Roger Browne and Nocturnal Skate Shop

Painted on the side of the Nocturnal Skate Shop, muralist Jim Houser paid tribute to local skateboarder Roger Browne. At the age of 11 in 1984, Houser vividly remembers attending the fireworks at the art museum on July 4th, where he noticed a few skateboarders riding in a closed section of the parkway and jumping off a homemade ramp. Inspired by this group of kids, he asked for a skateboard for his birthday a few weeks later. Houser is now approaching 49 years old, and skateboarding has been a huge part of his life ever since that birthday gift. When he was a teenager, he’d come into the city to ride, and after quickly immersing himself into the local skating community, he found out that one of the riders he saw flying down the parkway as a kid was named Roger Browne, one of the pioneers of street skating in Philadelphia. Houser very much looked up to Browne and did his best to ride similar parts of Philadelphia while hoping he’d also be there on the days Jim came into the city. Throughout his 20s, Houser would ride throughout Philadelphia, and occasionally connect with Browne, and his interactions with Browne along with his skateboarding skills continued to make a huge impression on the artist.

Nocturnal Skate shop asked Houser to create a mural on the side of their building, and he saw it as the perfect opportunity to celebrate Roger Browne and to thank him. The style of the mural is inspired by a project Houser previously did for a skateboarding company called Enjoi, where he created artwork for the bottoms of their skateboards. The artworks were based on frames from skating videos showing the skaters doing tricks, and the image used for this mural was pulled from a video featuring Browne leaping over the street, a moment caught on camera around 1994 around the corner from this mural.