"Seattle Skate Spots: Skating a City That Rains"
City Guides ·
"Three indoor spots out of 142 mapped in Seattle. Where the roofs are, which parks drain, and how to use a short dry window without wasting it driving."
Two parking garages and an arena. That is the entire covered inventory across the 142 spots we have mapped in Seattle, a city that gets measurable rain on roughly 150 days a year. Three roofs, 139 spots open to the sky. Here is how to work with that.
The three that have a roof
Google Parking Garage at 601 North 34th Street is the Fremont option, and it sits in the densest useful corner of our Seattle data: 82 metres from Seattle BMX, 276 metres from Troll Ledges on North 36th, and 582 metres from the All together park on Stone Way North. If the drizzle starts, you are a two-minute push from cover. It has no photos on its page, which is the one thing keeping it from being the obvious first call.
Parking Area W46 at 4317 12th Avenue Northeast is the University District equivalent, and it is the only one of the three with any photos at all. Two, which is enough to judge a surface before you commit a bus ride to it. It anchors a small U-District run: 318 metres to a stair setup on 8th Avenue Northeast, 337 metres to College Place Apartments, 641 metres to Gould Hall. Skate the outdoor ones while it's dry, retreat to the garage when it isn't.
The third is SLS Key Arena at 149 Thomas Street, the only indoor entry filed as a park rather than street. Treat this one with more caution than the garages. It is an arena record with no photos, and an arena is not somewhere you turn up and roll in on a Tuesday afternoon. What the surrounding data does support is the block: there's a bump jump spot at 201 Thomas Street 227 metres away, and Mollie bump jump on Mercer at 205 metres.
Three out of 142 is thin, and it is almost certainly an undercount rather than the full picture. For comparison, Amsterdam has 13 indoor spots across 134 mapped, in a climate not far off this one. If you know a covered Seattle spot that isn't in here, it belongs in the app.
The other thing worth noticing: two of the three are parking structures. That is not a coincidence, and it is the shape of the answer. In a wet city the roofs you can actually use are usually the ones built for cars.
Why the photo count is the number to check
Seattle's rain problem is not depth, it's frequency. Annual totals here are lower than New York's; they just arrive as drizzle spread thin across two thirds of the year. The question is almost never "is it raining" but "has this surface dried yet", and the answer depends on what the ground is made of and how much sits above it.
Our records don't carry surface or drainage detail, but 79 of the 142 Seattle spots have photos and 63 have none at all, and a page with eight images will show you the ground, the run-up and whether there's anything overhead. Garfield High School carries 13 photos, the most of any spot here. Stairs and curbs at 700 5th Avenue and the manny spot at 1001 4th Avenue have eight each. The Jimi Hendrix double set has six. In October, plan around the spots you can see.
October to April: work the parks
Nine of the 142 are parks, and once the roofs run out the odds sit with concrete. It drains and dries; a marble ledge in the shade of a tower does not.
Jefferson Park Skatepark on Beacon Avenue South has four photos, the best-documented park we hold. A second Jefferson entry sits 266 metres away at 1711 South Spokane Street, filed as street; same hill, two records. Marginal Way is logged at an address on Washington 99 and flagged outdoor, with no photos. Judkins Park in the Central District is also photoless.
Three more carry nothing but the name "Skatepark": one in Ballard at 5701 22nd Avenue Northwest, one in Delridge on Southwest Genesee Street, one at 11203 5th Avenue Northeast in Northgate. Two photos each, enough to judge the surface.
The one to write off from November onward is Bonair Dirt Jumps in West Seattle. Dirt and a Seattle winter don't negotiate.
When a window opens, stay downtown
A dry spell in February might last ninety minutes. Spend it driving and it's gone, and none of the three roofs is downtown. This is where the clustering in our data earns its keep.
Draw a 400-metre circle around Gap Spot at 617 Western Avenue and 23 of our records fall inside it. The nearest is ghost feeble curb at 623 Western, 38 metres away, then small gap on Post Avenue at 52 metres, tranny on Yesler Way at 71, and a kicker on Columbia Street at 96. Five spots inside a block-and-a-half walk.
Climb the hill and the civic centre repeats the trick: a 300-metre circle around the 4th Avenue manny spot catches seventeen records, including the Set of 12 on 2nd Avenue, the Federal Building at 1015 2nd, and capped ledges at 999 3rd. If the forecast gives you one clear hour, park once and walk.
The names that tell you to skip them
Three downtown spots are named for their gradient: Downhill at 107 Spring Street, Drop to downhill a block up at 351 Spring, and Downhill and stairs on Columbia. Downtown Seattle's east-west streets climb hard off the water, and a spot whose defining feature is the grade is the first thing to cut on a damp day. Save them for August.
One shop in 142 spots
Seattle has exactly one shop in our data: Seattle BMX at 3406 Fremont Avenue North, the same block as the Google garage. Berlin has 18 shops across 119 spots. That gap says almost nothing about Seattle retail and almost everything about how our shop layer got populated: Montreal has 139 spots and zero shops, Brussels 105 and zero. Assume we're under-mapping and check locally.
What the count does give you is a reason to point at Fremont when the weather turns. Garage, shop, ledges and a park, all inside 600 metres. That is the closest thing Seattle has to a wet-day default, and it's a short walk end to end.
Beyond that, the city stretches 21.7 km north to south in our bounding box, from Southwest Boys & Girls Club at 9800 8th Avenue Southwest up to the Northgate park. In summer that spread is worth driving. From October, it isn't.