A Brazilian man has made his home into a skateboarder's dream house by completely gutting it and converting it into a full-fledged skate park.
Now 31-years-old, Anselmo Arruda moved into his family's summer home in Itanhaem on the coast of Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state shortly after his parents died when he was just a teenager.
Living by himself gave Arruda a sort of freedom the lost boy was looking for and he says he soon turned to skateboarding to overcome the pain of losing his parents.
Arruda said that living alone in a large house, he had more room than he knew what to do with. So, sometime around 2008, he started moving out the furniture to make more room to skateboard inside his house.
Little by little, there was less furniture and more skating area. Before long, walls were being torn down and sinks pulled out of the walls. He started building quarter-pipes up the sides of the remaining walls and ramps to launch himself through windows and into the paved backyard.
One day a friend painted a large graffiti image in the middle of the living room, the first of hundreds that would soon fill the house inside and out. Arruda had finally built his skate park dream house, which today is known as the "Caverna House" or "Cave House" in part because of the bats that have also taken up living in the gutted structure.
Today, the home serves more as a cultural centre and Arruda welcomes people from the neighbourhood and all over the Sao Paulo metro area to come and skateboard. Arruda says the sport helped save his life, and he hopes Caverna House can now help others overcome hardship as well.
SEE ALSO:
