Now 31-years-old, Anselmo (AHN-SELL-MOH) Arruda (AH-WHO-DAH) moved into his family’s summer home in Itanhaem (EE-TA-NYAH-ENG) on the coast of Brazil’s southeastern Sao Paulo state shortly after his parents died when he was just a teen.
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 the year 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.
Finally, 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 center and Arruda welcomes people from the neighborhood 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.
“After my parents died I was still an adolescent, and I distanced myself from my family and I came to this house. And I started getting into skating, because skating was something I liked from the beginning of my life and when I was going through a rough time without my parents, I wanted to skate before doing anything (first thing in the morning). I wanted to be close to skating. And because for me it was a lesson in overcoming (hardship), I realized it could save lives too… It had already saved my life. It makes perfect sense to be able to share this positive inheritance,” Arruda said.
Arruda has since moved out of the Caverna House and now it is completely dedicated to skaters, graffiti artists, musicians and other artists who have used the house as a gathering place.
Arruda gives free skateboarding lessons to anyone interested and some of his friends and others teach other arts including graffiti and music.
He says Caverna House started as a youngster’s dream and today it is a reality.
“Really it was like this. I had the chance to make my dream come true. I always dream of being able to wake up on a skateboard. To not have to do anything before going skating. To be able to skate just after taking a shower. To be able to skate as soon as I leave my bedroom. Just like a complete skating ‘lifestyle.’ To just enjoy skating. To be able to enjoy skating wherever skating takes me,” Arruda said.
Caverna House is run completely independently and is not organized under any formal codes or as an NGO.
It is a from the ground up community center run by Arruda, his friends and those who frequent the neighborhood skate park house. (Southeastern Sao Paulo, Brazil)