CONVERSATION
When Shawn Connolly moved from small-town Maine to San Francisco in 1995, he just wanted to skateboard: “I had a fake plan to go to art school, but that never happened.”
Instead he spent his would-be college years skating the smooth bricks of Justin Herman Plaza and the hills of the Sunset with renowned pros, stacking footage and getting his picture in magazines like Thrasher.
In 2006, Connolly and his girlfriend Thuy Nguyen started teaching private skate lessons. It was Nguyen’s idea — she was a teacher and recognized that her students needed a physical outlet — and Connolly, who had never worked with children, was apprehensive at first. But he came to see, and love, that his knowledge was not just a valuable commodity but something he could pass along to kids.
The lessons soon evolved into an annual summer camp. In 2007, Connolly and Nguyen opened a clubhouse for young skaters on Divisadero Street, the San Francisco Skate Club. The space became a second home for many city kids, and the couple went out of their way to welcome kids who lived in far-flung neighborhoods or didn’t have money to pay for boards.
But 2020 was particularly cruel for the couple. As the pandemic raged on, Nguyen passed away after a long battle with cancer. After shuttering the club’s physical space for a while and spending three and a half months by Nguyen’s side in hospice care, Connolly didn’t know what to do. Friends stepped up: A fundraiser organized by close friend and longtime political aide Sunny Angulo (now Sup. Aaron Peskin’s chief of staff) brought in more than $100,000, enough to cover Nguyen’s medical bills and take pressure off Connolly, 45, who was living paycheck to paycheck.
He’s also dealing with his own health crisis: Two months ago he had brain surgery to treat early onset Parkinson’s disease, which was diagnosed seven years ago. (The shop remains open.)
When I dropped in recently, young teens gathered around a table invited me to come skate with them before even asking my name. Tempted though I was, I opted to stick around and chat with Connolly about skateboarding, Nguyen’s life and legacy, and the future of SF Skate Club.
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: Besides the nine-week summer camp, what other programs do you run?
Shawn Connolly: We do a Saturday program, which is just a way to get kids out during the school year. We have ten part-time employees who are instructors for those sessions.
There are nonprofits that teach skating in places without independent skate scenes. I was in Palestine last month volunteering with SkatePal, for instance. What’s it like teaching kids to skate in a city that already has a strong scene?
When we started, teaching skateboarding was not cool whatsoever. There was no Shred N Butter [SF Recreation and Parks Department’s skateboard program], there was nobody doing private lessons at skateparks. Our main priority was just to serve the youth, and that had a return. We got a lot of support from the skate industry. Also Thuy was a credentialed teacher and had a masters in education, she brought that element to it.
It’s very inclusive, there are no socioeconomic barriers, and we don’t emphasize skill. We prioritize just putting yourself out there and trying new things. The worst thing I can imagine is ending summer camp and having a kid that I didn’t get to work with on something specific.
You also sell skateboards and other goods here at the shop. Are you breaking even?
We don’t make a lot of money from our shop. One of my favorite things is putting boards together for either a first-timer or for someone in their 30s who wants to reenter skating, and those are our two biggest customer bases. We’re approachable. People know they can come in and not know what they’re supposed to be asking about.
‘We’re trying to bring up the youth to take our spots. That’s my goal: more youth employment and giving kids entry-level job opportunities. I think that’s something Thuy would have been really big into.’
I’m sure you saw people from both of those categories buying skateboards in the early months of the pandemic.
Skateboarding got really popular around that time, yeah. I was doing a lot of online sales and deliveries. Another thing that helped us get through was that Vans gave us a signature shoe and most of the proceeds went to us. That helped us pay rent for a couple months.
The pandemic hit in March 2020, then Thuy passed away in November. How did Skate Club make it through?
That was a tough time. She went through two types of chemotherapy, and then immunotherapy, and then after that she was in comfort care, which is a nice way of saying hospice care, at UCSF. I stayed with her for three and a half months.
Our friend Sunny set up a GoFundMe that did really well. I think I’d be living in BART by now if that didn’t happen, honestly. It’s the only way I could have survived. I used to pay my rent every month and that’s all I paid myself.
Coming back was a little difficult, just getting my bearings, but it was also good to have Skate Club to focus on. I put some sweat equity into the shop, and even with the pandemic going on, the kids were still showing up, and I was paying them out of my own pocket to spackle this or paint that or whatever.
That’s when I started down this new path of trying to secure funding to employ more youth.
We’ve created a culture where we’re trying to bring up the youth to take our spots. That’s my goal: more youth employment, and giving kids entry-level job opportunities. I think that’s something Thuy would have been really big into.
There was such a huge outpouring of support when Thuy passed. Suddenly her name was on every wall, there was a huge mural at Ocean Beach.
We made a sweatshirt with Thuy’s image, it said WWTD, and at first we wanted to sell them to pay bills, but I started seeing pictures of kids wearing them and I was like, okay, fuck it, we’re just gonna let the kids have them.
You couldn’t peel those things off them, and there were just battalions of kids skating around rocking them. I was like, this has taken on a life of its own. I just need to step back.
The mural is still there at Ocean Beach, and it barely gets hit up [tagged over]. We celebrated her birthday down there last year. The kids had a great time. We’re going to celebrate the same thing this year on her birthday, August 8.
A kid, an alum of the program, recently came in with a tattoo of Thuy on their arm. The kids remember her, and they’re dedicated to her memory.
She always made time for friends and family and the youth, to the point that it affected her health toward the end. She prioritized everybody before herself. And anyone that knows her knows her smile, and anytime she infected you with an idea, she made you believe it was possible.
What’s next for Skate Club? Are we going to see 16 more summers?
At this point I’m trying to build up the organization, which means I have to let go of some things. I just had brain surgery a couple months ago. I’ve had Parkinson’s since 2015, I’m young onset, and I got deep brain stimulation on March 23. I highly recommend it (laughs). I’m still recovering, so this summer I don’t know if I’ll be out there every day like before.
Other than my health, I’ll focus on making the organization as strong as it can be, and that means bringing in like-minded and creative people who are devoted to the youth.
The other day I was hanging out in front of the Skate Club and these two guys walk by and one says, “Oh, they teach skateboarding here,” and the other guy goes, “Is that still cool?” And I’ve always taken for granted that skateboarding is always cool, and I think that’s a testament to how skating can always rewrite itself.
As long as the hills are here, we’ll always have skating.
Max Harrison-Caldwell is a staff writer for The Frisc covering streets, parks, and other shared spaces. And skateboarding, of course.
