The sport has surged this year as boys – and, increasingly, girls – find an accessible way to test their skills and raise their spirits
Millfields Park in Hackney, east London, is filled with the sound of tiny wheels gliding on concrete after the nearby schools finish for the day. Children in checkerboard shoes and hoodies have come to skateboard at dusk. It is a few days before the start of the second lockdown.
Nieko, aged eight, tells me he took it up a few months ago because he just “likes riding around”. His mother, Joanne, a product designer, says she is pleased to get him off the internet. It is, she says, like the old-school days when people would knock on your door and invite you to the local park.