At an LA Costco, Skateboarding and Learning About Loss

Los Angeles is the birthplace of modern skateboarding, a city so chock-full of spots that whenever I leave the house for an errand or crosstown meeting, I scan the landscape looking for handrails and schoolyards I recognize from old skate videos. But four years after moving to the city, I have yet to skate any of the major landmarks: Never hit the ledges at the Jkwon plaza, never ollied across the Santa Monica sand gaps, never rolled around the West Los Angeles Courthouse.

Instead, a few mornings each week, I get up early and head to a Costco parking lot.

I am drawn there by a pair of parallel curbs that were designed to corral shopping carts. Unbeknown to shoppers on their way to rotisserie chicken and pallets of toilet paper, the curbs are world famous.

Their image has been reproduced on stickers, T-shirts and skateboard graphics. Pilgrims fly across the country and from Europe to skate them, sometimes taking dimensions so they can mold replicas back home. In January, when Nike released a limited-edition skate shoe under Costco’s Kirkland brand, it was an Easter egg for those in the know.

When I tell my normal friends about the curbs, they often ask if there is some unifying feature that makes all Costco parking lots great for skating, or if this particular Costco’s curbs are somehow extra special. The answer to both is, not really.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/business/economy/costco-curbs-skateboarding-genx.html