'Old Man Mondays': Why Adult-Focused Skate Sessions Are Taking Off

A few years ago, if you wanted to skate without feeling like the oldest person at the park by two decades, your options were limited: show up at an odd hour and hope, or find an informal Facebook group and cross your fingers someone else turned up too. That’s starting to change. Parks are now running sessions built specifically for adult skaters — and the model is worth knowing about, whether you want to find one or start one.

What “Old Man Monday” actually looks like

Prime Skatepark in Plymouth, UK, runs a weekly Monday-evening session called Old Man Monday (Prime’s session timetable lists it as 8 to 10pm; the session’s own page says 7 to 10pm, so check before you go). It’s not exclusively for skaters over 40 — all wheels are welcome, and you don’t have to skate to hang out in the café — but the pricing tells you who it’s built around: general entry is £7.50, while skaters over 40 pay £5 at the door. That’s a small thing, but it signals something bigger: the park is actively inviting an age group that often assumes it isn’t welcome, rather than just tolerating them.

The atmosphere is the real draw. Regulars describe it as more social than a typical evening session — old friends catching up, newcomers being shown the ropes, a mixed-ability, mixed-gender crowd that isn’t there to perform for anyone. It’s built to feel like a hangout that happens to involve skateboards, not a session where you need to prove you belong.

Why this model works

A dedicated adult session solves a problem that’s hard to solve any other way: timing alone doesn’t guarantee you’ll find your people. You can show up at a quiet weekday-morning slot for months and still skate alone. A named, recurring, promoted session changes that — it gives adult skaters a specific time and place to show up, knowing other adults will be there too.

It also removes a specific kind of hesitation. A lot of returning skaters won’t say it out loud, but part of what keeps them from going to the park is not wanting to be the visibly worst, oldest, or most out-of-place person in the session. A session explicitly framed around and discounted for older skaters removes that worry before you’ve even shown up.

For parks and shops, it’s a smart move too — it turns off-peak evening hours into revenue and community-building instead of dead time, and it builds a loyal customer base that a lot of skate businesses have historically overlooked.

Finding one near you

There’s no single directory of these sessions yet, so a bit of legwork is required:

• Call or message your local skatepark or skate shop directly and ask if they run (or would consider running) an adult or over-40 session. Many parks that don’t advertise this kind of session will still informally support it if a few regulars ask.
• Check the shop’s or park’s Instagram and Facebook page. Sessions like this tend to get promoted through social posts and stories rather than a static events page.
• Ask in local adult-skater Facebook groups or on r/OldSkaters. If a session like this exists in your area, the people organizing or attending it are usually active in those spaces. Our guide to finding other adult skaters lists the channels that work.
• Look for “veterans,” “masters,” or “35+” nights, not just “over 40” — parks use different labels for the same idea.

Starting one if it doesn’t exist

If nothing like this exists near you, you don’t need permission from anyone to start building it.

Pick a slot and commit to it publicly. A recurring, named time — “adult session, every Wednesday, 7pm” — is what makes something feel real and attendable, as opposed to a loose “let’s skate sometime” plan that never solidifies.

Talk to the park or shop before you promote it. If it’s a public park, you likely don’t need permission to just show up at a given time — but if you want a shop’s blessing, a discount, or their help spreading the word, ask. Most shops are receptive, because adult skaters are reliable customers.

Give it a name. It sounds trivial, but a named session — “Old Man Monday,” “Sunday Slow Session,” whatever fits your crowd — is far easier to promote and remember than an unnamed standing plan.

Start small and let it compound. The first session might be three people. That’s fine. Show up again the next week regardless. Consistency is what turns a one-off meetup into an institution people build their week around.

The bigger shift

What’s notable about this trend isn’t really the specific sessions — it’s what they represent. Skateparks have spent most of their existence designed around and marketed to teenagers. Sessions like Old Man Monday are a quiet acknowledgment that a meaningful, growing part of the skating population is well past that age bracket, and that building spaces and schedules around them is worth doing.

If you’ve been putting off going back to the park because you weren’t sure where you’d fit in, this is your answer: somewhere, at some hour, a session like this is either already running or waiting for someone like you to start it.