Growing up in West Oakland isn’t easy. Right across the bay from shiny San Francisco, the struggling city is riddled with gangs and has one of the highest homicide and robbery rates in the country. It’d be easy for the skateboarding scene to die off, or not exist at all, under such difficult circumstances, but Keith “K-Dub” Williams is making sure that doesn’t happen.
In 2008, the full-time art teacher decided to take matters into his own hands and approached the city to open up a skatepark right in the heart of West Oakland. With no funding to speak of, K-Dub built ramps out of found wood and funded other materials out of his own pocket while encouraging local skaters to get involved to help build the park up completely from scratch.
The park solidified itself in 2014 when Levi’s Skateboarding partnered up with K-Dub and upgraded the park from old, repurposed wood to full concrete. For our newest installment of Locals, we talked with K-Dub, a founding father of West Oakland’s skate scene and the lead organizer of Town Park as it continues it’s second phase of construction.
Comments
Popular
-
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH ILLEGAL CIV?
The Illegal Civ stuff feels like an ongoing soap opera, so to air out any confusion we talked to a few key characters.
-
SIGNS YOU WERE A LATE 2000S SKATER
All the things you miss about the era of skating that brought you stretchy nut-hugging jeans and floppy taco shoes.
-
8 ARTISTS REIMAGINE THE INDEPENDENT LOGO
What would an Independent rebrand even look like?
-
HOW CAN WE HELP KEEP SKATE SHOPS ALIVE?
For years brands and skaters have blindly cried "support your local," but we asked shop owners about other ways we can all provide actual help.
-
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ZOO YORK?
Yoga pants, no skate team, and "radically" shitty ads.
June 21, 2015 5:53 pm
Big ups to this dude.
June 30, 2015 2:11 pm
I got to skate this last time about a month ago when i was out there…,Park rips! kudos for putting in the work to get that place to where it is now!
August 31, 2015 7:20 pm
Hey guys – I’m trying to reach out to Keith – do you have a public email address I can contact him at?
December 3, 2015 6:57 pm
peace Aimee – hit me allthingsdub1@gmail.com – Big up Jenkem Fam!- K-Dub