The Grand Finale Celebration of Awesome

• Posted on 8 May 2024
• 0

We say good bye, and good luck.

The Grand Finale Celebration of Awesome 

This is it.

For 12 years, from my garage, to our humble shop on 39th Street, we have served Kansas City’s longboard and skateboard community.  As of June 29th, we will be closing our store, closing the website, and converting our social media efforts to the representation of the Kansas City Longboard community.

The Vision

When I discovered longboarding in 2010, so many things clicked in my mind.  The raw fun of the motion, the simplicity of it’s joy, the lack of structure, the delightfully open book for interpretation and application of it’s principles, and the delight of moving through a city with your friends, the main goal to just move, experience and explore.  These core components grabbed my mind and my heart and the result is the shop. 

How can I encourage a community to stick with it’s pointless passion?  How can I encourage personal growth through skating without mucking up the works?  Can I take this “business” and use it to pump up our local riders, empower them, show them that all of this isn’t about being sponsored or even at it’s base about being the best, or better, or anything but having fun, and an excuse to get out move our bodies and the world around us?

Stoke Clinics

In Daniel Quinn’s book, Beyond Civilization, he wrote, 

“If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.”

My intent for Stoke Clinics were to have a single point in time each month, that all skill levels of riders could come together, practice, and also help get new riders or interested parties a solid start.  Kansas City is not the easiest place to start riding.  We have hills everywhere, so for a newer rider the need to learn how to stop and control your speed is an early skill needed for continued enjoyment.  New riders were exposed to several different styles of skating, taught how these different boards and styles could be effectively leveraged for enjoyment across our varied and challenging terrain.  The shop fundraised, and bought safety equipment, got boards donated from the raddest companies that actually gave a crap, and set about it.

After 10 years, I would like to think that this is just a habit for the community, it is just something I hope the longboarders will do.  I never wanted it to be a program, I wanted Stoke Clinics to be a part of the doings of our community.  

“Oh!  You longboard?  Have you been to Gooseneck Corner on the second Sunday?”

This way it didn’t matter if the shop was here, if any of the companies, or groups vanished, or even if I wasn’t here.  It’s never been about the shop, it’s never been about the companies that contributed, it was about the community.

This May 12th, 2024 Stoke Clinic will be the last one that Burning Spider Stoke Company will be attached to.  We will be giving away all our collected safety equipment (helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards) so if you don’t have a helmet, this Sunday we will bring them, but we aren’t taking them with us.

It has been such an incredible honor as a shop to instigate these, I give it freely and hopefully to our community to carry on.

See You in the World

So this is it.  We are closing.  Everything we have in stock is it, we will not be getting anything else in.  Any sales from this point forward is helping us to finish this out as close to $0 as we can get, so what ever future comes of me and my family won’t be in digging ourselves out of a hole.  Stoked to actually get out of the four walls of the shop and experience all the amazing goings on in our community.

Thank you!

To say this has been a dream of mine is an understatement.  For the past close to 30 years my dream of owning a skate shop has came, and it has been awesome.  I have learned so much, grown so much, and I could not have would not have had it any other way.  Thank you to everyone that has bought anything from us at any time in any fashion over the past 12 years.