So here’s the story of the North Carolina East Coast Pool right on the beach! The hotel has been there forever, but they ended up remodeling the hotel at the beginning of this summer. Which is rare since Carolina Beach, NC is a tourist destination. A friend named Brownie who is a local skater here put the word in that the hotel was getting work done and that the pool might be skateable. So of course, being from a smaller town, me and all the homies were actually down to hand bucket and scrap slug out a pool for multiple days. Also, this was in the beginning of the summer season, so it was in 90 degree weather with full humidity. After two days, we got it ready to skate! Finally, we decided we would go early in the morning for the first session hoping that the cops wouldn’t see us since it was right off the main strip in this small beach town.
All the excitement was overwhelming after spending so much time and labor getting it ready for grinds! Nevermind the fact that the pool blocks where already ripped off and we were basically grinding a hard edge with tile sticking up as our “coping” you would say. That’s why the intro to the video is a tile falling over because everyone that got to clean it or skate it basically took one as they where falling off more and more. As scary as it was to grind with no exact edge and ever changing coping, we were all for it!
The first session we skated as hard as we could, and as soon as we saw a cop pull into the beach parking lot to check on everything, we would all dip down into the pool and hope that they wouldn’t kick us out, or give us any tickets. Just waiting for him to leave so we could catch a grind and skate like it was the last pool we would ever skate.
Words by Griffin Faulkner. Photos by Josh Dunn and Griffan Faulkner
