Everyone knows the story of skateboarding in Philadelphia’s Love Park. A group called Franklin’s Paine (web site is a nightmare to navigate, no explanation anywhere of the group’s origins) has been trying to raise money for a street park to serve as a replacement for the community that was displaced at Love. So which is the more noble fight, the battle to Free Love Park or the fight for a new park built specifically for skateboarders? An agency called Red Tettemer has gotten involved in the PR and has dubbed the marketing campaign From Love Comes Paine. They’ve built a moving (but headache inducing) web site that at times seems more like a masturbatory exercise in Flash than it does a useful resource, low bandwidth version included. The design of the park is skate plaza, but taken to a more pedestrian inclusive direction than Kettering. It’s more than just landscaping, and hopefully there won’t be a huge DC logo anywhere. It looks like they are making some progress, but with $1 million down and $5 million more needed to break ground, a 2008 dig seems unlikely given that fundraising started in 2003. Do you call it a “dig” or a “scrape” when making street plazas? And yes, I know Skate and Annoy is not up for any design awards, but you try navigating those sites and see if you don’t end up frustrated. Fashion vs. function.
[Source: Creativity Online]
10 comments
Jakeandannoy
Pete, when AZ got Encanto Park, in Phoenix, it was from contest fundraising and long overdue.For some reason, within four years of that, 3 more big budget parks sprung up around Phoenix and the east valley.
Now AZ has more than a few grindline/dreamland parks. But during those formative 4 years, I remember getting arrested at spots I’d never even been hasseled at in the past. I remember one cop trespassing me off a spot and also literally threating that city would “take our parks away” if we didnt start skating them exclusively.
So yes, from my personal experience, its happened.
Don’t know if there is any public statistics or research to back my claim tho I remember Tempe, Chandler, and downtown Phoenix getting more severe on street skating around the time these parks were popping up.
Kilwag
Skateparks are a blast. I am grateful that we have so many out here now, without them my skateboarding would be severely limited. It’s a cold fact of my life, I’ve got a wife and two kids under the age of 3, plus a job and a mortgage. I only have a limited amount of time available to skate, so I like to make the most of it. Going to a skatepark is usually the path of least resistance to fun.
BUT – I have to agree with Pete as well. A session at an unsanctioned spot will always have more potential for “life.” A couple summers ago I somehow got the opportunity to (poorly) skate a handful of pools, and I gotta tell you I hadn’t felt more “connected” to skating in a long time.
Of course last summer I skated exactly zero pools… So I’m not “core.” As I like to say, the joy in skateboarding isn’t in skating, it’s in talking/typing about it, right? Ha ha.
So, pool, or random (actual) street spot, both superior in some ways to the skatepark experience. If my knee allowed it, I would enjoy skating a lot of the illicit terrain that Portland has to offer. As it is, my responsibilities and deteriorating body have for the most part relegated me to the skatepark, but I’m not complaining.
Skateparks are training grounds for a lot of skaters, a place to work on something to bring out into the wild. At the same time, there is a massive contingent for whom skateparks are the final solution. Think of the street guys who are overly concerned with making sure the street plazas don’t look like actual skateparks aesthetically.
It’s an interesting debate, at least for people who aren’t actually out there skating right now. And now I’ve gone and done this.
Welsh Pete
I’m also wondering, have any any studies been done on the correlation between skateparks construction and subsequent outlawing of skateboarding in the streets? You hear it all the time, “Go to the skatepark, to do that.” But I’m just wondering if any cities have used ‘the skatepark’ as an excuse to crack down on real skateboarding (joke).
Welsh Pete
Tom makes some good points (as always) but I’ve got to say, it will be a sad day when skateboarding is confined to the parks and not just from an ‘academic/intellectual’ or ‘hardcore’ perspective. Parks are great but waiting for a run isn’t always cool, the ‘scene’ at certain parks is not always that fun and there is nothing better (imho) than finding some random skateable object, even if its less than perfect and stupidly hard to skate. Being out in the elements, seeing the sites of the city and interacting with it all, is almost as important as the tricks you do (just another opinion) Skateparks are training grounds for the real thing (whether its a pool, bank or handrail)…
Oh and Brooklyn Banks is one of my favourite spots ever. Perfect downhill transitional brick curves- its hard not to have fun on those…
Jakeandannoy
I agree with Tom. Speaking of wild in the streets, Im endorsing them right now, go to myspace or find their music online, its rad. Nah, fuck that, its badicle, a combination of radical and bad. My favorite track is “you skate too slow”.
