Toney owns Hard Times Skate Shop, one of a handful of Black owned skate shops in the country. When the city moves to take away the skate park in the city, he fights for both his community and his business.
Toney owns Hard Times Skate Shop, one of a handful of Black owned skate shops in the country. When the city moves to take away the skate park in the city, he fights for both his community and his business.
https://hardtimesskateshop.com/
Toney Herndon: My name is Tony Herndon. I grew up with my mom slash grandparents. My grandmother had eight kids, so her house was kind of where all the grandkids were at, at this point. My grandfather, he was one of the first Black rigor supervisors in the shipyard.
I grew up in the Brighton area, down the street from Craddock. James Hurst Elementary is in the Craddock neighborhood.
Nichole Hill: So he went to school in Craddock, but...
Toney: But no, I didn't grow up in Craddock. Craddock is not a place where, you know, like people can grow up that are kind of black. Back in the day, it was like a very segregated area. Yeah. But I guess over time it's changed. That's where the skate park is now.
(Synthetic slow music begins)
Toney: When I started school in 96, my grandmother got sick, so I had to stop going to school and help, take care of her. Just because we didn't really have a lot of money to keep the nursing staff in the house. She had Lou Gehrig's disease, so she eventually just lost all of her motion functions and speaking.
So, that, that was yeah, it's very, yeah, that, that probably was just a lot of, that was heavy right there, just for me.
My grandmother always looked out for me, so it didn't feel like a chore.
And, um... just during that time, after she passed, and not directly going back to school, it was, it was just kind of, just a transition of like, you know, having my grandmother around. She was somebody who was there my whole life. And then also at that time, turning like an adult and like making your own decisions.
I stopped going to school. Ended up getting caught with some drugs at one point. I was part of a first offender's program, and a part of my probation term was that I had to complete school. And so that was the motivation to go back to school and finish.
(Music changes to uplifting drum beats)
Then I got out of school, finally graduated from Norfolk State. At this point, I had a felony. And just trying to figure out what I need to do with life, you know what I mean? Couldn't really find a job. Not anything that I thought was worthy of my time.
Around that time, just you know brainstorming and living life. I just happened to ride down the street one day and notice that they had built a skate park like not too far from where I lived at.
(Sound of a car riding by a skate park)
And and when I saw the park, I just kind of got this epiphany, like, skate park. So I ended up just writing a business plan for a skate shop, learning as much as I could about opening one.
I didn't know the true cost I like all I knew what the costs that were the computer was giving me on template business plans. I knew I had some money saved up, but I didn't know in reality how much money a business costs, you know.
I was just riding around in the neighborhood that the skate park was in, which was happening to be Craddock, and I never went inside of the neighborhood. And so just this time, you know, I thought, oh, let me just ride in the neighborhood. and inside of the neighborhood, they have like this little shopping center. It was so close to the skate park, which was like my ideal location. It's like somewhere where you could skate to. To the shop from the park and it was just like, like wow,
(Car drives off, then a bell of a front door bell saying "Front Door")
And then so my 31st birthday, I got the business license and, you know, Opened the shop and was like running.
So we was up and running like, getting the shop together Painting it opening up wholesale accounts Just trying to get the word the shop was opening. The city would give like free business classes and so all these free classes and resources I would take just to see if my knowledge base was where I thought it was at.
And every time it was. And this happened to be in the first class I took. It was a reporter from the Virginia Pilot that was like shadowing the class. And she somehow took a liking to me and my story. Within the first two months we were on the front page of the Virginia Pilot of an opening. and so that ran.
Nichole Hill: And it didn’t stop there. Even with all this attention, Tony continued to center what mattered to him most…
Toney: Every year since then, just trying new things with the store doing things in the community.
We started on Juneteenth when it first became a holiday. I knew nothing about throwing events. We finally got permission from the city for within 20 days we had to try to plan this huge event. And was able to have access to a professional skater to come out to Portsmouth. This year was our fourth year with the event. Last year it was in New York Times.
Nichole Hill: With all these good things happening, we wanted to know why did he name his business “Hard Times Skate Shop”?
Toney: I came up with the name for the shop, Learning to ride a skateboard is going to give you a hard time, but if eventually you get past the point, it becomes a great experience.
And that's kind of with anything you deal with life. Everybody's going to go through hard times. So just giving a name that people can recognize and resonate with. Even if you don't skate, you'd be like hard times. I've had them,
(Slow, high pitch keys, with subtle drum beats)
it wasn't always easy, at a time that the old shop, I couldn't pay the rent.
Luckily that I had enough knowledge that I know that I had bartering power and the space being empty, you know, so like you could put me out and don't get nothing or take this little bit of coins I do have. And so me and this lady end up developing this relationship that was pretty cool before she passed.
The first thing she told me when I signed the lease is she was like, you're more than a business owner. People are looking at you. And this is like this old white lady. She's like 80 years old. And I was just like, let me sign this lease lady.
But that's kind of what it grew into in that whole neighborhood. And that's why the name is so cool because we're the only Black owned skate shop in the whole entire state for 12 years. And so even being in a neighborhood that people would call low on hope, I think me being in that neighborhood attested to like, you can do whatever you want to do.
