Sophomore Nick Wnorowski looks like a rock star as he stands on top of his skateboard, navigating through the Ithaca skate park. On a sweltering hot day in April, the Syracuse native throws on his aviator sunglasses underneath a blue baseball cap on top of his shaggy hair.

There is no obstacle he can’t handle. He warms up in the concrete bowl. He has an old school flow, dipping in and out of the bowl, popping high above the coping each time he reaches the lip.

“The park is different from other places,” Wnorowski said. “You can just roll up and skate.”

Wnorowski is one of Ithaca’s top skaters in a blooming skate scene, but he is also shooting a video for his production company, Midnight Stroll Productions. The unnamed project features other top skaters in the central New York area skating in Ithaca and Syracuse.

His experience in skating and video goes back to a driveway more than 10 years ago.

“My buddies and I made a skate video back in 1998 and I had been skating before then,” Wnorowski said. “It was just in my friend’s driveway back in the day.”

While he now uses the park as one of his favorite spots for riding, other skaters at the college find there are good locations to ride on campus as well.

Sophomore Gabe Pastel is known to frequently skate outside the Terraces, working on a new trick or just riding around for fun.

Skateboarding differs from team sports, but Pastel said skaters around campus come together and share a sense of unity.

“When kids skate up here, it’s like how a team gets close,” Pastel said.

Aside from the large population of skateboarders on campus and in town, Ithaca also boasts a premier skate shop, Homegrown, located on The Commons, and Comet Skateboards, a skateboard manufacturing company.

Homegrown, independently owned and operated by Ithaca native Andrew Douglas, stays true to its name. Douglas decides exactly what he wants to carry and how he wants his store run.

The store not only provides the Ithaca skateboarding community with skating equipment and apparel, but it’s also a good place for skaters to gather when they aren’t riding.

There is a laid back vibe to the store. Long shelves of skateboarding sneakers, clothing and gear line every wall. A large leather couch and flat screen TV that constantly plays skate videos sit at the back of the store.          As the skateboarding scene in Ithaca evolves, Douglas said Homegrown needs to do the same. When the store moves across The Commons in November, Douglas said it will be more of a high-end skate shop.

“It’s not going to be as chilled out,” Douglas said. “It’s going to be more upscale and more boutiquey.”

As the owner of an independent shop, Douglas has to compete with the mall shops that are becoming more popular.

“A lot of little kids go up there and get their gimmicky stuff,” Douglas said. “I’ve always been trying to cater to the more mature skaters — the people who have been doing it for a while.”

Conveniently for Douglas, he gets all of his shop boards from the experienced skateboard manufacturers at Comet Skateboards.

Comet, run by Jason Salfi, was started in Oakland, Calif., after Salfi graduated from Cornell University. He returned to Ithaca after hearing about a Cornell professor who was making a sustainable and biodegradable adhesive from a soy-based material, which is now found in all of Comet’s boards.

“I was interested in starting a business that had ecological goals and a mindset that would transform the industry as we knew it to more sustainable practices,” Salfi said.

The sustainable mind set of Comet Skateboards makes it a perfect fit for the environmentally conscious nature of Ithaca.

“Life is easy around like-minded people,” Salfi said. “We’ve had a very warm welcome and we’re thankful for that.”

With an independently owned shop and a cutting edge sustainable skateboard factory in Ithaca, one would think that the skate scene would be booming. Comet employee Ira Garrison said that it’s not as good as it could be.

But with plans in progress to build an indoor park in Lansing, N.Y., and improve the concrete outdoor park on Route 13, Garrison said a strong scene could be on its way.

“[The scene] is ramping back up with the arrival of a manufacturer in town,” Garrison said, “And the prospect of a new park going up.”

As the scene attempts to grow back into what it once was, Garrison said Ithaca is a good place for skateboarding because of the open-minded nature of the town.

“Ithaca is a place that makes sense to have a big skate scene compared to other places,” Garrison said. “Ithaca is known for its free-thinkers, so it would make sense that there would be the kind of people here that would be into it.”

The skaters at the park don’t seem to mind a scene that has potential to be huge is a shadow of what it could be. Wnorowski and his friend, Cornell junior Joe LoMando, still tear up the park, having as much fun as they did when they were 10-year-olds in the driveway.

They follow each other over ramps and rails while high school students stand at a distance visibly impressed. They look on with awe cheering and tapping their boards on the top of the ramp whenever either skater lands a trick. Wnorowski and LoMando pause only for a quick water break before they get back on their boards for another session.

Wnorowski said this is what skateboarding is all about. Cruising around and having fun never gets old for him.

“You can do whatever you have fun doing,” Wnorowski said. “You can just ride around if you like that, or you can go out and try tricks. It’s always skating with your friends, getting out there and doing something.”