Grinding to the finish line

Now that longtime skateboarder Peter Karvonen is older, he’s no longer skating to compete or prove his skills to anyone. 

What he is trying to prove, as the owner of Birmingham’s oldest and longest-standing skate shop, is that there has always been a passionate and community-centric skateboarding family in the Magic City.

“Skate shops still have that ‘clubhouse feel.’ You want to be involved and see who’s out skating and see what’s going on,” said Karvonen, who owns Faith Skate Supply. “… We still have a lot of loyalty in the community. A lot of older guys have moved on and don’t skate anymore, but they still buy all their shoes here and dress their kids in our Faith shirt. It’s like, there’s so much respect and love and support.”

Karvonen remembers what it was like to be in his teens and “hyper-focused” about everything that had to do with a skateboard. He said he quit all of his other sports and would spend about 10 hours a day skating. He competed in competitions for a while, he said, and stayed out of trouble because of the sport. 

“I would see guys do a trick, and that was the ‘a-ha’ moment that I had to know everything I can about this; this is the greatest thing ever. And I never went back. I made some of my best friends that way, and everything has just kind of fallen into place for me through skateboarding,” Karvonen said.

Over the years, Faith Skate Supply has moved locations to different spots as the Birmingham population has grown. It now dwells on 1201 Second Ave. N. 

Karvonen, who grew up in Vestavia Hills, has been skating for 30 years now, since he was 14 years old. After high school, he moved downtown and attended UAB for a stint. Ten months after a buddy of his opened Faith Skate Supply, his mom gave him a loan to take over the shop and chase after a dream of his: to own a skate shop. 

Since 1995, Faith Skate Supply has been a staple in the longstanding Birmingham skate community. 

At the beginning, people would travel from all over the state and sometimes even the Southeast to buy from Karvonen’s shop. Skaters, some of whom have gone professional, even moved to Birmingham for the skater community here, he said.

“There’s this weird rebirth where history repeats itself, and what was cool in 1995 is cool now, which is kind of my era of skateboarding when I started the shop,” he said. “It used to not be as cool to be a skateboarder as a kid, but now it’s kind of a cool thing. Everybody skates now.”

Karvonen said his customer base has grown to include everyone from older guys getting back into skating for the exercise to more and more girls and women interested in joining the scene. 

Sandi Sidwell, a skateboarder since 2010, skates at Faith Skate Supply. Sidwell said over the years, she's seen an increase in women and girls skateboarding, which she loves.

"Girls want to have fun, too. They want to be out there," she said. "I think the culture has completely opened up. It used to be girls sit on the side and watch, and now I see so many guys being cheerleaders, like 'C'mon, try it!' And that is huge."

Karvonen said it's becoming “a family affair,” as well, with mothers and fathers teaching their kids, like Sidwell. 

In the 2020 Olympics, skateboarding will be a competition sport for the first time. Because of this and the sport’s recent popularity, Karvonen said skate parks have been popping up all over the world.

Sidwell said that skateboarding is one of the only sports that's "not saturated with mainly one type of person."

"It's so eclectic. It's filled with every gender, class, socio-economic background, you name it. If you can stay on four wheels, you're part of the crew," Sidwell said. 

For many skateboarders in Birmingham, finding places to skate can be difficult and even unsafe without the city having an official skate park.

“We’ve fought for [a skate park] for 10 to 12 years. We’ve fought for a skate park forever,” Karvonen said. “In the rest of the nation, there’s skate parks everywhere. Mississippi has more skate parks than Alabama, … Atlanta has probably built 12 to 15 in the 40-mile area around the city. They’re popping up everywhere.”

Though a lot of city officials have the mentality that a skate park is a liability to the city, Karvonen said it’s not, since it would be free and open for everybody to use. 

Karvonen said the skating community, which includes Faith Skate Supply, has never gotten as close to a promise for a public skate park downtown until recently, when ALDOT invited the community to come to an open input meeting in October 2018 for the public to advocate for what they wanted to be built under the 59/20 bridges.

Overwhelmingly, people voted for the skate park. As of Iron City Ink’s press time, ALDOT plans weren’t finalized.

“I really commend the skate community for coming together to express the strong support for a skate park as part of the CityWalk project. Their petition with thousands of signatures made a big impression and elevated the prioritization for the skate park,” City Councilor Darrell O’Quinn said. 

Karvonen said he started an online petition where within two weeks, he had over 5,000 signatures of support and testimonials for the skate park, “with everyone’s stories of skateboarding and how much their kids wanted it.”

“Skateboarding can save some people’s lives. It really can keep people out of trouble,” Karvonen said, because the sport gives kids something to be passionate about and have a healthy outlet, he added. 

“Give them somewhere to go if you don’t want them in the street, in the traffic, too,” Karvonen said. “There’s a saying that if a city doesn’t have a skate park, the city is the skate park. I think the city finally understands it now.”

Through the A.skate Foundation, Faith Skate Supply has raised over $40,000, Karvonen said, from donations in the community. In the near future, they are looking to use the donations to pour more concrete or take the steps to build a small skate park while ALDOT fulfills their skate park promise.

Although public meetings were held about what to do with the space under the bridge, no ALDOT plans are finalized as of Iron City Ink’s print date of May 14.

O’Quinn said there’s a great deal of emphasis for the city and ALDOT to not simply create a skate park, but executing the project “at a world-class level.” 

“We want a skate park that the city can be very proud of for a long time,” O’Quinn said. 

In 2019, Faith Skate Supply has also started offering “skate clinics,” which are weekend lessons that both children and adults can take part in to learn some of the basics and tricks involved in skateboarding. The clinics are open to boys and girls and take place at the skate shop, where they use the ramp inside and skate on the concrete area outside. 

Chris Solomon, a longtime skater who knew Karvonen back when he first started skating, is one of the main teachers for the clinic. He said he’s loved being able to give back to the Birmingham skating community.

“I can share the love I had and still have from skateboarding and share with others, kind of pass it on and make sure the next generation is going to be all right,” Solomon said. 

At the end of each clinic, they do a graduation ceremony to celebrate what they learned. 

“When I see a little kid on a skateboard, and they drop in [on a half-pipe] for the first time, the excitement and that joy they get, I know that feeling. I can feel it internally in myself, and it makes me just as excited and happy for them as when I learned that trick,” Solomon said. 

Solomon added that the “mom and pop” skate shops like Faith Skate Supply have had a hard time thriving with online buying becoming such a big part of people’s lives. Part of the clinics is showing people that Faith Skate Supply isn’t just a shop, it’s a social hub to meet people, make friends and invest in the skating community.

“It’s the heart of your skateboarding community,” he said.

Faith Skate Supply sells skateboards and carries skater shoe brands and skating-centric clothes. For more on skate clinics, go to facebook.com/faithskatesupply or faithskate.com.