When two friends made plans to restore a derelict skate park by hand, they also set out to reignite a community. The result is a brand new chapter for Hackney Bumps, a concrete haven in the heart of East London, where skateboarding is just the beginning.
Text: Jessica Holland – Photography: Greg Holland
WHAT’S BETTER THAN THIS? It’s a summer night and you’re 15 years old. You’re playing spin the bottle with your friends at Hackney Bumps, a skate park made of undulating concrete that looks like a lunar landscape, stretching out into the darkness. The bottle lands on your crush, and your mate says she should kiss you. You give them a panicked look, but the girl says, “Fuck it, why not?”
The person telling me this story is Elijah McKenzie, who’s 16 now, goes by the name Moss, and uses he/they pronouns. We’re talking about what Bumps – a decades-old BMX spot, originally, that was given new life by a small group of skateboarders during the pandemic – means to him. This is one moment that comes to mind. The kiss, by the way: “I can’t even describe it. It felt like serenity.”
Another image that stands out is of him sitting out on the warm concrete with friends, blasting music and watching the sky turn ice-cream colours. The loose-limbed feeling of having spent the day in motion, sweat on his skin, sun in his eyes, trying skate tricks, hitting the floor, scrapes and bruises, the euphoria of landing something new. “Last summer was the best summer of my life,” he says. “If Bumps wasn’t here, it wouldn’t have been anything like how it was. It would have been glum.”
Moss needed somewhere like this. They moved to this part of East London, across the river from the Olympic Park, at the start of the pandemic when they went into foster care, aged 14. Their home life had been difficult and chaotic for some time. They’d witnessed violence and the effects of addiction, and had been trying to hold things together for their mum and five siblings, three of whom are autistic. Then they uncovered a secret that made them feel that their efforts were pointless, that no one else in a position of responsibility was even trying. “That was the breaking point. I was the most angry I’ve ever been.”
They packed a bag, went to school, and told a teacher they weren’t going back. At 8pm that night, a social worker took them from school to an emergency foster home, which has since become permanent. “It was the first good environment I’ve ever been in,” they say. “It did wonders for me. But I was never going to heal just from being somewhere new.”
School wasn
