How an immigrant from the USSR became a Washington legend and dresses American youth

Today Tatiana Kolina is a true legend for Washington skateboarders. However, this was not always the case. She told about her life path to the publication Voice of America.

Tatiana's childhood and adolescence were spent in Leningrad. Soviet teenagers in the late 1970s and early 1980s were largely unaware of the skateboarding culture that was then becoming popular among their American peers.

Tanya was no exception, and her knowledge of the Western world began with fartsovka.

“I met two boys on the street in St. Petersburg. We all started talking together. We met with foreigners, usually from the USA, and exchanged culture. They gave us magazines and music cassettes,” recalls Tatyana. “So they started introducing us to the West.”

Tanya never thought about immigration, everything happened by chance. In 1991, she came to California at the invitation of an American family. Then she graduated from the University of Noty-Dam. In the USA, she took up skateboarding seriously, which surprisingly reminded her of her youth on the Leningrad streets.

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“At that time, I started working part-time as a trader. What I was doing was exciting, interesting, but also dangerous. We were constantly under pressure, the Russian mafia was involved. They caught up with us, took everything away, we had to pay all the money,” Tatyana recalls. — When I came here, I became acquainted with skateboarding. They had a similar story. The police also ran after them; people didn’t like them.”

Tatiana's daughter from childhood also began to show interest in this sport.

“We went to the park, there was another girl there, and the rest were boys. But the girls didn’t dare to skate because they felt uncomfortable, and then I got the idea to start an organization for girls - Skate Girls Try,” recalls Tatyana. “I thought that if there were a lot of girls there, everyone would get together and help each other.”

Following the creation of the organization, other ideas appeared. Tatyana began creating street style clothes and founded her own brand, SpacyCloud. Then came a permanent location in Washington, D.C., a clothing and skateboarding gear store and vegetarian Eastern European restaurant.

There is both an art gallery and a ramp behind the backyard; concerts are held, DJs of all ages perform.

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“Skateboarding is a lot of fun. This is part of my life. My whole family does this. And being a DJ is just another fun activity that I really enjoy too,” says 8-year-old DJ and skateboarder Julia Macracken.

Free skateboarding lessons for beginners are held in the evenings.

“Skateboarding culture for me is a way to get rid of stress, it’s what makes me happy,” explains Dolores Cruz. “I hope to share with other girls the happiness I have found in skateboarding.”

This summer, skateboarding was introduced to the Tokyo Summer Olympics for the first time, and a wave of new customers flooded SpacyCloud. Especially girls inspired by newly minted Olympic stars.

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“Since this sport was included in the program of the Summer Olympic Games, many more girls began to engage in it. There is a real explosion of skateboarding culture among all ages,” says SpacyCloud employee Maddy.

Tatiana's organization was selected by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to participate in the Culture Cocus special program. As part of this program, Tatiana holds her events at the center.

“My heart is in it. Skateboarders are very independent, but as a community they are very close-knit. Many don’t have parents, some live on the street, but they help each other a lot, and I also want to do something for them,” sums up Tatyana.

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