Legendary New York Skater Andy Kessler Passes

The skateboarding world is mourning the passing of Andy Kessler. The New York born boarder, considered among his peers and admirers as a grandfather or "mayor" of the sport succumbed to complications of an insect sting in Montauk, N.Y., on Wednesday. He was 48. Kessler is survived by his mother and sister.

Kessler was an early hero of skateboarding. The sport, which gained popularity in the early 70s, moved from California creeping into New York later on. Kessler was a member of a skate collective called the Soul Artists of Zoo York (considered by some to be New York's version of the Z-Boys crew from Dogtown in Santa Monica, Calif.) which skated all over the Upper West Side, where Kessler grew up.

He and a group of youths varying in race and income levels pioneered the art of city skating. They skated throughout the city from Riverside Park to the abandoned swimming pool in Van Cortlandt Park dubbed the "Death Bowl." The bowl was later immortalized in the documentary about the evolution of the skate scene in New York, "Deathbowl to Downtown." In an article about the scene in 2005, New York magazine called Mr. Kessler “its most prominent rider."

By the early 1980s, the Soul Artists of Zoo York were disbanding, even as the Dogtown riders were becoming professionals and starting companies. For five years, Mr. Kessler worked in fields as diverse as flea markets and massage therapy. Following a serious drug addiction, he recovered with the help of Narcotics Anonymous and became dedicated to helping youthful addicts. Many plan to attend his funeral.

Mr. Kessler long nurtured an ambition to build a park for skateboarders and roller-bladers, and in the mid-1990s he proposed the idea of building one in Riverside Park, near where he grew up. The New York City parks department accepted the idea, and Mr. Kessler recruited a group of disadvantaged youths to build it. He later built more parks on Long Island and elsewhere.

In a 1999 interview conducted by Masha Falkov, a high school student, that was posted on the Internet, Mr. Kessler related what he would want God to say to him at the Pearly Gates: “You’ve done a good job, but you left a few things out, so we’re sending you back.”

Photo courtesy of nytimes.com