“The best skate spots ever on every corner, and I was sleeping in a nomad hostel.”
A tiny scene on perfect ground
Two things are true about skateboarding in Kyrgyzstan and they pull in opposite directions. The first: there are fewer than forty skaters in the entire country, and Mike Boisvert met most of them. “The most I ever saw at once was maybe fourteen or fifteen, including the kid practising ollies.” The second: the street is extraordinary. Bishkek is an ex-Soviet capital, which means marble, and block after block of it has barely been touched. “Amazing spots, like Barcelona. I was mesmerised.”
Where to skate
The main square downtown is the real park. Stairs, ledges, banks, good marble, skaters and BMX riders on it every day, and by Mike's count it gets more use than the actual skatepark. Bishkek Skatepark is well designed and has a bowl, but the ground broke up within a couple of months of opening, which is what his video about the country ended up being about. Since then a brand new park has been built in the city, too recent to appear on any map yet: Mike knows because a friend of his spent a month building it. Beyond those, downtown Bishkek is simply good marble in most directions.
Apollo is the scene
Apollo (@apollo_kg) is the filmer, the skater, the dad and the brand: he runs his own board company, puts his dog on the graphics, and handed Mike a deck. “He's super shy, he doesn't speak much, but he's going to film you forever and bring you to the spots.” Nikolai Kamenshchikov (@gnomvelikan) is the other name to follow. There is no skate shop in the country: boards come from Wall Ride over the border in Kazakhstan, or from Apollo directly.
The story Mike keeps telling
He crossed the border alone, arrived at night at a hostel with the word Nomad in the name, and woke up to the best skate day of that stretch of the trip. “I learned ten tricks that day. I was on fire. I don't know what happened to me.” The other memory is food: a single noodle longer than he is tall. “I've never seen this before. That's why I make YouTube videos, because I forget this stuff.”
What it needs
More skaters and more parks, in that order, plus someone loud enough to pull people together, because Apollo is beloved and introverted in equal measure. Boards are expensive against local wages, and with no shop in the country every setup is an import. Mike's read is that the floor is already here and the direction is up, helped by the neighbours: “Kazakhstan is popular. Uzbekistan is popular. I don't see why it would not get popular.” The one thing that surprised him was how little the locals cared about being filmed. Most said no when he asked for a line, which in a scene chasing attention almost never happens.
If you go
Most travellers come for the mountains, the lakes, the horses and the nomad culture, which is still a living thing here rather than a museum piece: families move with the seasons and carry a foldable house on horseback. Mike's own regret is that three days left him no time for any of it. Bishkek is safe, clean and cheap, the kalpak hats are everywhere, and the road out of the city runs toward Uzbekistan. His travel advice is more urgent than his skate advice: “It's going to be really touristic in the next few years. Go now, before it blows up.”
Mike Boisvert: “You could do a skate trip in Kyrgyzstan. The local scene is small, but the more people go, the more it helps.”
Watch the Kyrgyzstan video
Photos and video: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
