LAUREN IBAÑEZ/ NEXTGENRADIO
What is the meaning of
home?
Owen Henderson speaks with Avian Duke, a skateboarder and the vice president of Sk8 Liborius. Duke helped to renovate the historic cathedral that became Sk8 Liborius, putting his skills as a machinist and welder to use to build ramps and pipes for the indoor skate park. In June 2023, the church caught fire, leaving nothing but the brick walls of the sanctuary and a pile of charred rubble. Nevertheless, Duke says the skate community he calls home has become even more close-knit in the wake of the disaster.
A skater’s sanctuary is gone, but the community created is still home
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I’ve been skating since I was eight years old.
My dad had got me skating. He had a board, and I just got interested in skating around on it. I was like, ‘Oh, man, this is cool,’ you know and you just learn how to do tricks and stuff. And then he took me to a skate park and I watched people skate, and I was like, ‘Man I wanna try to do that.’
My name is Avian Duke, and I’m 23 years old.
When you think about it, like when you go play like team sports and everything you got, you know, those one kids want to be the all-star and you know everybody’s competitive. Skateboarding, it, it’s not competitive unless you want it to be.
One of those things with skateboarding where like, you know, it was always viewed as like, ‘Oh, yeah, those guys are like skaters or whatever. They’re like, you know, below dog food.’
They just don’t judge people because they know, we’re all weird now and kind of ways and… Yeah, everybody’s just welcoming. It’s no judging at all.
Home means to me anywhere you feel safe and comfortable.
Here’s the key for it. Those other locks, I don’t remember them working.
The building is St. Liborius. It was the oldest Gothic cathedral west of the Mississippi. And that’s really what it was before we moved into it and you know, gave it the Sk8 Liborius name.
It was really like a home because like for me, because, one, I had a key, and then I’d just invite friends and stuff over, and we just hang out, skate, listen to music, and just to whenever it didn’t really matter what how long we were here. So it was just really nice. It was like a home outside home.
It was a safe place. Come in here and skate anytime that I wanted to and… pretty much did what I wanted with respect.
When I first entered… My friend Ian, he actually knew about it. He was like, ‘Hey, let’s go up to the church and skate, they have like a session up there.’ And so we came up here. And that was my first time.
I was like, ‘Wow, this is insane. Never seen anything like this, probably won’t ever see it anywhere else like this either.’ So it was definitely really cool.
<<Footsteps in gravel>>
Oh, we’re right in front of the rectory right here. This is what — the kitchen over there started the fire. And the flames went throughout the kitchen windows, caught the roof on fire.
<<Walking along broken glass in hallway>>
It’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? It’s dark, gloomy, and burnt up. Yeah, still smells like natural gas. That’s what started it. It’s pretty shocking to see something. It’s like a nightmare.
<<Walking across burnt wood and metal>>
This is the sanctuary. This is the back end of it right up against the altar. There was a mini ramp right here in front of us. There’s still some remains of the street course. And the vert ramp’s completely gone. That’s what was sitting right in the middle.
There’s been a lot of volunteers coming in and hoping to the point of like, man like there’s really not much more we can do right now.
It’s really awesome to see that because they really care about the place
I think everybody in the community has gotten a lot, you know, closer after this. And knowing that there’s still hope to, you know, do something with the place.
It was really just like a community scene. Everybody’s really close with each other. Yeah, it’s like a whole ‘nother different family.
When he was 15 years old, Avian Duke visited Sk8 Liborius for the first time and fell in love. He’d never been to a skate park like the one inside the North St. Louis church.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is insane,’” Duke remembered. “‘Never seen anything like this, probably won’t ever see it anywhere else like this either.’”
He remembers seeing the half circle of the vert ramp as soon as he walked in the sanctuary doors. “It was pretty cool. Then you had a mini ramp on the top balcony above you.”
Duke started skating when he was eight. His father introduced him to the sport, and he quickly became obsessed, learning tricks and improving his skills.
After his introduction to Sk8 Liborius, Duke spent more and more time at the church, building ramps and pipes for the park, and cleaning up the debris to make way for new additions.
On the evening of June 28, 2023, Duke was skateboarding with his friends inside the church. On June 29, all that was left of the sanctuary were the brick walls.
Sk8 Liborius started as the Catholic church St. Liborius, built in the late 1800s. In 2012, founders Bryan Bedwell and David Blum started converting the interior of the abandoned church into an indoor skate park.
For 23-year-old Duke, that church had been a “home outside home.” He skated there for hours at a time. In 2020, when COVID-19 lockdown restrictions started going into effect, he persuaded Blum to let him live inside the rectory of the church because he worried the border between Missouri and Illinois would close, cutting him off from skateboarding. After six months he moved back to his home in Alton.
