Homebase Skateshop ramps up community, history on Skate Shop Day

As night and rain settle over West Fourth Street in South Bethlehem on a February Friday night, the block between Vine and South New streets stands frozen in time.

A metal grate blocks the entrance of the D.T.L.R. clothing store. Both barber shops on the strip — Official Cuts and Steel Barbers — are empty, faintly illuminated by the glow of the mirrors.

But as a storm picks up, a large crowd slowly begins to form outside the Homebase Skateshop at 29 W. 4th St. The store’s limited sidewalk space is quickly overtaken, as foot traffic soon bleeds into the side street.

The crowd, full of skaters and non-skaters, wait in packs outside the store, and light cigarettes, shielding the ends from the rain. Others peer through the gaps between the painted flowers on the storefront windows, peeking over rows of hats as the Lehigh Valley alt-rock band Leadpetal tune their guitars.

Conversations are interrupted by sporadic electric guitar notes. 

More than 60 people dance with little shoulder room to spare as guitarist Bella Calamia and drummer Sam Marencik begin the raucous opening notes of their set.  

Leadpetal was one of multiple bands booked to celebrate Skate Shop Day weekend on Feb. 20. The day was officially recognized on Feb. 21 this year, and Homebase hosted five events that weekend. 

According to the official webpage, Skate Shop Day was created in 2020 by friends Scotty Coats and Chris Nieratko. Because fewer skaters hit the parks in winter, the February festival is meant to motivate skaters to visit and support their local shops during the winter off-season.

Stores that participate choose to celebrate the day in their own distinct way. Homebase featured a concert, art show, a Tech-Deck fingerboarding session and two tournaments for a stationary S.K.A.T.E. game and Super Smash Bros.

Quintin Fernandez, a store manager of Homebase, helped organize the live music show and a session recording alongside WDIY’s Tape Swap Radio.

He said skateboarding and music are intertwined, as many skaters, like himself, discovered their taste of music through skate videos. Having also grown up as a musician, Fernandez said this correlation made sense to host shows when possible.

“Everything that we do at the shop is intertwined with skate culture in our local community,” he said. “Music is just a big part of what we do anyway, so it makes sense to do shows like that in (the shop) when we can.”

Additionally, Fernandez said Homebase provided him and his friends growing up a place to hang out after the last bell rang at school.

“(The skate shop) was always there, it was always available, like the doors were always open to us,” he said. “Everyone’s safe here. We want everyone to have a place here, not just skateboarders.”

As the live show moved into the second act, the doors remained open. Onlookers entering the store watch Chris Devlin, lead singer of Headzo, jump into the crowd while shredding a guitar solo. The crowd responds with a small mosh pit and rowdy applause.

Alongside Leadpetal, two other bands — Headzo, a skate punk band, and Wipes, a noise rock band — performed sets as more people piled in, skaters and non-skaters alike. Wipes’ set could be heard clearly from across the street, despite Homebase’s closed doors.

Currently playing locally while searching for a bassist, Marencik said she appreciated the opportunity to perform a Leadpetal show in her hometown.

“Every time I looked up at the crowd, it’s just all familiar faces, like a lot of people in other bands,” Calamia said. “(It) just shows how great the music community is — everyone always shows out.”

When scheduling acts, Fernandez said Wipes was the first band in mind, due to frontman Ray Gurz’s previous connections with the store. Gurz had worked at a previous Homebase location for three years, and has known store founder Andy Po for over 15 years.

Fernandez said he focused on finding bands with similar sounds from the Lehigh Valley, instead of neighboring cities like Philadelphia and New York.

“The event is really by the community for the community,” he said. “As a Lehigh Valley skate shop, we always just want to support the Lehigh Valley.” 

Gurz — a musician and avid skater — could spot his own blue helmet, littered with stickers, hanging above a photo collage on the shop wall. 

Fernandez said Gurz often wore it during performances with Carpenter Ant, one of his previous bands. Outside of music, Gurz has been in the Lehigh Valley skating scene for years. He appeared in five Homebase skate videos and owns the skating company Lost Soul Skateboards.

Coined the “Home Team Art Show,” the collage represents Po’s journey with the shop. Beginning with photos from 1997, the year he moved from San Diego to the Lehigh Valley, and culminating in the release of Homebase’s skate video in 2002, which sits neatly stacked next to Po’s Sony VX-2000 camera.

Po said the video’s premiere sparked the creation of the tight-knit skating community found today, something that previously didn’t exist.

Upon arriving on the East Coast, he remembers entering a “splintered” Lehigh Valley skate community.

He said skaters only skated with people from their neighborhoods and schools, the opposite of what Po was accustomed to in California. Self-taught in filming and editing, Po rallied skaters from other neighborhoods to film tricks for a video.

The result was “City Without Spots,” the Lehigh Valley’s first skate video. It later became the primary motivator for founding Homebase, the place where the remainder of the collage shows. 

“What this photo show represents is the fact that since we opened up, even before we had a skate shop, we were investing in our community,” Po said. “We were doing whatever we could to give people a platform.”

He said he feels grateful to have a staff that can carry the torch to continue building the communal foundation he started and shape their own vision for the shop’s direction.

“Not every small business has that ability for succession, and it feels like we do,” Po said. “We’re definitely blessed that we have people that care even more than that.”