There’s a stormwater channel near the South Chula Vista Library that shoots off Third Avenue. It was installed in the mid-1980s and is still used today as a pipeline that carries runoff water into the Otay Mesa River.
Its angled walls are marked with graffiti tags like a sleeve and skateboarders hop its enclosure fence to carve the concrete. The site was even featured in a scene from the 2005 biographical skate drama, “Lords of Dogtown.”
Aside from its film debut and practical use for stormwater drainage, it was also the location Guillermo Herrera learned to skate.
As a kid Herrera used to live in an apartment near the channel. He would visit the ditch with his older brother – at first sporting rollerblades his mom bought him. He laced up the rollerblades and leaned into the drop. After one slip, fall and minor head injury, he traded his rollerblades for a skateboard.
Now, the 35 year-old Chula Vista native runs @san_diego_skate_spots, an Instagram account amassing 17,000 followers since posting his first reel in February. Herrera highlights the local skate scene, showing exact locations of hidden gems around the county and prompting skaters to try each spot.
But this is just his side gig – it was his day job with the city of Chula Vista’s Public Works Department, where he works on maintenence team, that initially made him want to start the social media account. inewsource sat down with Herrera last week to discuss skating, parks and city infrastructure.
Why did you create @san_diego_skate_spots?
Here in Chula Vista, there’s a lot of skate parks that I didn’t even know. The city put me on a route where the parks that I had are the ones that have skate parks. I didn’t even know these skate parks existed. Months passed by, and I would constantly be at these parks. Very little people, or no people at all, would go and skate them. And so to me, it was like, if I was a kid, I would always be here. So I was like, well, maybe they don’t know that the skate parks are here.
I was like, alright, well, you know what, I’m going to go around all Chula Vista, and document all the skate parks and skate spots here. And hopefully, you know, these parks get traffic. And so I kid you not, the first skate park that I posted, it just blew up.
There’s a lot of history behind these spots. How do you learn about the backgrounds of each location?
I get info from all around: from childhood memories or I learned it when I was a child. Or from my fellow skaters; they tell me, or I’ll ask them. Sometimes I Google these spots … but also now with social media and YouTube and all that, all this information is readily available.
A perfect example: Washington Street skate park (under the Pacific Highway overpass). That spot used to be a DIY back in the late ‘90s, and the city was going to tear it down. (But after outcry from the skating community,) it started getting built to become a full-on skate park.
It’s cool to see how many people have skated X, Y and Z spots, and hearing their stories: ‘I broke my elbow,’‘I broke my arm on this spot,’ ‘I landed this trick at this spot,’ and then somebody else would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember I was there.’ It’s so cool seeing everyone interact and it’s the way that skateboarding should be – it should always be united.
How does your job with the city interact with the social media account?
Every skate park that has any issues, for example, broken concrete, broken rails, missing screws from a quarter pipe … I’m the one who takes care of it, because we’re the construction crew. So that was like a total aid to my page.
It’s like a win-win for me: I help fix these skate parks, and I get paid for it.
I’m really interested in the way you’re sort of stumbling on these intersections of skating and municipal issues. You mentioned that the “Yoni Egg” DIY, located under Interstate 15 in Mission Valley, had beds and belongings in it from unhoused people sleeping there. Are there any spots you’ve visited that demonstrate other issues like this?
(There is) this spot called the Tick Ditch up in La Jolla by Nobel Drive. This is where they do that event called the Death Race where they all go down that hill and see who gets all the way down first. The last time I checked it out, there was trash everywhere, encampments all around it. But every time that event is going to happen, because it happens once a year, these companies like Independent, Creature, all these brands, they’ll go and clean up the spot and give it a little TLC before the event happens. But a lot of these spots that are secluded are trashed and have encampments around them. It happens all over San Diego.
Sometimes you clean or fix up these spots. Tell me about that.
If us skaters see a crack getting bigger or something, we usually try to patch it up just to keep it skateable. We do try to aid these spots that way the city doesn’t have that preoccupation about all the skaters. That way they can see that we’re actually taking care of the spot and they won’t have any issue with us skating.
There have been a lot of people that offer to help out. They donate blowers, weed whackers, and some even offer their services like, ‘Hey dude, I do power washing.’ I get all that support and that type of donation toward these spots.
New skate park in the South Bay
Herrera teased the opening of a new park, featuring a skatepark, in San Ysidro.
The 8-acre, $23 million Beyer Park will have a playground, ball fields, picnic areas, a dog park, skate park, restrooms, walking trails and public art. Construction is projected to finish in 2026.
It’s one of 19 park projects across San Diego that received funding through the city’s Parks for All of Us initiative, which aims to provide more equitable funding to establish broader access to parks.
The park is not yet open to the public.
With all the parks you go to, have you seen or experienced the limited access to green spaces for some communities?
Absolutely I have. And you know what? I think it’s more (reflective) of the involvement of the community and the residents. A couple months ago, I went up to Prince Memorial Skatepark in Oceanside. That skate park, for years, had just one little restroom and no water fountain, and really poor lighting. There’s a skater that has been there for years, you know, ever since he was a kid. Big shout out to my friend Fisto. He, for years, was going to city council meetings, trying to have them implement new bathrooms, a water fountain, lighting and shade for that skate park because it was basically forgotten. And we all know that there’s always a budget every fiscal year for parks or for whatever section of the city they want to invest in. And so he was informed that there was funds. But the thing was, not everyone from the skating community was showing up to the city council to show them that there is a skateboarding community that is hoping to skate these skate parks. Imagine skateboarding in 85 degree weather for hours and no water fountain in sight. So these factors were obviously shown to the city council members and eventually got them what they wanted. So I can say that it just depends on the community of each city and what they’re really focused on, what they really want. Because, to be honest, down here in the South Bay, not a lot of people go to these council meetings and voice what they really need. That’s what the city council members want to see. If they really want this, then more people should show up.
What are you hoping to promote on your account? Where do you see this going?
Just going to all these spots, I see so many young kids, like 10-year-olds doing what a 20-year-old used to do back in the day. And so, to me, just exposing them on my platform, and having somebody that’s up there in the skateboarding scene see them is already a win for me.
Skateboarding is for everybody. You know, whether you’re a kid, a teenager or an adult, the goal in skateboarding is to have fun. I would like for skateboarding to bring everyone together.
Aside from just doing spots here in San Diego, I have also extended a little bit down south of the border to Tijuana.
There’s so much skateboarding talent down there. I just want to incorporate everyone together, show a little bit of the skateboarding culture down there, and show that it’s not as easy skateboarding down there as it is here in San Diego.
It’s a little bit harder for families to provide their kids with skateboards for X, Y and Z reasons. So I try to go at least once a month and hand out skateboards, shirts, whatever I have that has been donated from the skate shops over here.
I grew up on both sides: San Diego and Tijuana. I was maybe one of the only kids in (my) neighborhood that owned a skateboard. And I remember as a kid just giving whatever I didn’t need to them. I want to keep on doing that, because to this day, it’s kind of hard for every kid to get a skateboard. And if I can help, I will help.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.