“Brujas has a special kind of bond,” said Carla Cruz, 24. “This right here is a sisterhood.”

As the young women skated through the 10,000-square-foot park, that bond quickly revealed itself. They not only cracked jokes and traded stories, they also provided one another with words of encouragement and guidance on tricks. Often, they filmed moves to show off later on their Instagram account.

Each skater seemed to be honing her own specialty and style. On the smoothest stretch of pavement, Ms. Wilkerson was practicing one iteration after another of a move called the boneless, in which she grabbed the middle of her board with one hand and rotated it around to the opposite end before hopping back on, all in one seamless whirl. Ms. Cruz stuck mostly to the curved walls of the bowl, trying a variety of pivots and pull-ups. Ms. Olivieri seemed to be on a perpetual search for surfaces to pull off a 50-50 grind.

Ms. Gil took particular joy in skating outside the park, popping nollie flips, shove-its and other tricks in front of the nearby condominium complexes, which have risen as part of a continuing wave of development in the area. To Ms. Gil, skateboarding represents a cry of dissent against the city’s gentrification.

“Skateboarding is a political act,” said Ms. Gil, whose family moved to Washington Heights in 2009 after being priced out of an apartment on the Lower East Side. “It allows us to question private property and reclaim all the spaces in our city that have been rezoned and redeveloped into oblivion.”

These rapid changes are a pressing fact of life for the Brujas, all of whom have seen their neighborhoods shift in recent years. Though Ms. Olivieri has spent most of her life in Washington Heights, the influx of wealthier residents has led to an increased police presence, she said.

“Cops have taken over the entire neighborhood, but they’re here for the people moving in, not us,” she said. “Now I’ve got officers giving me a hard time for skateboarding, even making me show ID in my own damn lobby. It’s wild.”