As dusk fell on a recent sunny Friday, local skateboard enthusiast Scotty Dixon's front yard began filling up with cars - most from Vermont and New Hampshire, some from Massachusetts, and a few others from New York, Maine, and Florida.
Following one's ears to the action led to the backyard, where the background sound was a mix of high-energy, guitar-grinding thrash metal, hardcore music, and punk rock, playing from speakers set under the eaves of an outbuilding.
The music was enhanced by a supplementary rhythm section: the clack of skateboard wheels, trucks, and decks hitting the ramps and bowls of Dixon's private skatepark.
Often, the tunes were drowned out by the whine of a circular saw and a power drill, as guests took a break from skating, or just watching, to help enlarge the skatepark.
Within an hour, an entirely new ramp appeared, from its support structure to its Skatelite surface. After one person whooshed a push broom across the structure to chase away the fallen leaves, many of the builders tested it out as friends and onlookers cheered them on.
The scene looked like a party. And it was. A table was filled with boxes of pizza, a case of Miller High Life, and a variety of snacks and fruit.
Friends arrived to smiles, cheers, and hugs. People snuggled their babies - and dandled them on skateboards.
But it was more than just a regular gathering. There were prizes to be won here at the fifth Hinsdale Hoe Down, an annual competition billed as a “local skateboard appreciation festival” held at Dixon's house.
A totally gnar event
Later that night, competition winners would take home t-shirts, stickers, whole skateboards and parts - decks, wheels - a $250 cash prize, and “a lot of glory,” said Dixon.
The invitation flyer gave the location, “Scotty's House. If you know, you know.”
Apparently, many people knew, because as the afternoon turned to evening, more friends arrived and parking became scarce, and creative, in Dixon's yard.
Despite its homegrown qualities, the competition is backed with local and corporate sponsorships, including Brattleboro Printmakers, The Void, Vermont Skateboards, Lowcard Magazine, Miller High Life, and Skatelite.
Dixon told The Commons that 187 people showed up to his house for the competition a few years ago.
“That one was so f-in' sick,” he said with a smile, and added, “This one's gonna be smaller.”
In the competition's announcement on social media, Dixon stated the rules for the event: “Don't park in the street. Don't drink and drive. Don't piss off my neighbors. Don't trash my house. If you bring a dog bring a leash. Yeah, everyone has a well behaved perfect dog - I get it. Bring it on a leash. More or less the only rules."
Dixon also requested that, in the story, The Commons use the terms “radical,” “wheelie,” and “totally gnar” at least once, and demonstrated to a non-skating reporter how it could be done: “Radical wheelie-board event shows that any backyard can be totally gnar if you're willing to work for it.”
Pointing out his backyard's two concrete bowls - which mimic the emptied swimming pools of drought-stricken 1970s California, where bowl-riding got its start - Dixon said he built them mostly by himself, with the assistance of friends in the skater community and a skatepark professional.
“It was my first time working with concrete,” he said, noting that concrete is tricky because once it dries, you can't modify it. But, Dixon said, the first bowl “was not as bad as I feared and much better than I thought it would be” - and, most importantly, “it skates.”
“It's a success,” he said.
The first bowl was tagged with multiple layers of spray-painted art, and the second looked ready for a burst of colorful creativity.
But the ramps' surfaces are hands-off, said Dixon.
“I don't let people paint on Skatelite. It's expensive - $300 a sheet, and the company gave them to me - and I want people to see it as it is,” he said.
Tired of waiting
Dixon said he started the skateboard appreciation event and competition partly out of frustration.
“I started building my park because I got sick of the town of Brattleboro jerking around BASIC,” Dixon said, referring to the process, spanning well over a decade, of working with the town to site a public skatepark.
The nonprofit BASIC (Brattleboro Area Skatepark Is Coming) developed from a Selectboard committee, with support from the town's Recreation & Parks Department. BASIC, and area supporters of skateboarding, tried for years to build a skatepark, only to be rebuffed time and time again.
The first location the town chose for the park, the Crowell Lot, was met with a negative campaign to stop its construction; some residents claimed skaters would vandalize the area and ruin the park's trees.
After many tries, the town approved the skatepark for Living Memorial Park, and its plans are currently on the drawing board at Stantec, the firm designing the facility.
“Right after [the town] reneged on the Crowell Lot, I got screamed at by some lady when my skateboard fell into the Latchis parking lot,” said Dixon. “I got so frustrated I went home and started building.”
“It turns out it's a lot easier to just build your own park than going through all the NIMBYs and bureaucracy,” he said.
“Once I had some ramps, I started having these events,” said Dixon, who began constructing his backyard skatepark when he was in nursing school “to have fun.”
Now that he's a licensed psychiatric nurse, Dixon said, “I get yelled at at work, then I come home and build things with that energy.”
“Every year, I build something new,” said Dixon. “The day before the competition is a big work party,” he noted.
Skating and camaraderie
Gordy Danielson, from Bangor, Maine, said he and his friends “always show up early to try to help build stuff,” including on the day of the event, “because I like to help Scotty.”
“I got my first board when I was 4 years old,” said Danielson, a lifelong skater who skates every day. (That penny board - one of “those thin, short, 1970s skateboards” - was a Goosebumps tie-in to the series of children's horror novels written by R.L. Stine and later made into two feature films.)
Not everyone was there to compete.
Dawson Bass of St. Augustine, Fla., came up with his band, 86 Hope, to play later that evening at Brattleboro Printmakers, a do-it-yourself membership-based screen-printing space.
“I don't really skate,” Bass said. “Sometimes I mess around, but I don't compete or anything. Westley [Durden], our drummer, competes. I hope he doesn't bust his shit. We need him for the tour.”
Jonas Fricke, of Brattleboro, said he comes nearly every year, but doesn't enter the competition. “I'm just gonna roll around,” he noted.
Kayla Peters from Southampton, Mass., said she doesn't skate much, and that's partly due to the requirements of her profession. If Peters, an emergency medical technician, were to fall and break a limb, it would greatly hinder her ability to go to work.
When a visitor asked Peters if she's ever noticed women skating - at that point, men were holding a monopoly on the ramps and bowls - she said not many do, “but the women that do show up do get a lot of support here.”
The camaraderie is a major reason Peters keeps coming to the event every year.
“I love the teamwork and the support everyone has,” she said. “Even though it's a competition, they still cheer each other on.”
And that goes for newcomers, too, said Peters.
“Even if you're a random person who just shows up, you'll become a pal here,” she said.