It should be your favorite too, or I’ll kill ya.
houseofneil
bailgun, I agree 100%. Add Flash based websites to that too. Annoying as hell.
Tom Miller
Aside from the bluster, I tend to agree with the first comment. The epic spots of yesteryear typically have their roots in the scene that developed around them more than the terrain itself.
I have no problem with the Franklin’s Paine concept being informed by Love, but one hopes and presumes designers have taken the opportunity to do things better than ever before.
That’s one of the things I really appreciate about the NW skatepark developer approach to things. Nostalgia can inform but should not dictate the future. The NW sensibility embraces the idea that a skatepark can be whatever you want it to be. It’s not ashamed of being an intentional, non-bust skate experience. And it flat-out blows doors on any terrain in the world. When we get our appropriate share of skate plazas to complement the tranny it will unquestionably be the best place to skate in the world.
If you want to do some skating as part of a broader social dialogue or whatever, sure Barcelona. If the act of riding your skateboard is your primary motivation, the NW is the place to be. I’m not passing judgement – people can be motivated to skate for any reason they choose – I’m just saying I personally like the attitude that embodies the NW skatepark approach. It’s forward-thinking.
Extrapolating further, maybe it’s fair to say skateboarding has a bit of an identity crisis. The reality of skateboarding for most of us is increasingly defined by the skatepark experience, yet there is a sense among some, especially its academics (the industry and its magazines) that if skateboarding is confined to the organized and structured playpen, its wild-in-the-streets attitude will be forever lost.
I think that’s bullshit. Ask anybody who’s participated in a heated Burnside, Washington Street, Hailey, or Orcas session – to name just four epic spots. Besides, skateboarding will be whatever skaters want it to be. Thrasher, et al. have a strong lock as self-appointed cultural arbiters but I’d guess the more those sources drift from most skaters’ daily realities, the less influential they become.
bailgun
an open letter to all web designers…,.
STOP WITH THE MUSIC THAT AUTOMATICALLY STARTS PLAYING AND ALL THE ANNOYING NOISES. MOST OF US ARE EITHER A-ALREADY LISTENING TO OUR OWN MUSIC, OR B-AT WORK, WHERE THE NOISE GETS AT-WORK WEBSURFERS BUSTED. YOUR PARENTS ARE VERY PROUD THAT YOU COMPLETED THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FLASH COURSE, BUT PLEASE, JUST STOP.
oh, and if your page takes more than 10-15 seconds to load, i’m going somewhere else.
Kilwag
OK then. Tell us how you really feel!
JAKEANDANNOY
More like “Franklins Paine-in-the-ass-to-find-your-way-around-the-site”. Hmmm? Oh, well go fuck yourself then.
Anyone here give a shit about PA street spots?
Love Park? A street plaza offering 3 different sizes of the exact same hubba ledge? Right. This shit is so uninteresting.
I’ve skated most of these “famous” street spots and for the most,are overrated.
Santa Monica Courthouse sucks.The ledges are a foot high and chopped to rubble.
Brooklyn Banks are choppy and under a street so sketchy it makes Burnside look like the mall. HollyWood High is a bust and offers 2 sets of stairs and a giant ass ledge 4 out 5 of you wouldn’t go near. And Lockwood, like the courthouse,has been in EVERY Girl or Chocolate video and is basically a black asphalt parking lot without those stupid plastic benches and mini-sized tables.(that place gets alot of love)
These places arent sacred. They dont mean shit. They’re like the fat chick you banged that worked at a
7-11 ,and then let you steal beer from the coolers while on her shift.
You found it, had your fun, then invited your buddies and that shit got blown out to the point you didnt even want to see it anymore, so you moved on.
Love Park hasnt been “cool” or cutting edge since the movie “KIDS”.
End communication.