Boone, NC — The First Friday Art Crawl is back in Boone, and this month’s festivities found a crew of women in the parking lot of Lily’s Snack Bar with skateboards in hand. The funky college watering hole isn’t a typical location for skateboarders with its limited parking and proximity to an ever-busy App State intersection, but this First Friday it was turned into a skate park for a couple hours.
This temporary skate park was the idea of Alicia Green and Ashley Galleher who have partnered to tell the High Country all about the local skateboarding scene and to tell it from a woman’s perspective. Skateboarding has been a lot of things in its past — mostly male-dominated, imposing, and intimidating, but it’s not always those things.
Skateboarding has always included female riders, but very few of those women are captured in images where the masses can see them, and so the sport has touted more men than women historically. But that is changing around the world and here in North Carolina. In the waning Summer of 2020, Ashely opened her backyard skateboard ramp up to a group of women looking to break out of their covid-induced house arrest. Guys were invited to skate too, but on Tuesdays it was a dedicated Ladies’ Night where strangers became friends around a cooler of Mexican beer and the challenge of skateboarding. It wasn’t a typical ladies’ night scene, and that’s a big part of why this group of women kept coming back. Alicia, a professional photographer and budding skateboarder, felt the magic of these Tuesday nights was something worth sharing so she picked up her camera to document what this group of women were creating with a few skateboards in a Zionville backyard.
“In our society, women spend a great amount of
time and energy doing for others so it’s a true gift to
be able to provide a space and facilitate an
environment where we can be our best selves, for
ourselves. Amazing things happen when groups of
women get together guided by positivity,
encouragement, and grit. Watching women unearth
the toughness and courage we are all born with is
the highlight of owning and operating Zionville Ramp
Company.”
Ashley Galleher, Founder of ZRC
The magic of those images was tangible to the staff in charge of the Turchin Center’s 20th anniversary of the Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition (AMPC) and selected six images to display on the gallery’s walls for this Spring’s exhibition.
Alicia wanted to share the images and the experience of skateboarding with more people and Ashley was the one to do it. Through ZRC she builds ramps to build community. Best of all, skateboarding is available to everyone. Girls, moms, boys, dads, and all the rest are welcome at ZRC to learn how to bring the joy of skateboarding to their lives. But the question remained, how do they tell more people? The answer: Show off a little by hosting a skateboarding event in Boone on First Friday to promote ZRC and bring people to the Turchin to see and feel the magic of those photos for themselves.
From March until June 13th, visitors can see and feel for themselves the joy and challenge that took place those pandemic Tuesday nights in Zionville by visiting the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts on King Street. To see more of what Alicia does with her camera follow @_eddylinecreative_ on Instagram or visit www.eddylinecreative.com. ZRC is open to the public for group and private lessons, open skate nights for riders of all abilities, summer camps for kids, and anyone can purchase their very own ZRC ramp to keep skating in their own driveway, backyard, or basement. Come this June, ZRC is opening an indoor skatepark to ensure the love of skateboarding is open and available to all people in our mountain communities no matter the weather. Follow @zionvillerampco on Instagram and FB and online at www.zionvillerampco.com to keep pace with their construction progress and for the Grand Opening announcement.
Courtesy of EddyLine Creative.
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