Evan Walker has always found commonality on wheels. He first picked up a skateboard in middle school in California, learning to skate but also to make friends and express himself. Later, working as an environmental sustainability advisor, he moved around to small towns and big cities, and one of his first acts in a new place became finding the closest skatepark. That’s where he could usually connect with a group of people who also wanted to challenge themselves physically and creatively.
Walker is now a co-founder of the Cincinnati Skatepark Project, which has been advocating for spaces to skate in the city for four years. On a recent April morning, he was among a group to lift shovels of dirt in Camp Washington and ceremoniously break ground on the city’s first full-scale public skatepark. Walker’s hope is that the park, expected to open by fall, will jumpstart a network of places to skate in Cincinnati.
“This has been an all-wheels effort,” he said to the crowd gathered at the groundbreaking, “and a long time coming.”…