Skateboard Legend Dies From Sting
By Timothy Small
(Aug. 13, 2009) Andy Kessler, who was a prominent figure in New York City’s skateboarding scene in the late 1970s and who designed the Montauk Skate Park nine years ago, died of an apparent allergic reaction to a hornet sting while doing construction work at a house on Ditch Plain Road in Montauk on Tuesday. He was 49.
 Bart Schwarz
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Mr. Kessler was dedicated to redeveloping the park he built on Essex Street in Montauk, friends said. For the past year, he had worked hard to organize a fund-raiser that would allow him to make improvements such as filling in the dead ends.
“The fund-raiser was his chief concern,” JJ Veronis, a longtime friend of Mr. Kessler’s, said yesterday. “He was so passionate about it.”
“I first met him in 1975,” Mr. Veronis recalled. “I was 12 years old and I was skateboarding in Central Park. Andy was the king. He was an amazing cat. Back then, Central Park was a little dicey. He took me under his wing.”
Mr. Kessler grew up on West 71st Street in New York City. “He was the epicenter of activity and energy,” Mr. Veronis said. “He knew quite a few people — some real illustrious characters from the Central Park scene,” most of whom were graffiti artists. There was “Mountain, Crunch, JC, Zephyr, and then all the Upper West Side guys.”
While Californians were revolutionizing the sport in empty swimming pools, Mr. Kessler and his crew were pioneering it on the streets of New York City. “We used to go around, acquire wood from various sites, and travel all over the city,” Mr. Veronis said. “We would seek out areas to ride. We were riding under the Brooklyn Bridge in the mid-’70s. We would build ramps all over the place.”
After a few days, the Parks Department would take them down, “but we had some memorable sessions,” Mr. Veronis said. “The ramps would become legendary in our minds.”
They also built secret tree houses in Central Park. “Sixty, seventy feet up. We would pick the trees with no branches. One cat would climb up it and drop a rope down. They were like clubhouses. We would leave artifacts up there. It was almost like an ‘Oliver Twist’ scene. Andy was the Artful Dodger.”
New York City was much more intense than Los Angeles, Mr. Veronis said. “We didn’t have swimming pools in backyards and open viaducts. You had sidewalks and anywhere else you could get some action. It was about making that action happen with your imagination, and Andy was king.”
In the early years, “we would meet on 75th and Fifth, a spot he dubbed ‘the Margarita,’ ” Mr. Veronis said. “No one would speak. We’d just show up on weekend mornings, get on the subway, and cruise around. At first there were 5 or 10 guys. Soon there were 10 or 15, and then 20.”
Mr. Kessler and a graffiti artist named Ali were the first to coin the term “Zoo York.” According to a 2005 New York magazine article in which the skateboarding legend was profiled, “New York had its own Dogtown: a loose-knit collective of skateboarders and graffiti artists known as the Soul Artists of Zoo York.”
They were pioneers of city skating, with Mr. Kessler as the “Tony Alva of the East Coast,” Mr. Veronis said. The term Zoo York was later “appropriated” by the clothing company Ecko Unlimited. “He felt very strongly that these people stole the term and benefited from it,” Mr. Veronis said.
Mr. Kessler “wasn’t a big cat,” his friend said, but had enormous influence. “He could walk into a real volatile situation where two groups were about to go at each other, and he’d step right in, look them in the eye, and it would be over.”
It was his idea to build the Riverside Skate Park on 108th Street, the skate park in New York City. With Mr. Kessler as the lead designer, it was built in collaboration with the Salvadori Educational Center for the Built Environment, a nonprofit organization, and the New York City Department and Parks and Recreation in 1996.
Twenty-four “at-risk” students were chosen to help design the park. The idea was to promote teamwork and give them a chance to apply math and science and learn about construction. Before a skate session in Montauk on July 27, Mr. Kessler said that working with the kids had been “the best experience of my life.”
Mr. Kessler, who had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction earlier on, was also a champion of rehabilitation. He had served as a support system to hundreds of drug and alcohol addicts over the past 25 years, Mr. Veronis said.
In a posting on New York magazine’s Web site, one person wrote: “Andy has done more for skateboarding on the East Coast than anybody. And I for one, personally know people whose lives he saved by getting them help for their drug habit.”
He went on to build several other parks in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Montauk Skate Park was built in 2000. Mr. Kessler did not have a house in Montauk, but he always found ways to spend time there.
“The one thing about Andy — he was always living day to day,” Mr. Veronis said. “He never had a place, but he had such good will that he was always accepted and taken in. He would always make things work.”
July 27 was a crisp, sunny day in Montauk. Mr. Kessler had the park all to himself. He might have been riding one of the boards he designed. He had a line called Wounded Knee, which he happened to have established before injuring his knee on a ramp in New York City.
He took time out of his session to talk about the fund-raiser and to praise the new generation of skaters. “I have to tell you, some of the stuff that the younger guys do is really incredible,” he said. “They have inspired me.”
Mr. Veronis said he plans to take over Mr. Kessler’s fund-raising efforts. He said he also hopes the town will dedicate the park to its late designer. A memorial paddle-out will take place tomorrow night at 7 at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk.