Grindline is set to work on a new design for a public skatepark in Cleveland Ohio. There’s a public forum today, Wed. April 28th at Speakeasy, (under Beir Markt) on 1948 West 25th Cleveland, OH. Public Square Group has the lowdown, and it looks like the local two-wheeled community is gearing up to get their pegs in the door. F-Word. I can’t believe ESPN pays people to write about BMX and Skateboarding. How did I miss that job posting?
My apologies to Eugene skaters closer to home here, I slipped up on posting about the event last weekend.
– Thanks to Matt Jamison for the tip.
70 comments
pirate
arrgghhhh…death to traitors… You shall walk the plank!
egbert
NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! There is nothing to see here. Please go about your business.
Fitz
Heaven forbid you wouldn’t be entertained, Mike.
And for the record, I’ll never stop advocating for BMXers. They need reasonable skateboarders on their side. In fact, I’m going to add a BMX bike to my two-wheeled stable soon, for those times the trails are too wet. It looks fun.
Vince
Why is BMX vs skateboarding being discussed? Skateparks are skateparks. Bikeparks are bikeparks. Cleveland will eventually have both. This is a long time coming. No need to treat both lifetsyles like second class citizens by trying to combine them in one place. Make no mistake – they are not the same and would be a waste of energy to think so.
But Cleveland has a big BMX scene. They will get a bike park in due time and it will be bike-only and have bike inspired stuff. The city folks know that this is best option to create an amenity and not a debacle. Now if the young BMXers could get on board (or on bike?).
They get fed these BS civil rights arguments and act like protesting will make a difference. I don’t see bballers trying to get access to tennis courts?
Nick your singer on the autoo train
…give me those bike waarrrss/don’t let them ennnnd!
Nick your singer on the autoo train
Bike wars nothing/ but bike waaaarrrrsss…
bobcat
is this skateandannoy.com or sandyvaginasahoy.com???
bobcat
it was ‘rad’ watching some paperboys threatening teenage skaters and flying over crying little girls on skateboards at the skateboard park last saturday. even more cool was them telling the kids older skater dads to fuck off. such awesome role models.
conahan
They should get paper routes. It might build some character. Unfortunately I think paperboys are mostly older people driving around in cars in the wee hours of the morning.
Welsh Pete
Bobcat’s flawless line of logic and reasoning has finally convinced me that ALL bikers are inconsiderate aggresive arseholes without exception!
Fitz
I know I’m sold. We need more role models like Bobcat.
egbert
It was pointless before it even started.
Fitz
I disagree. Freeride, downhill, and BMX riders need to step up and get something going. The city will keep allowing bikes in some skateparks, and despite the hassling, the bikers will keep coming.
Provide them with a more atrractive option and they’ll be less of them (us) in your (my) parks. I’m in a somewhat unique spot here. I like to skate and I like to ride my bike. The two need not be so diameterically opposed. In helping each other, we help ourselves.
Fitz
Sure thing, Kilwag. Always easier to preach to the choir.
kilwag
Maybe there is a bike forum somewhere to talk about this. I mean, I know there is… I’t my fault, I could have easily left out the comment about the bikes but chose to throw out the bait. I have learned my lesson (for now). Bikes are fun. I used to enjoy the hell out of them as a kid and when I lived on a ski mountain. I’d just rather skateboard. I prefer to do it in a spot without bikes, but it isn’t going to ruin my day if they show up.
Fitz
This is rapidly becoming pointless. Have fun.
JakeAndAnnoy
Yeah, Skatecist! Go back to Norcal with all that big wheel violence! Hahahaha. Those are the 2 best “bottom lines” I’ve heard in long ass time. lol,lmfao.
….but, not rofl.
bobcat
the trolls are hungry here. don’t feed em.
bottom line: paperboys still suck.
Fitz
Who’s trolling who?
Bottom line: Skate-supremacy sucks.
Talentlessquitter
Is there such thing as the ‘Cleveland clevage’?
Welsh Pete
BMX is an Olympic sport. They were building renegade tracks and jumps long before Burnside. I’d say its a pretty established and organized activity. Not sure why, they aren’t getting more BMX specific facilities built… maybe because they don’t rely on good quality concrete as much as we do.
conahan
I just saw a local news item about an illegal bike track in the wilderness area of a park that will need to be restored by Parks. They said it was the second one discovered recently. Scandal!
Fitz
It’s true–there’s a lot of renegade bike-stuff going, and it’s not sitting well with the hikers, bird-watchers, etc…
There’s some great stuff going out at Sandy Ridge, which is sanctioned, as well as Black Rock, Oakridge and Post Canyon–lots of Singletrack, jumps, ladders, and such. However, these are a fair jaunt. Hoping the city will step up and allow some further access in Forest Park, or perhaps allow shovel brigades at Kelly Butte. Otherwise, there’s not much you can hit with out being booted.
See now why bikes see parks as an attractive option?
For BMX riders, the scale is right at the larger parks. For downhill/freeride, not so much. Feels cramped. Portland needs a Colonade, or something like it.
The more I think about it, the more I think I should hit up Kent and Chad for a tutorial in Civic Organization.
conahan
Do you think the popular success of skateboarding is responsible for the resurgence of BMX? Or were they there the whole time building backyard ramp scenes and working their way up to getting public bike parks built?
skaterdave
Before the public park boom hit MI, I frequented a mostly bike- but skate friendly- pay to ride facility… they’ve been here all along, often a more rural activity.
Fitz
They were there the whole time. Ever skate Cedar Mill? A biker-built ramp in a barn… How about Eliis’s Ramp? Biker built. Union City, PA? Same. Hood River? Crazy Kyle (a biker) had a lot to do with dragging some ramps down there and getting that getting started…
You can’t sweep bikes under the mat. Maybe they never worried about their own Advocay Groups because they just figured we were all one in the same.
Rob Dizzledyk
AZ has a bike park apparently right next to the skate park in Chandler. My homie from OMA has crashed the bike park(s?)
ohhh how ironic.
Prickly Pete
Do what you want in your own town; I don’t think any less of you if you think bikes are OK. Forgive me if I feel protective of the park I raised most of the money to build over four years. If you work to create something, you don’t feel good about someone fucking with it, even if it is open to the public. There’s a cumulative effect to the divots bikes leave. Ten years of bike divots could make a skatepark a shitty place to skate. I plan on still skating in ten years.
Bikes usually get the boot by the cops since our park isn’t insured for mixed use. For better or for worse our park is on the main drag and cops roll through pretty regularly. We get free public skateparks in exchange for rules and unwanted guests (cops included); it’s a deal with the devil.
Maybe this is why at least two skatepark advocates I know have built their own backyard stuff since getting a park in their town–less buuulllllshiiiit. Enough said.
bk
how many fucking skateparks have you been to with divots in the flat? i’ve been riding & skating 12 years and have yet to see any park with holes in the concrete.
brk
i’ve slammed to flat, hanging up on disasters, because of gouges in the deck right behind the coping, caused by bike pegs. it takes a number of years, but it happens. look at the deck of the long qp in the street section of glenhaven. give it another 5 years or so and there will be deep gouges there too.
Fitz
I haven’t seen much. Pool-coping takes it pretty hard though. Then again, I’ve seen skateboards do some serious damage too.
Fitz
I’m in agreement there. I think BMX is in the same place we were around ’90: Not quite organized enough, mature enough, or fully-fleshed out to gat it together and start addressing our needs. The rise in pirate dirt-jumps and illegal trail-building morrors Burnside, FDR, etc… Hopefully, they’ll decide on a direction soon, and pursue it. I for one, have little desire to ride a bike in a park, or skate with bikes. I’d like to see a bike specific-concrete park somewhere though. Seattle’s Colonade is pretty cool-looking, though may not meet the needs of BMX types. Maybe they’ll get it together?
lou sassel
build your own, then you can allow or deny anyone you want anytime you want
egbert
All this fuss over a little ‘ol skatepark…heaven for fend boys.
JakeAndAnnoy
Yeah, and I wanna drink beer and bbq at my park when I feel like it. And in LA for the most part you can.
But God forbid a cop drives by and sees someone breaking the helmet law. Get a ticket faster than you can say cuntcussin.
Pete(Welsh, not Prickly) I’m more inclined to your personal philosophy although you might have just been kidding.
Fitz
He wasn’t.
Welsh Pete
I’ve said this before but skateboarding is at its greatest when it is done where it is not intended. Skateparks should honor that and reciprocate by allowing the general public to use them as they see fit. Just the other day I sessioned with some eXtreme blanket sliders at Newberg. It was radical. These two girls wrapped themselves up in blankets and would drop in wherever they dared. I got to carve around them a few times. It made me feel like I was really skateboarding again not just pretending in a skatepark.
Let’s make skateparks more authentic. That entails dodging people who hate us and dealing with the wider world. Fenced off Southern Californian parks with a tonne of rules are no fun. I want to dodge glue-sniffing 12 year olds throwing beer cans at me when I’m learning a new trick.
skaterdave
I like blankets on my face, even suddenly and unexpectedly.
Fitz
Apples and oranges, Pete. Smoking versus skating, or skating city hall isn’t remotely the same. Slippery slope argumnets are illogical at best…
My hope is that discussions like these give people a new perspective. Bikes will always be around, and the conflicts caused between our user-group and theirs is detrimental to the process of park building and the ability to keep them open. We are the only one’s who see much of a distinction…
And really, how are you going to keep them out? Fight and argue everytime you go to the park? Hang up signs? Waste police resources on an almost irrelevant crime? That sounds like a blast.
In my opinion, they should break out a shovel and get busy. And many, many of them do. As for the rest of them who want to ride a skatepark, I don’t see much of a solution, which leads me to the idea that there’s not much of a problem.
Oh, and thanks for keeping this civil. It’s an on-going debate, and it normally degenterates pretty quick.
jake
my favorite part of the meeting was when the grindline rep asked by a show of hands how many people wanted a skate plaza and everyone booed.
bobcat
I like turtles.
Carl
I’ve found that I’m able to get along with all of you better when I shun public parks completely. Fuck em don’t care.
