USU Skateboard Club hosts first-ever ‘Costume Party at the Park’
Skaters dropping in at Logan Skate Park recently may have found themselves skating side to side with pirates, subway surfers, emos and more.
Utah State University Skateboard Club hosted its first annual “Costume Party at the Park” event at the skate park on Oct. 29. The event was attended by USU students and Logan community members.
Attendees arrived in a variety of costumes, including a Batman and Joker duo, Patrick Bateman, a dinosaur, SpongeBob SquarePants, Gandalf the Grey and many others.
The event included a costume competition, skate competition, scavenger hunt, pizza and live music.
The skateboarding competition had participants skating through the park, ending up ollie-ing off an uphill ramp at the entrance of the park and over a mannequin arm. The mannequin arm was moved backward every round to increase the difficulty of the ollie.
Connor Hales, former club president, cheered on each contestant as they attempted to ollie over the severed mannequin arm. The ultimate winner of the ollie competition was a skater dressed in a pirate costume, whom Hales nicknamed “The pirate.”
Competition participant and club President Leo Gilbert shared behind-the-scenes of the event itself.
“The main inspiration for me was — there’s a Thrasher Magazine event called the ‘Halloween Hellbomb,’ and it’s just a costume skate contest. It’s a little crazier than ours, but just having people at the skate park in costume seemed like a really fun idea, so we went with it,” Gilbert said.
There were over 60 attendees at the event at the park. Not all were skateboarders but instead spectators who watched from the sides with pizza provided from Logan City’s Lucky Slice Pizza location.
Hales spoke to The Utah Statesman about the growth in attendance the club has seen in the past year.
“I think last year, the attendance was a lot of people we knew, like, from our social circles,” Hales said. “It’s been amazing this year, especially with the freshmen that have attended. We didn’t know most of the kids that are in attendance, and so knowing that there’s an influx of new skateboarders carrying on the torch each year has been really cool for us.”
The club recently launched a line of T-shirts in collaboration with Directive Boardshop. The shirts, designed by Gilbert, were given out as prizes at the event.
“It’s been really fun to have something to represent us that people can wear around and show they’re proud members of skate club,” Gilbert said.
The costume contest section of the event was held over the club’s Instagram stories, where viewers and attendees could go and vote for their favorite costume.
To close out the night, local band The Jugs, made up of club members, set up in the middle of the park and had crowd members gather in the bowl to listen to their set.
Hales spoke on his hopes for the future of the club after hosting the first-ever “Costume Party at the Park.”
“The sky is really the limit for our club, just starting up again last year and seeing where we’ve already gone in a year,” Hales said. “Our ultimate goal is to create a space on campus to skateboard, whether that’s indoor and we can use year-round, or to develop a skate park up on USU campus to, again, bring the community and the university together.”