It’s easy to stereotype people who skateboard: baggy jeans, obscure band tees, scuffed Nike Dunks, Thrasher beanies, proudly scraped elbows. Oh, and, most often, straight men. But coming out of lockdown, professional skater Lyndsay McLaren noticed a huge increase in female skaters around Victoria Park.
‘The thing they all had in common was that they looked, you know, beginner level,’ she says. ‘And they were alone.’
That’s why she started Neighbourhood Skate Club: a supportive meet-up where women and queer people can learn to skate together. Its mission? To make the sport accessible and create a space where people can learn without being judged or getting unwanted attention. ‘Even just carrying your board around, as a woman you deal with a lot of harassment,’ McLaren says. ‘It’s almost like it attracts a certain type of man to talk to you.’
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Earlier this year, McLaren began doing one-to-one lessons in Victoria Park with women she knew. Word spread of the cool pro-skater with a different approach to teaching. Her Instagram DMs were overflowing, so she created a separate page for Neighbourhood. It now has 1,900 followers and even recently took over the Strand for a women’s and queer people’s skate jam.
McLaren says she hopes that the club can be a place where people can lean into each other for support and feel powerful both on and off the board. She says that the simple act of cruising around makes members feel strong. ‘When they look at me like, “Holy shit, I’m doing this!” that’s a really special moment.’
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