There is a school called Palm Beach in Napean Sea Road that served a dual purpose in 2011. A group of skateboarders would take over a big classroom in the old, run-down building after the students had left. That’s where they would practise the niche sport, which speaks volumes about the dearth of proper skateboarding facilities in the city at that point.

But that venue didn’t last long. The school authorities eventually shunted the skateboarders out. They shifted to a roller-skating rink in Mahim but even there, they weren’t made to feel welcome. The roller-skaters felt that the skateboarders were infringing on their space. So, with nowhere else to go, the skateboarding community decided to take matters into their own hands. They approached a few corporates with the idea of building a skate park, met with further rejection, and yet kept pursuing the matter till, in 2016, they found an ally in Sagar Naik, the then young mayor of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. He gave them the nod for a skate park in Nerul, and that set the wheels rolling — quite literally — for the skateboarding community in the city to evolve and grow.