Roller Skates and Old Stone: Zooey's Kansas City Senior Session at Harrison Street DIY and the Kessler Park Colonnade
Picture the senior session your aunt has in mind. A letterman jacket. A split-rail fence. A tree that... well, looks like every other tree. A weird half smile somebody the photographer to ask for twice.
Now picture a kid in quad skates carving across a concrete bowl painted with a six-foot octopus, pink and purple hair going sideways, while the graffiti on the wall behind her shares some very unsolicited opinions about everyone's mother.
That second one is Zooey.
Zooey is a senior in the Class of 2027, a roller skater and a roller derby competitor, which means she showed up to her senior session with wheels on her feet and zero interest in standing still for an hour. Good. We had three stops planned across Kansas City: the Harrison Street DIY skatepark in Columbus Park, an urbex location we are keeping to ourselves, and the Colonnade at Kessler Park in the Historic Northeast. Motion first, grit second, stone and stillness to close it out.
Harrison Street DIY: the Kansas City skatepark skaters poured by hand
In 2014, local skaters Ben Hlavacek and Keelin Austin spent a year asking the city for more places to skate and got mostly ignored emails for their trouble. So they started one themselves at East 4th and Harrison Street in Columbus Park, on a vacant lot where a public housing project had been torn down years earlier. The city had dropped concrete Jersey barriers there to keep cars off the lot.
Skaters saw ramps. Skaters saw a home.
The very first project cost about fifty bucks. Over the next decade the skate community put roughly $100,000 in donations, grants, their own paychecks and a whole lot of weekends into concrete and rebar, with support from the Tony Hawk Foundation, Charlotte Street Foundation and PBR. Hlavacek has said a professional version of the park would cost at least half a million dollars. A lot that used to collect needles and illegal dumping turned into a place where neighbors walk dogs, parents push strollers through, and traveling pros stop in to skate. Organizers call it one of the most respected DIY parks in the country, and they have the receipts.
It was never a boards-only club, either. Roller skates, inline skates and scooters have always shared the concrete there. Zooey fit right in.
Why Harrison Street matters, and why losing it stings
DIY parks are third spaces for kids who don't fit the rec-league mold. Nobody charges admission. Nobody hands you a schedule. Older skaters teach younger ones how to mix concrete and how to fall, and some of the kids who learned there grew up to become the people pouring concrete for the next park. As one skater told Northeast News at the farewell, places like this give kids a home and teach them to work with their hands.
The land was always on borrowed time. The Housing Authority of Kansas City put the site out for development, and it's slated to become Columbus Park Townhomes, a 75-unit rent-to-own development aimed at affordable housing. A petition to save the park gathered close to 5,000 signatures in 2024. On Sunday, October 18, 2026, skaters and neighbors showed up for one last session and an art pop-up called Site Four, and the park is expected to come down soon.
Affordable housing matters. So does a place for kids to go that isn't a parking lot or a phone screen. Both are true, and Kansas City will feel this one. I feel it personally, too, as my husband and sons have enjoyed it for skate and BMX the last several years.
If you want to back what comes next, follow Harrison Street DIY and MOKAN Skates. There's been talk of a new DIY spot in the West Bottoms, which happens to be our studio's neighborhood, so you know where we stand. The city has also planned a public skatepark under the Buck O'Neil Bridge between the River Market and the West Bottoms. Read the full farewell story from Northeast News.
SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHY at Harrison Street
We didn't pose Zooey so much as follow her. She skated the flat in front of the octopus wall and we chased the movement: hair lifting, wheels mid-push, the blue graffiti doing half the color work for us. Then we slowed it down. Arms crossed on the deck in black wide-leg denim. A crouch on the lip of the bowl, chin in hand, skates laced in pink and blue. Derby kids know how to hold their ground, and it shows.
The urbex stop (we're not telling you where)
Urbex is short for urban exploration: forgotten structures, layered graffiti, rust, and the occasional plant that has decided the place belongs to it now. For the second look, Zooey traded the hoodie for a black sundress and we headed somewhere with peeling paint on the railings and decades of tags on every surface.
The location stays off the internet. We protect urbex spots the same way skaters protect theirs, because once a place gets blasted across social media it gets crowded, fenced off or wrecked. We scout ahead, stay out of anything posted or unsafe, and leave nothing behind but footprints.
What it gave us were the moodiest frames of the day. Zooey leaning back against rusted yellow and blue rail, eyes up. A seated portrait on graffiti-covered stone with leaves drifting through the foreground. Same kid, totally different energy.
The Colonnade at Kessler Park: Kansas City's biggest front porch
We closed at a classic. Kessler Park covers about 300 acres along the bluffs of Kansas City's Historic Northeast. It started out as North Terrace Park, part of landscape architect George Kessler's 1893 plan for the parks and boulevard system that shaped this city, and it's generally considered the first park Kansas City finished. It took Kessler's name in 1971.
The Colonnade sits on The Concourse near St. John Avenue and Gladstone Boulevard. The Park Board asked Kessler for drawings in 1906, and Henry Wright, who worked in Kessler's office, designed the Beaux Arts structure, finished in 1908. A fountain went in at the center in 1909, and in 1965 American Legion Post 151 replaced it with a memorial to President John F. Kennedy. The neighborhood has treated it as a public living room for over a century. Locals call it Kansas City's biggest front porch.
Zooey changed into an oatmeal wrap sweater, studded light-wash jeans and skate shoes, then leaned into all that fluted limestone. Pink hair against stone poured before her great-grandparents were born is a combination we will never get tired of.
Old bones, new blood, huh?
Senior photos that look like the actual kid
Three locations, three moods, one person who was fully herself in every frame. That's the job. Your senior photos should look like the version of you your friends would recognize, whether that's roller derby, a band, a garage full of dirt bike parts or a bedroom full of plants hanging on for dear life. Bring the skates. Bring the guitar. Bring the dog. We'll find where it belongs.
Senior sessions are booking now across Kansas City, the West Bottoms and Belton.
Kansas City Senior Photos: FAQ
Where is the Harrison Street DIY skatepark? At 401 Harrison Street in the Columbus Park neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, near East 4th Street. It held its farewell session on October 18, 2026 and is slated for demolition to make way for a 75-unit townhome development.
Can I still book senior photos at Harrison Street DIY? Probably not for long. If skate culture is your thing, we know other spots around Kansas City with the same energy and we'll scout them with you.
Where is the Colonnade in Kessler Park? On The Concourse at St. John Avenue and Gladstone Boulevard in Kansas City's Historic Northeast. Kansas City Parks lists it as open from 5 a.m. to midnight.
Can I bring roller skates, sports gear or an instrument to my senior session? Please do. The things you love are what make the photos yours. We plan locations around them.
Do you photograph alternative senior portraits in Kansas City? Yes. Stag & Bird is a Kansas City photography collective based in the West Bottoms, with a second location in Belton. We photograph seniors who would rather look like themselves than a yearbook template: skaters, derby kids, musicians, artists, the kid with pink hair and the kid who wants everything in black and white.
How much does a senior session cost? Our portrait experiences range from $650 to $3,200 depending on locations, wardrobe changes and how much production you want. Read our past blog on the cost of senior sessions here.
We are the Weirdos, Mister.
-Court
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