Lincoln skaters built a massive social media following. Now they’re helping kids like them.

LINCOLN – Fast food containers pile up at the top of the skate ramps as competitors trickle into Peter Pan skate park. Some pause at the gate to catch up with friends in the park’s last sliver of shade. Others beeline straight to the half pipe.

“I’m going to have a hole in my pants later!” one skater yells after failing to land a frontside 180. “Board, board, board!” shouts another, warning of a loose board darting through the park.

The constant clatter of wheels hitting concrete slows for a moment when Treyson Russell, 21, and Wolow Gatluak, 23, show off three custom skateboards – the day’s prizes. The two Lincoln skateboarders, who hope to go pro, organized the June event themselves.

It was the latest marker on a modern journey to minor celebrity – and role model – status for the Booey Boys. 

Russell and Gatluak first met while skating at The Bay, an indoor skate park and youth engagement hub in Lincoln that caters to self-described “outsiders.”

Over the years they built a viral social media presence, which they then leveraged into a brand they named the Booey Boys. It’s attracted almost 2 million followers across TikTok and YouTube, as well as video sponsorships from Under Armour, Red Bull and Mountain Dew.

“We did it almost by accident,” Russell said. “All of those pivotal moments worked out and I don’t know how — it’s beyond me.”

Like in skating, not every attempt has been perfect. After financial setbacks, injuries and a short-lived stint in Los Angeles, they returned to Lincoln to inspire a new generation of skateboarders, a moment they described as “full circle.”

“We watched their videos and thought, ‘Dang, they’re pro!’” said Carmelo, a 12-year-old skater from Lincoln who met Russell and Gatluak at The Bay two years ago. The Booey Boys, Carmelo said, have taught him how to grow up and live his life.

It’s the exact cycle Mike Smith was envisioning when he founded The Bay in 2010.

Two journeys, one home 

A mile east of Memorial Stadium on Y Street sits one of the region’s largest indoor skate parks full of ramps, rails and plenty of skate scuffs.

“This is home!” Russell said, walking through the entrance of The Bay, part of the nonprofit Rabble Mill.

Rabble Mill aims to empower Nebraska kids to grow, succeed, and reinvest in their community through a variety of programs, including those at The Bay.

Russell and Gatluak have taken on roles as skaters, volunteers, teachers, students and even employees at The Bay ever since meeting there in 2013.

“Young people need three things: somewhere to be, something to do and someone to look out for them,” Smith told Forbes in 2017. 

Those three things brought Gatluak and Russell together in the early days of knowing each other. They still do.

Russell started skating at 5 years old when his dad gave him an old board from the 80s. With skating banned in downtown Lincoln and no indoor skate park, they regularly made weekend trips to Omaha to skate before The Bay opened at its first location in Gateway Mall in 2010. 

“Him being cool enough to like bring me to the park or like every day driving me somewhere … My dad was like the skate dad,” Russell said.

Russell stuck with skating, even after the time his board popped up and knocked out two front teeth. Two years later, The Bay on Y Street opened on his birthday.

Around the same time, Gatluak’s family abruptly moved from Des Moines to Lincoln. The family struggled to find an affordable place to live but eventually landed in a duplex just down the street from The Bay. 

“I didn’t know this at first, but when we first moved into our Y Street location, it was (the people at) The Bay that helped us move in,” Gatluak said. He wandered over to The Bay a few months later and realized the connection.

Discovering skateboarding helped Gatluak accept the move to Nebraska. It gave him something to fall back on, he said, which has been the mission of The Bay all along.

“They needed a place to just be a kid, to make those friends, to build those relationships,” said Smith.

Russell and Gatluak went to the skate park nearly every day, six years straight. Volunteers and mentors at The Bay taught them to skate and guided them into adulthood. They kept a phone in hand, and eventually started filming their days at The Bay for fun.

They started posting the videos online, first to Gatluak’s TikTok in 2019 then  to a collective YouTube account. Gatluak would yell “bababooey!” at the beginning of his videos because it sounded funny. It inspired the Booey Boys name.

They quickly found an audience. Viewers urged them to buy a camera. When they said they were too broke to buy one, followers started sending them money via Venmo, Gatluak said. The Booey Boys bought their first camera in 2020. 

