Skateboard pioneer Kessler dies at 48

Published 8:00 pm Friday, August 13, 2010

NEW YORK — Andy Kessler, a trailblazer during New York City’s 1970s skateboarding scene and a designer of skate parks who was admired by boarders on both coasts, has died. He was 48.

Kessler died Monday after suffering a heart attack following an allergic reaction to a wasp sting, said Moose Huerta, a close friend.

Kessler got his start in the 1970s with a loose-knit group of skateboarders and graffiti artists known as the Soul Artists of Zoo York. They skated all over Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where Kessler lived. Central Park’s Bandshell was a favorite spot.

In the 1990s, Kessler persuaded the city’s Parks Department to build a skateboard facility. He went on to design other skate parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Montauk.

“Flowing through traffic, timing lights, shooting reds, dodging pedestrians … dude just had the streets so wired,” said Tony Farmer, a skateboarding friend. “Suffice to say, he was an amazing cat.”

Huerta, who was too young to have skated with Kessler during the early days, said the sport started as “a counterculture activity” but never carried the cache that California skateboarding did. But Kessler didn’t care.

“He did it out of love,” he said. “He didn’t receive anything out of it. It spoke to him.”

Kessler’s burial is scheduled for Sunday at Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, N.J.