Skate shop owner Nate Sherwood keeps skating alive in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Walk into Eduskate Board Shop in Cedar Rapids, and you’ll notice Nate Sherwood.

“That’s me owner ‘operskater’ of Eduskate I ‘appreciskate’ you noticing. Don’t let me ‘irriskate’ you with those I can do those all day.”

Sherwood’s heart is just as big as his personality and his vocabulary.

“I feel like a bartender, a locksmith, a cab driver, a therapist,” Sherwood said. “You get people coming in with whatever their problem is, we get to hear about it we do our best to try to usher them towards happiness.”

With Riverside Skate Park on hiatus, his goal is to keep skating alive in downtown Cedar Rapids.

“Just like any other performance art or sport it brings people together,” Sherwood said. “[It puts] smiles on people’s faces which we can all use in this world.”

Molly Irmen knows that, she came to the shop six years ago, and she’s still a regular.

“The first time I came in I brought in a board that was it was a Walmart board that was rusted out,” Irmen said. “[Sherwood] had spent an hour two hours just trying to make it stateable.”

Sherwood, along with his wife Lyndsey, are celebrating 10 years in business

“There’s people that came here as young adults themselves now they’re parents they have kids they bring in and they buy skateboards for them,” Sherwood said. “We have folks that come in that were parents that decided to get back into skating because their kids showed interest.”

He said he’s happy the skate shop can be a place to escape.

“A lot of my customers work in factories they deal with all the entrapments of that,” Sherwood said. “We do a lot of things we run a tab for people we do whatever we have to to keep them skating keep them smiling.”

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