It doesn't matter where you're from, or what other people think is popular or not, if you want to do something and believe in it, you can do it. And like, the neighborhood was like a very gang infested, you know, high crime area. And I'm one of the kids was like, "Yo, Unc, why are you, why are you opening your store out here in the middle of a war zone?"
And I was like, "it ain't my war." You know what I mean? Like y'all are fighting each other for what? we stayed out there for 12 years and it became a testament to the, to the business that I ran because we had people coming from everywhere to that store from North Carolina.
People were coming from out of town, out of country from Richmond and, and the state. The neighborhood never had any good press. And so that was a cool thing about just being able to just be a positive highlight.
Nichole Hill: Across the United States, Black skateboard brands are few and far between. You probably wouldn’t know it if you aren’t in skate culture, and Toney would never admit it, but he’s a big deal.
Toney: I have a lot of relationships with those brands. Like Proper Nar was one of our sponsors for the first sponsors for the Ghostgate Day event.
Nichole Hill: Pause: Proper Gnar, Black woman-owned skateboard apparel brand, owned by Latosha Stone and featured in Beyoncé's Black Parade shopping guide on Juneteenth.
Toney: DGK, I know Cooley he's the team manager. There's a picture of me and Stevie Williams right there. Who's the founder of DGK.
Nichole Hill: That's Dirty Ghetto Kids, a multi-million dollar skateboarding and clothing company out of Philly. Stevie Williams is considered one of the most influential skaters OF ALL TIME. (He also happens to be Black.)
Toney: So like we, that's, I mean, it's, it's, it's cool.
(Drums drop in)
I did not get into the skateboard culture in Portsmouth.
When I grew up in Portsmouth, my family, we played baseball, sports, team sports, all these things. It's people that skated during their time, but just not in my neighborhood. We were just like, we weren't That wasn't what we did. We did have skateboards. We could ride them. My friends in the neighborhood ride skateboard, but that wasn't our go to thing.
We would gather up, go to the cemetery, they had like an open field, we played baseball over there, football. Just sports that we were just more accustomed to playing.
People gravitate to what they have in their neighborhood. We have baseball fields, basketball courts, in our neighborhoods. We didn't have any skate parks. Skate park in Portsmouth is like, 15 years tops, the newest thing, you know what I mean? To Portsmouth. Versus the Virginia Beach. They had the first mega ramp on the East Coast. And so like, if you go to California, All the Black kids skate because it's in their neighborhood.
So it's not a black or white thing, it's a resource thing. What is your city giving you to have access to? That's why it was so important that when the city wanted to tear the park down, that we made a stand on it. Because even if a kid doesn't want to skate today, what if he does tomorrow and everybody deserves the option, especially kids, to try things that they want to do.
Nichole Hill: But with all of this national attention, why tear the skate park down?
Toney: The city had planned to relocate this fire station that was in Craddock.
It's a historical fire station. No one really knew why they wanted to relocate it, where they were going to relocate it to. But then they started building these, like, these big houses across the street from Craddock. And then, you know, All of a sudden the response time for the fire station engines to get to George Washington Highway wasn't quick enough because of this red light that was like, it's been an intersection for forever.
I guess the option was to relocate the fire station to the skate park. And they had mentioned it before and, even the Civic League got involved and to the point they were like, the skate park is a good thing for the neighborhood. And they were like, you know, what is the alternative? What are the plans for the skate park?
And so just one day I'm just having a ride past the skate park and they have this zoning meeting sign up to rezone the skate park. And I'm like, no one has told anybody about this. And so just having a ride past, and I was here yesterday, last night. So the sign had to be fairly new.
So then they had like the meeting today, 3 o'clock.
(Slow keys music begins)
Everybody voted to rezone the park. Except for me.
It just sounded real sketchy. Skatepark clothing, not too far from my business, Is definitely, (laughs). Not good for a hard time.
(Music stops)
And so, you know, I have taken several classes, some leadership classes. I'm a member of left co leadership class. And during that class they just showed you if you have issues with your city, how to maneuver through the city.
And so I end up just writing a petition, putting it on petition. org, you know, sending it to a few people that I know to help them put it on their social media. The news ended up. Picking this petition up because it gained like a lot of footing like in like two three days and So when it was time for the city council To vote on this rezoning project with the skate park, the city's like oh no one ever uses the park But I'm like you're only going there like 11 to 1 o'clock When kids are in school so why would anybody be using the park?
So I presented it to the Civic League President, and um, the day of the city council meeting, it has got, it had gotten so much support that, you know, you have to call in to the city council meeting to speak for a certain amount of time.
And so we had gathered up a campaign to get these people to call in and say they wanted to speak on this issue. On this day of the city council meeting to the point so many people called in that the city floored it. They were like we're gonna come back to this issue at a later time.
Um... the later time hasn't came back yet,
But so just did a petition and I think we saved the park.
(Uplifting music with a beat drops in)
Nichole Hill: Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends.
This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn, and our work has been supported by the Virginia African American Cultural Center through a grant from Virginia Tourism Corporation. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Toney Herndon.