AARON POLANSKY CARVING A COMMUNITY OF SKATEBOARDERS

From the start, skateboarding has been about creating community for Bay View Sky High Skate Shop owner Aaron Polansky. “When I was a kid, I saw this skate video called ‘Curb Dogs’ and it was all these different looking kids all doing it together,” says Polansky. “That’s what really sparked it.”

Decades later, as Sky High Skate Shop enters its 29th year, Polansky still embodies that spark, cultivating an engaging space for skaters.

When Polansky was a teenager in Racine, he began working at the shop. He took over as owner in 1999, and moved it to Howell Avenue in Bay View in 2004. Regularly, Polansky, a dark-haired man with an air of gentle calm, fostered connections with youth through afternoon skate jams at the Cass Street School playground, setting ramps on the blacktop and lending boards to kids who couldn’t afford them.

For skateboarders who visited him years ago and who are now in their 30s with kids of their own, Sky High’s still a home away from home.

“I always want to take abandoned spaces and create something from nothing,” Polansky says. “Estabrook is the main project now. It had been this empty zone used by kids for skating or bike polo, so we cleaned it up and slowly added concrete skate elements. Now there’s support from all these groups because they see it as something positive.”

Patrick Murphy, now in his mid20s, has been going to Sky High since he was a teen. “Estabrook wouldn’t be what it is without Aaron,” he says. “He’s showed all us younger guys what it means to be a part of a community and how supporting your local shops keeps that community alive.”

Murphy watches a younger generation swing by Sky High to see Polansky for help with homework, to talk about art and music or to simply seek support. And, like clockwork, at the annual summer skate jam and block party outside the shop, skilled skaters and shop supporters meet kids on the block and just hang out.

“This is just me doing me,” says Polansky. “If I didn’t have the shop, I’d no matter what be building and creating and doing things with people.” –