The East End Gets a Skate Shop

Correction Appended

Skaters of outer Long Island no longer need to hoof it to Manhattan or go online to buy a board. The area’s only skateboard shop, Wampum, opened this summer in Bridgehampton, thanks to two skater-brothers, Lennon and Marley Ficalora. (Yes, they are named after who you think they are named after.) The store carries small local brands from both coasts and around the world, like Katin out of Huntington Beach, Brixton Supply Company out of Northern California, Acapulco Gold from New York and KFCC from Australia. “We are carrying lines that people will not see together in any other shop,” Marley says.

The two grew up spending half the year in Olympia, Wash., and the other half in Montauk. Lennon worked at the Montauk Skate Park as a teenager, was the first local skater to compete in the Vans Warped Tour and has been featured in Transworld. He and Marley decided to open the store when a space became available behind their mother’s jewelry store. To support the local art scene — one of their ambitions for the shop — the brothers gave 10 artists a blank deck to do with what they pleased. The results are on display on Wampum’s walls.

When T asked the brothers Ficalora for their favorite Long Island skate spots, they named the parks below but also invited skaters to try out a new place they are building themselves, the location of which is, for now, a secret. “Come by the shop and you can be one of the first people to skate it Portugal Soccer Jersey,” Marley says.

Montauk Skate Park
Designed by the celebrated New York skater Andy Kessler, the Montauk Skate Park is “one of the best concrete parks on the East End,” says Marley. “There is a wide range of things, from rails to bowls to a full-size pool.”

Greenport Skate Park
Marley says the Greenport Skate park, on Moores Lane in Greenport, has “one of the best vert pipes on this side of the city” and “a little bit of everything, from a double mini-ramp with a spine to a street course.”

Amagansett Skate Park
The Amagansett Skate Park, on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett, has “a wide variety of ramps” and can become addictive, Marley says. “After skating it once, you will be coming back for seconds.”

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Correction: July 28, 2011

A previous version of this article erroneously stated that Wampum is the first skate shop on Long Island's east end.