Photo by JJ VelasquezEd McMurray started skateboarding 30 years ago as a child growing up in Southern California, where the sport is seemingly sewn into the fabric of adolescent life.
When McMurray moved to Buda, he noticed there was a dedicated skateboarding scene—not quite as big as in California—but nowhere for the skaters to safely ride.
With both his itch to skate and the community's lack of a proper dedicated skating venue as motivating factors, McMurray built a half-pipe in his backyard to provide a place for his friends to skate.
Now he has a skate shop right across the street from the city's first skate park.
Buda Skate opened at 503 S. Loop 4 on Oct. 12, two months before the grand opening of the Jackson Tyler Norris Memorial Skate Park across the street. The shop sells skateboards, gear and accessories, clothing and shoes. It also offers instruction for beginning skaters.
His business bravado has led some in the community to call him an entrepreneur, he said. But McMurray does not agree with that descriptor.
"I'm not an entrepreneur," McMurray said. "I could have taken this money and started a software company—that's entrepreneurialism. This is just taking care of the community."
The risk involved in starting his business was relatively low for McMurray, he said. He said he has a day job in the corporate world that pays the bills, and the startup costs were minimal, although he said he has read a statistic that one in three skate shops closes within one year of opening.
Still, he said his main priority is not making money but giving Buda's skateboarding youth a home.
Getting the skate park approved was a long and arduous process, said Buda Skate employees Caleb James Cleaver and Deaton Gutierrez, who were in high school when City Council first began to seriously consider constructing the park.
They said the process began with an older generation of skateboarders about 12 years ago. But substantive progress was not made until Jesse Crouse, whose father sat on the council at the time, began lobbying the city for a skate park.
A video showing the dangerous situations skaters put themselves in while skating turned heads at a City Council meeting, they said.
In 2010 funding for the park was approved. A year later, City Council approved naming the park after a local youth who died while skating in Lockhart after being hit by a car.
With Bastrop set to open its own skate park, McMurray said he has been talking to prospective skate shop owners there about the industry. He said he is more than willing to share advice with people hoping to open up their own shops.
"It's more of a competition against the corporations," he said.
- 503 S. Loop 4, Buda
- 512-295-0298
- www.budaskate.com
- Hours: 11 a.m.–8 p.m. daily
