WHEN HITS THE SUN
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.
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
