Bright Side Skateboard Supply opened its doors to customers on Aug. 7, 2024. Located at 98 King St. N. above McPhail’s Cycle and Sports, Bright Side offers a curated selection of decks, trucks, wheels and clothing for skaters of all levels. It is the first independent skateboard shop to open in the city since Funhouse Skate & Snow in Kitchener closed in 2019.
The owner, Ryan McDonough, is no stranger to running a skate shop. The Kitchener native started his career in the skateboard industry, working at Surf Paradise in Kitchener in the mid-90s. In 2001, he left Surf Paradise to join Board Zone as a manager and buyer.
He and a partner eventually purchased Board Zone’s Waterloo and Thornhill locations in 2008 and changed the name to Sanction Skate and Snow. The Waterloo location was initially in the University Shops Plaza, but McDonough moved it to King St. in Waterloo in 2013.
“That’s the same time they started road construction and shut down the road in front of the store. We closed in 2015, but I wouldn’t put the blame on the LRT. It was a culmination of factors, and it wasn’t sustainable at that point,” McDonough said.
After the store closed, McDonough started working at McPhail’s with a brief stint in the financial industry. He said he missed the culture a brick-and-mortar skateboard shop brings to a community.
“There’s been a massive hole locally, but also personally, with the lack of being a core skate shop, and I felt the need to make that happen again. A local shop gives everyone in the skating community a place to meet, greet, hang out and check out products,” he said.
Community is a core part of the skating culture, bringing in people from different ages and backgrounds. When McDonough looked back at his time growing up in Kitchener, the people he met in his local skateboard shop are some of the people still in his life today.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to why people skate together. But the great thing about skateboarding for me is the people it brought into my life,” McDonough said.
“There’re people that I looked up to because of their skateboarding who became long-term friends. My best man at my wedding was a friend I met at a skateboard shop 30 years ago,” he said.
Over the last decade, new skate parks have opened across the region, and McDonough said he appreciates the effort the cities are making to provide skating spaces. While the skate parks are welcome additions, he said they have created a system where skaters in one area do not know skaters from another area. It is a culture different from the one he grew up with.
“Growing up, there was only one park, and that park is where you warmed up before you went street skating. Now, we have multiple parks. But skateboarding doesn’t fit into that little square. Skateboarding is art, music, fashion, and a form of transportation. That’s where our role comes in as people who can go to the city with ideas on making the whole city skate-able,” he said.
McDonough plans to host events in the shop to help strengthen the local skateboarding community, including skate video viewing parties, artist events and clothing drops. When it comes to success, he said his definition is simply seeing more people participate in skateboarding.
“How do I measure that? It’s hard, but the number of entry-level boards I sell is a good indicator. People who buy high-end stuff always buy high-end stuff. But when I sell basic entry-level junior completes, it shows me that kids are starting, and that’s the most important thing,” McDonough said.
He sees the shop as a way he can foster the same type of community that has supported him throughout his life.
“These are friendships that have never dissipated or changed, even though people come and go and skateboarding changes. It built a sense of community, which feels like it’s been lacking, especially in terms of, there’s so much around skateboarding, whether it’s music, art, the creativity that’s within skateboarding is something that’s really important to me, and it’s given me so many opportunities in my life,” he said.
In the print version of this article, in Vol. 13 Issue 1 released on Oct. 3, 2024, Ryan McDonough’s name is misspelled as Ryan Dunna. This has been corrected in this online version.
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