From the Production Journal · August 2026
Crazy Street Riders at Eastern State Penitentiary
Preserving an overlooked chapter of Philadelphia skateboarding history rooted at Eastern State Penitentiary.
At Eastern State Penitentiary, before Philadelphia skateboarding history was widely documented, a group of young Black riders was already building, riding, and defining a space of its own.
The Crazy Street Riders—known as CSR—formed around friendship, ingenuity, and a shared determination to skate. Their homemade ramp at Eastern State Penitentiary became the setting where the crew developed its identity, gathered as a community, and pushed the possibilities of what could be done on a board.
Archival footage from Eastern State preserves fragments of that world: riders moving at speed, friends gathered beside the ramp, the surrounding prison grounds, and a handmade sense of place. Members visible in the footage include Andre Carter, Darren Carter, and Adam, along with other riders whose identities are still being researched.
Blue Morrocco Productions is pairing those images with recorded memories from the people who were there. The goal is not to fill the gaps with guesses. It is to let firsthand voices and surviving evidence establish the history carefully.
An Oral History Discovery
The Sign at the Ramp
Visible in the archival footage is an “Advanced Riding Bowl” sign displayed at the Crazy Street Riders’ homemade ramp at Eastern State Penitentiary. According to CSR founder Andre Carter, he obtained the original sign elsewhere, and the crew added the CSR name before placing it at their skating spot.
It was not the official name of a commercial skatepark. It became part of the identity the riders created around their own space—a visible marker of the crew’s presence and history.
Andre’s complete account of the sign’s origin is being preserved for the documentary.
In Development
The Crazy Street Riders project is in active oral-history and documentary development. Interviews, participant identification, archival research, and artifact discovery are continuing as Blue Morrocco Productions builds the historical record with the riders and community.
Have a memory, photograph, object, or firsthand connection to the Crazy Street Riders? Blue Morrocco Productions welcomes historically relevant material and community recollections.