“Home to me is a place where you feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “It was a safe place. [I could] come in here and skate anytime that I wanted to and just pretty much do what I wanted with respect.”
For Duke, one of the main attractions of skating was the sense of community he felt.
Avian Duke, 23, of Alton, points toward a crumbling wall on Monday, Sept. 18, 2023, at the recently burned down Sk8 Liborius’ sanctuary in north St. Louis. The sanctuary used to contain a variety of ramps, pipes, and other skating obstacles paired with graffiti and remnants of religious art from the space’s past life as a church. “It didn’t look like much from the outside just driving by,” Duke said. “People would go in there and think, ‘Wow, I never thought this would be in here.’” KYLE STOKES / NEXTGENRADIO
The blaze on the evening of June 28 started in the Sk8 Liborius’ church rectory’s kitchen, according to fire officials. “It’s dark, gloomy and burnt-up, and it still smells like natural gas,” said Avian Duke, one of the skatepark’s leaders. “It almost seems like being inside some random, abandoned building and walking around. It just doesn’t look like [how] I remember seeing it.” JAZ’MIN FRANKS / NEXTGENRADIO
“It was really like a home. I had a key, and then I’d just invite friends and stuff over, and we just hang out, skate, listen to music,” he said. “It didn’t really matter how long we were here, so it was just really nice.”
“It was really like a home. I had a key, and then I’d just invite friends and stuff over, and we just hang out, skate, listen to music,” he said. “It didn’t really matter how long we were here, so it was just really nice.”
Duke said the skaters lifted each other up, supporting each other and always being there to offer each other help.
“With skateboarding, you know, it was always viewed as, ‘Oh, yeah, those guys are skaters or whatever. They’re below dog food,’” Duke also added. “They just don’t judge people because they know we’re all weird in our own kind of ways. Everybody’s just welcoming, there’s no judging at all.”
That camaraderie kept Duke coming back to Sk8 Liborius, and eventually, he joined the organization’s board.
Then on June 29th, he woke up to a slew of messages, telling him the church had burned down.
That morning, Duke and one of his friends from the group went to the church, sneaking past the firefighters to see the destruction with their own eyes.
“They started spraying certain areas of buildings. Bricks were flying off,” he said. “It wasn’t a good idea, but we just had to come in here and check it out.”
Officials say the fire started in the rectory’s kitchen before sparks blew onto the roof of the sanctuary, setting it ablaze.
For now, Duke said the Sk8 Liborius board doesn’t know what their future holds. While the rectory of the church is somewhat intact, all that remains of the sanctuary are the walls and a space filled with rubble. Fundraising efforts to rebuild the skatepark are underway. Meanwhile, he and other members of the group have scattered, skating at different parks around the St. Louis area.
However, he has really appreciated the outpouring of support from the community. So many volunteers have turned out to help that there isn’t much more they can do, Duke said.
Despite losing the physical space of the church, Duke said he still feels a sense of home with the skating community he’s built.
“I think everybody in the community has gotten a lot closer after this,” he said. “Knowing that there’s still hope to do something with the place.
“It’s like a whole other different family.”
“They just don’t judge people because they know we’re all weird in our own kind of ways. Everybody’s just welcoming, there’s no judging at all.”
Avian Duke, 23, of Alton, stands by a window in the ruins of the Sk8 Liborius church in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. “This whole scene was kind of created from everybody around here,” Duke said. “It was really just a community scene. Everybody’s really close with each other.” JAZ’MIN FRANKS / NEXTGENRADIO
Since the fire in late June 2023, the remains of the Sk8 Liborius skatepark, pictured on Monday, Sept. 18, 2023 in north St. Louis, have been fenced off to the public. “It’s nothing but brick left,” said Avian Duke. “Just the walls.” OWEN HENDERSON / NEXTGENRADIO
A Sk8 Liborius sweatshirt that survived the fire hangs at the back of what used to be the sanctuary on Monday, Sept. 18, 2023, at the church in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. A fire that started in the rectory building spread to the roof of the sanctuary. “All the embers and stuff from the roof carried over to the church,” said Avian Duke. “It took no time for that to get torched.” OWEN HENDERSON / NEXTGENRADIO
“Home to me is a place where you feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “It was a safe place. [I could] come in here and skate anytime that I wanted to and just pretty much do what I wanted with respect.”
Avian Duke, 23, of Alton, examines the rubble of what used to be the Sk8 Liborius sanctuary on Monday, Sept. 18, 2023, in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. “That night, I was here with my friend skating, and we’re like just talking about the future about the place,” Duke said. “About five hours later, the rectory is on fire.” JAZ’MIN FRANKS / NEXTGENRADIO