This story is part of a new series covering the rising skate culture in Mansfield, produced in partnership with Skate Ohio.
Justin Esterline is a Mansfield native, longtime skater and skateboarding enthusiast. By day, he works as an instructor with Relationships Under Construction, where he teaches teens how to develop healthy relationships and make good life decisions. But outside of work, he brings those same counseling skills to the skate park, where he can connect with teens in a casual setting to discuss their lives and coping skills.
These days, he’s seeing those worlds collide more often.
“I did have one student at one of my schools go, ‘Man, do you really skate?’ because I was wearing a skate shirt,” Esterline, 42, recalled. “It was funny — a month or two later, we were at a skate competition and all of a sudden he's like, ‘Mr. Esterline, what?’ I was like, ‘You thought I lied to you?’”
Growing skate culture in Mansfield
Mansfield is seeing a revival in its skate culture, as the city isn’t as hostile to skaters as before. Teens today are allowed to skate freely, and community members are rebuilding many of the skate parks that were demolished. Esterline said he’s excited to see the city embrace skaters, and hopes Mansfield becomes a skateboarding destination.
“It's a different feel here in Mansfield right now,” Esterline said.
Esterline started his skating journey as a teenager, mostly out of necessity. Skating helped him deal with his emotions after his parents divorced. However, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, skaters had a reputation for being rowdy and destructive. City officials and other adults would chase them out of areas and threaten to call the police on them.
“The culture was always against us and negative,” Esterline said. “But that was never actually the way I presented myself out there. I always tried to do it the right way.”
Now, even Mansfield’s mayor is supporting the growing skate culture.
“We are excited to see all of the renewed interest and support of our young people through skateboarding,” Mansfield Mayor Jodie Perry said. “It has been fantastic to watch all that is happening, and I believe it is just the start of more things to come.”
This is part of a push to get Mansfield’s youth off the streets and away from crime. Children and teens from low-income families are most affected by crime, according to a 2023 Community Needs Assessment in Richland County. However, after seeing a spike in homicides in 2023, the crime rate dropped the following year. Esterline and other Mansfield skaters attribute that drop in part to young people choosing skating over crime.
Skateboarding could even be a part of the solution to Mansfield’s crime problem. According to a national case study from the University of Southern California and The Skatepark Project, skateboarding can help teenagers improve their mental health and form relationships with one another.
“Study data show that skateboarding plays a significant role in skaters developing more complex networks of friends and allies, including intergenerational and cross-cultural relationships,” researchers said. “Hence, the skatepark offers skateboarders an opportunity to grow as individuals, but just as importantly, to connect with others — and in some cases, build a collective.”
Providing safe and fun spaces for young people
Brasshouse Boardroom, a skate shop located in Downtown Mansfield, opened in 2023. The walls in the main room are covered with skateboards without wheels, called decks. Decks come in different shapes and sizes, and the bottom sides are covered with bright and striking designs.
The shop also offers every part of the skateboard, allowing people to customize their boards, including the wheels, bearings and trucks. But the coolest feature of this shop is the mini ramp in an open back room, right behind the cash register. They leave the ramp open for skaters to test out their prospective skateboards for the right feel.
“As soon as they built this, they said, we have to have a mini ramp in the back,” Esterline said. “So now, we come in and we get to have mini ramp sessions here and hang out.”
Hanging out is partially why Libby Robinson and her husband opened Brasshouse Boardroom. She said that she realized the need for this store after an uptick in violent crime hit Mansfield in 2022.
“There was a local meeting at Liberty Park, and they were asking what this community wanted to see,” Robinson said. “And we wanted to see a skate park, something for kids to do where they don't have to have a bunch of equipment, their parents don't pay for them to get involved.”
Robinson wants to provide another option for Mansfield’s youth to stay out of trouble, adding that local teenagers use Brasshouse Boardroom as a hub to make friends, window shop and even practice a few new tricks.
“It builds friendships between people that you would never see hanging out,” Robinson said. “That's really cool for me to see because the community was so spread out. There wasn't a skate park or a skate shop or anywhere for them to all meet.”
Esterline stops by the shop regularly to hang out with the skaters as a role model. He said he wants to push kids to skate instead of choosing drugs, alcohol or violence. He uses himself as an example of how skateboarding can change someone’s life for the better.
“I made some really crappy decisions because I was angry,” Esterline said. “And I'm just like, man, don't make those same decisions. Don't go down that way. Like seriously, rely on skateboarding, man.”
After our interview, Esterline showed off some of his moves on the mini ramp. Like most skaters, he’s not satisfied with a move unless it’s perfect. Right now, he’s trying to perform a kickflip, but can’t quite land it.
“I'm just old, dude, that's the problem,” Esterline joked. “I can't do what those guys do no more. Nothing I do is cool anymore.”
For what it’s worth, he did land the trick. And, as a non-skater, I thought the moves were pretty cool.
