Beacon creates canvas for graffiti works
Once shunned as vandals and hooligans, skateboarders and graffiti artists have entered the mainstream. The City of Beacon’s skate park, which opened in 2018 at Memorial Park, welcomes the public to perform tricks on the sturdy ramps and to scrawl on two Art Walls.
Skateboarding is now an Olympic sport and Mike “Skatchface” Long, a skater and graffiti artist who lives two blocks away, notices an uptick in legal (or, with permission) walls that encourage street art.
An Art Wall at the park, with a green disclosure sign (Photos by M. Ferris)
Mark Price, the city’s recreation director, says that he’s never heard of a municipality providing a similar platform for graffiti devotees.
The skate park’s addition of the Art Walls germinated from a suggestion in 2024 by Chiara Fedorchak and Kira Sheehan, then students in Erin Haddeland’s Participation in Government class at Beacon High School. The class each year proposes “participatory budgeting” ideas to the City Council.
The first phase of the project overhauled the facility by transitioning from black-and-white to color. The park’s former guise meant well, but the rinky-dink equipment is gone and the gear is solid and realistic, like the rectangular parking block, perfect for grinding. One rail is bolted into the smooth pavement.
Two more phases are planned for the site, which welcomes skaters, scooters and BMX bikers. New equipment is coming this summer, says Price; the third revision will revisit the skate area and the park’s surrounding sections. Skatchface and others say they would love to have lights and shade.
Mike “Skatchface” Long begins work on the Wall.
Though the spiffy space is free and open from dawn to dusk, there are plenty of rules, suggestions and restrictions regarding art. Wording on the officious signs is sprinkled with a few jokes — and the admonishment, “Have Fun!”
One list at the entrance includes the edict, No Smoking, No Vaping, No Clowns. “We were on the fence when the community suggested it, perhaps tongue in cheek, but that can pertain to lots of behavior, so we kept it,” Price says.
He points to a 2018 legal ruling that awarded $6.75 million to 21 graffiti artists who sued the owner of a Queens building known as 5Pointz, who had given them free rein for years before whitewashing their artwork overnight without notice. The owner eventually tore the building down.
The city-authored copy on two reflective green signs conveying Disclosures and Rules teeters between legalese and playfulness. Artists waive “any and all rights,” including “moral rights,” a term central to the 5Pointz case.
Strictures prohibit “obscene, defamatory, fraudulent, violent or criminal language … as decided by the city.” Creating “any artwork … subjects [it] to destruction, distortion, mutilation or other modifications, by reason of its removal, alteration or being painted over by others or the city. Artists should have no expectation that they can reclaim their work.”
Long’s finished graffiti mural
The art started with the installation of two 6-by-20-foot slate-gray slabs, which the city recently painted over, and inevitably spread to other impromptu canvases. The quality ranges from amateurish tags to professional-grade work.
Two colorful benches at the base of the western Art Wall provide shade. The manga-inspired doodling suggests that creative young people congregate.
On a recent weekend, at the sun-splashed eastern spot that generally features larger pieces, Long covered the entire wall with a set of bright, emotionally charged visages in his signature style. Another work, a fantastical beast with crooked teeth and gleaming eyes, adorns the side of a ramp.
“I’ve brought artists here to paint, but this is my first time,” he says. “Until now, I just came to skate.”
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