The two grew closer outside the skate park. Russell’s parents let Gatluak move into their house during high school. Their families have been intertwined ever since, celebrating holidays together and even teaching younger siblings to skate at The Bay, they said.

“It’s not even like a friend thing. It’s like, that’s my little bro!” Gatluak said. 

From Lincoln to LA and back

After seeing how much his father still owed in student loans, Russell wasn’t convinced that going to college would be worth it.

Gatluak, not knowing what else to do, enrolled in Southeast Community College. Less than two years in, COVID-19 forced everything online.

“Once COVID hit, that kind of threw me off,” he said. “I was less engaged in college and I was doing more social media stuff because I’m at home all the time.”

In the early days of the pandemic, their social media content, most of which featured their friend group doing skate challenges and hanging out in masks, started to blow up. 

“If you wanted to engage with humans you went on the phone. That’s when everyone was on the internet,” Gatluak recalled. 

The Booey Boys’ budding YouTube channel of 13,000 subscribers grew rapidly at the height of the pandemic. Gatluak said skaters had yet to build a community on TikTok. Their skating content was some of the first on the app.

“I just think that the ‘come with us and skate with us’ type of vlogs make the viewer feel like they’re one of us and also makes them feel like they know us a lot too,” Russell said.

By the time Russell graduated from Lincoln Southwest High School in 2021, he and Gatluak decided to go to LA – the “mecca of skateboarding,” Russell said.

“I was like, all right, like, that’s real. Like, moving out to LA and doing it on your own and giving it a go … that takes some courage,” Smith thought at the time.

The Booey Boys had no plan, no jobs, a little bit of money and no place to stay. They wanted to meet other content creators. And, of course, they wanted to skate.

For the next six months, Gatluak and Russell skated throughout Southern California, regularly posting videos, collaborating with other content creators and growing their brand.

“We were blowing up at the time. At every park we visited, people recognized us,” Gatluak recalled. They reached 1 million TikTok followers and 20,000 YouTube subscribers.

Six months in, they were sleeping on the floor of an unfurnished studio apartment. That’s when they got a call from Smith.

“I remember Mike saying over the phone, ‘I know you guys are broke, you should come back to Lincoln,’” Russell recalled.

Smith was launching Gap Year, an eight-month program at The Bay to help 18 to 24-year-olds in Lincoln explore and plan for the future. He said Gatluak and Russell would be a perfect fit.

They realized LA could never replicate what they had in Lincoln. 

“Like we were good friends with a lot of these people but like our characters are our friend group. For the channel, everything is back home,” Russell said.

‘Making it work’

The Booey Boys brought a better understanding of social media and a better business sense back to Lincoln. They joined the pilot year of the Gap Year Program and got an internship at Lincoln marketing agency Archrival.

It opened their eyes to learn that there’s more to making content, Russell said.

They hope to create their own agency devoted to athletes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who want to build their own online brands. They also want to create multiple pathways for income under the Booey Boys brand, including selling merchandise made at the university’s Innovation Campus.

And they haven’t given up on skating. Last month the Booey Boys competed in the Red Bull Ensemble competition in Minneapolis. They placed third in people’s choice.

“You don’t have to go the extra mile to go pro, like that’s the goal obviously. But that’s not the only way to do it, to make it in the industry,” Gatluak said. 

After the recent competition at Peter Pan Park, the Booey Boys return to The Bay, where they teach skating lessons to younger kids. 

It’s 10 p.m., and they’re arranging rides home for Carmelo and his friends, just as others had for them years earlier.

“Now it feels like it’s our responsibility to do the same for them, you know, like show them the same way if not better,” Russell said.

Gatluak and Russell are just one example of kids using resources at The Bay to start their careers, a pool that will likely grow as The Bay expands. Gatluak’s younger sister is also in Gap Year, working as a hairstylist at a salon. Another participant got an internship with the comic Peanuts through the program.

“When kids from all different walks of life meet in a space as equals, and they can make friends and it’s a safe environment, that’s where the beginning of the life changing journey begins,” Smith said.

“It all starts at a ‘place.’”