Growing up in West Oakland isn’t easy. Right across the bay from shiny San Francisco, the struggling city is riddled with gangs and has one of the highest homicide and robbery rates in the country. It’d be easy for the skateboarding scene to die off, or not exist at all, under such difficult circumstances, but Keith “K-Dub” Williams is making sure that doesn’t happen.
In 2008, the full-time art teacher decided to take matters into his own hands and approached the city to open up a skatepark right in the heart of West Oakland. With no funding to speak of, K-Dub built ramps out of found wood and funded other materials out of his own pocket while encouraging local skaters to get involved to help build the park up completely from scratch.
The park solidified itself in 2014 when Levi’s Skateboarding partnered up with K-Dub and upgraded the park from old, repurposed wood to full concrete. For our newest installment of Locals, we talked with K-Dub, a founding father of West Oakland’s skate scene and the lead organizer of Town Park as it continues it’s second phase of construction.
Related Posts
-
LOCALS: THE VINTAGE SKATEBOARD CLOTHING DEALER
Looking for that old Shorty's shirt you had when you were 13? You might be in luck...
-
LOCALS: BEHIND NEW JERSEY’S D.I.Y. HAVEN
Meet some of the faces behind Shorty's, one of the best D.I.Y. spots on the east coast.
-
LOCALS: THE PORTABLE POP UP SKATEPARK
When he's not working, Kevin drives into the city with homemade boxes, rails and kickers and creates a free pop up skatepark.
-
LOCALS: FRITZ MEAD’S MINI HOUSE & BACKYARD BOWL
When Fritz Mead moved to NYC, there wasn’t any space left in his friends’ house, so he came up with an idea – he’d just build his own house in their backyard.
-
LOCALS: BUILDING THE FUTURE OF DETROIT WITH DERRICK DYKAS
Meet Derrick Dykas, the man pushing the Detroit skate scene and developing one of the world's first community built green skatepark.
-
LOCALS: THE UNPUBLICIZED SKATESHOP RUN OUT OF A TINY NYC APARTMENT
We took the train uptown to Eugene Kang's apartment, where he runs Terminal Skateshop out of his living room.
-
LOCALS: THE BROOKLYN SKATEBOARD COLLECTOR & HISTORIAN
This guy has covered every single inch of his small Bushwick apartment with a chronology of skateboards.
-
LOCALS: BUILDING NYC’S NOTORIOUS DIY SPOTS WITH JERRY MRAZ
Whether you know it or not, you have probably seen or skated a spot built by Jerry Mraz
June 18, 2015 4:20 pm
Kdub is a BOSS.
Great work everyone all around on this 1.
June 19, 2015 12:06 am
Yeah, KDub seems like a great guy. That’s really cool that he spearheaded that movement and got stuff done. Good story, Jenkem.
June 19, 2015 1:16 am
Great job KDub
June 20, 2015 5:32 pm
he rules