Throughout the 80s and most of the 90s, Turtles (named after two concrete Turtle shaped playground elements) was a legendary skateboard and BMX spot on the outskirts of Boston. Sitting on the edge of the Charles River, this children’s playground was accidentally designed to be one of the most fun spots on the east coast. An accidental skatepark. Its wading pool (only full of water a few months out of the year) provided some perfect grind ledges, rails, as well as a small set of stairs… and of course the infamous turtles. A snake run of banks ran through the playground, ending in a five foot tall pyramid/hip with tubes on top (designed for kids to crawl through). Aside from a few swing sets, turtles actually wasn’t much of a playground, especially by 90s standards, when every McDonalds in America seemed to have a giant built in playland.

By the mid-90s the park was run down. The swings were falling apart, the slide was broken, there was graffiti all over the bathroom building, and there were more skateboarders, BMXers and Mountain Bikers in the place than little kids. At that point, if you were a small child you stood a good chance of getting crushed by a speeding bike or skateboard, so it wasn’t a great place to “play.” I had been riding Turtles for many years by the time I went to college. But in ’95 I moved right down the street from the park, and rode it pretty much every day until it was demolished in ’98.

To the average person in Boston the name Turtles meant nothing. It was just that run down playground along the Charles River. But to BMX riders and skateboarders around the country who had ridden the place, or seen it in magazines (Chris Lashua had some amazing pictures riding the place in Homeboy magazine and Freestylin’) or videos, it was a famous skatepark. It may have been an accidental skatepark, but it was better than some of the intentional skateparks we see today.

Jumping the tubes on top of the banks at the bottom was almost a mythical feet. Skateboarders rolled over them, people fastplanted them and tail-tapped them, and rumors flew around about people jumping them. But in ’96 Dave Muggleston was the first person I saw start to jump them on a regular basis. He would just roll around the park and jump them like it was nothing. By today’s standards it’s a normal hop, but no one was doing it back then, despite the big names that had ridden the place. Above is a photo of Dave just a few weeks before the park was bulldozed in 1998.