The Bro Bowl — Tampa, Florida

The Bro Bowl is a sunken concrete skateboard bowl in Perry Harvey Sr. Park on the northern edge of downtown Tampa. The City of Tampa poured the original in 1978, and USF News identifies it as the first public skatepark in Florida. Skaters gave it the name, though no one seems to recall why. In 2013 the Bro Bowl became the first skatepark added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The bowl that skaters ride today is a second version. The original was demolished in 2015 when the city rebuilt Perry Harvey Sr. Park, and a near-replica built from laser scans opened in April 2016 as Bro Bowl 2.0. The City of Tampa park page describes the new skate park as having all of the features of the original plus added ramps, stairs and ledges. The park is at 900 E Scott St and is open from sunrise to 10 pm.

Skateboarding reached Tampa early. USF News reports that local newspapers credited USF students with bringing it to the city in 1962, and that by 1975 campus contests included tricks. That same year a USF graduate student in urban planning, who also worked as a City of Tampa parks and recreation planner, proposed a safe public place to skate after watching children ride a steep hill in Sulphur Springs.

His design covered 6,500 square feet, with ramps and bowls shaped to mimic ocean waves. Because the City of Tampa owned it, there was no admission fee, unlike other skateparks of the era that charged for entry. The city opened the bowl in 1978 inside Perry Harvey Sr. Park. WUSF reported in 2013 that it was the first public, free skate park in the State of Florida where riders skated at their own risk, and one of the last skate parks from that period still standing anywhere in the country.

83 Degrees describes the layout as a 1970s downhill snake run: riders started at the top of a slope and dropped into a circular bowl with slanted banks and moguls at the bottom. The Tampa bowl drew local skaters and visiting professionals for decades, and its fame grew in 2003 when it appeared as a level in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground, along with downtown Tampa and the Skatepark of Tampa.

The listing came out of a local preservation campaign. USF News reports that a USF undergraduate and skateboarder, later a USF history doctorate, led the effort that put the Bro Bowl on the National Register in 2013, making it the first skatepark in the nation to be listed. WUSF reported that by then the bowl was 35 years old and one of very few surviving examples of its era, the reason preservationists argued it should be ridden rather than only read about.

The timing set up a conflict in Perry Harvey Sr. Park. The city had long planned a $6 million face-lift of the park to honor the Black-owned businesses that flourished on Central Avenue during segregation, and the original plan demolished the Bro Bowl and gave skaters a new park a few blocks away. Mayor Bob Buckhorn and many African American residents favored moving the skate park so that Perry Harvey Sr. Park could center Black history, WUSF reported in November 2013.

The National Register listing made that harder. Because the Perry Harvey project would use federal money, the city had to plan for the historic bowl. WUSF reported that moving it was possible but would cost more than $100,000 and would require a new nomination to keep it on the Register, a process taking nine months that would delay the park project. In late 2013 the city was seeking an agreement with the state to move the entire bowl while keeping its listing.

The city chose to document and rebuild. Bay News 9 reported that after navigating state and federal requirements, the City of Tampa began demolishing the original Bro Bowl in early 2015. Before it came out, researchers from the University of South Florida laser-scanned the basin so engineers could build a close copy. USF News describes the result as a near-replica built in 2016 at the new Perry Harvey Sr. Park, and riders told Bay News 9 the new bowl felt slightly tighter and smoother than the old one.

The rebuilt skate park was part of an 11-acre, $6.95 million renovation of Perry Harvey Sr. Park along North Orange Avenue, according to 83 Degrees Media. The new skate park covers 16,715 square feet, more than double the original bowl, and was built by Team Pain Skateparks and Cutler Associates a few blocks north of the 1978 site. 83 Degrees called it a compromise among Tampa skaters, the city, local civil rights groups and the Skateboarding Heritage Foundation.

Pieces of the original survived. Fox 13 reported in March 2016 that laser mapping captured the bowl's exact layout and that pieces of the original Bro Bowl were saved and built into the restructured park, with help from Team Pain and the Skatepark of Tampa. Fox 13 reported in April 2016 that slabs of the old graffiti-tagged bowl sit in the center of the new skate park on the north end of Perry Harvey Sr. Park, which is otherwise kept free of graffiti, and that skating there is free.

Bro Bowl 2.0 was formally opened with a ribbon cutting on Saturday, April 16, 2016. Mayor Buckhorn told Bay News 9 that the process took a while and was complicated, but that the city was able to preserve the bowl and recreate it exactly as it was before. Alongside the replica bowl, the new Tampa skate park added a street course with stair sets, handrails and ledges.

Two places hold the Bro Bowl now. The replica is in Perry Harvey Sr. Park, where the City of Tampa lists the skate park beside basketball courts, a festival lawn and an interactive fountain. USF News reports that the Tampa Bay History Center acquired three concrete sections of the original bowl; one is displayed at the history center and the other two are in storage.

The park around the bowl tells the other history the Perry Harvey project was built to honor. The city lists James Simon's gateway sculptures of musicians, dancers and a jukebox, Michael Parker's Leaders Row, Rufus Seder's Lifetiles, and fourteen inset pavers that tell the chronological story of The Scrub and Central Avenue, the historic Black business district of Tampa that once surrounded the site.