Prickly Pete
Raise your hand if you can stomach the sight of a biker doing an air to axle peg on pool coping or bailing a trick umteen times, sending his bike to the flat bottom where it divots the concrete. Yeah, I see the irony in this when skaters wreck lots of private and public property, but the owners of those property have every right to kick us out too.
So what did I base my comment on? In my town the City gave the skaters and bikers land and seed money for parks. The skaters raised $350K in two phases to build a big park, the bikers haven’t so much as raised a penny or piled up dirt for a jump.
I know the bikers of the world are no different than the skaters of the world. Skaters just seem to be more organized at this point in history. There are also way more skaters and probably more older/organized skaters than bikers. This doesn’t entitle bikers to ride a bike on the skatepark.
Fitz
If they paid taxes, it sure does. If their folks paid taxes, it sure does. That city-money came from taxpayers. Bikers are using the park in much the same manner as we are. I don’t like the sight of bike abuse anymore than I like seeing skateboarders littering. Both take maintenance funds from dwindling city coffers. So does enforcement and intervention when conflicts arise.
Prickly Pete
Fitz, by that logic I am free to skate inside city hall because I’m a tax payer. There are things I don’t do in my own living room because it’s not a good idea, and I own my house.
Saying bikes in skateparks are OK because you like biking is like saying that smoking in an airplane is alright because you want to smoke. It’s not a reason, it’s just what you want to do.
skaterdave
No jet skis in the city swimming pool. Paying taxes has nothing to do with it.
Peter
Keep your lamp out of my skatepark!
egbert
I love lamp.
Greg N
I think bikes are good fun. But the fact is they have tires THE SIZE OF CAR TIRES. This gives them way more options… they could ride on almost anything! Build parks out of anything! They should have some crazy ass parks in EVERY CITY, yet for some reason they dont have the gusto to build in any major way.
Instead they ride in smooth concrete skate parks where kids are trying to learn the challenging skill of riding a skateboard. There are tons of bikers that have respect for that, but most dont really think about how a tailwip can end a kids desire to navigate the skate park.
lou sassel
Fitz are you saying BMXers are GAY?
Fitz
I imagine they’d enjoy greater acceptance if they were.
Fitz
Have at it. I’m picking extreme centrism.
Welsh Pete
yeah and BMXers still get cheers in Oregon parks today. the only real difference these days is the internet allows a ‘vocal’ minority to piss and moan.
ps. stay out of my skateparks on that bike. one less bike. ftw!! choose a side fitz. us or them. your flirting with the devil. commit or be gone. next time i see you one-handed wheelie down my street, i’m erasing your number from my celly. f’real.
Fitz
Pete, skateboarders didn’t hate BMXers in the ‘eighties. I recall Burnside circa ’90, with Terry Osbourne killing it on an bike while skateboarders cheered him on.
And on that note, I’d ride my bike at a skatepark in a hot minute if they didn’t look too small to be fun for a dedicated downhill/free-ride rig such as mine. Might be a lark for a few minutes, but why dick around on slippery concrete when there’s a world full of mud, rock, roots, trees, etc? Shit man, I live in Oregon. There’s a few mountains here… Some insane dirt-jumping, spectacular trails, amazing riders… Why constrain it?
Now, if I had a BMX set-up for appropriate urban-riding, I’d consider a park. Why not? It looks fun. And as a skateboarder, I’d know how not to get in the way.
Luckily for everyone, I have no real interest in going to a park on anything but a skateboard, though my son and daughter are super-excited about BMX, so who knows? Maybe I’ll build-up a 24″ cruiser (read: the longboard of BMX) and roll around the park with him when he’s older.
Until then, I don’t give a shit about who rides what.
will
Yes, I skate their on a daily basis.
RH
Ain’t y’all heard of the Matt Hoffman SKATEPARK?
corncobcock
not all BMXers are jerks. That type of thinking is racist and cowardly. Treat people on an individual basis. Hold yer bullshit for a second….think about it. I’m an old kook and have seen all your ripper generations come and go. Save your hate for snithches and cops
bailgun
did you really compare bmxers not being welcome in some skateparks to racism? RACISM?
dude, everything you say from now on is even more suspect than before. and trust me, it was pretty suspect before.
skaterdave
Get that snowmobile off my golf course…
Fitz
Yeah he did. And it is. Hating a group for their behavior is like hating gays or anyone else because they’re different than you.
In other words: Bikers like to ride bikes. You don’t. Gays like to ride each other. I assume you don’t. WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?
Grow up. You, me, and everyone else is a lifestyle recreationalist. In other words, our lives are so full of ease we seek ways to flirt with injury. That’s a luxury.
Also, whining about who uses public facilities is a useless waste of time. Everyone else (as in John Q. Taxpayer, etal.) sees bikes, boards and blades in exactly the same vein: And they don’t give a shit. Be glad you get to skate at all. You could be like the bulk of the planet, attempting to carve a living from almost nothing.
But shit, I forgot. This is utterly important.
Fitz
Seconded. In the ‘eighties, jocks hated us. Now, we’re the jocks, and we have our very own target group.
Not interested. I don’t like running into bikes, but as infrequently as it happens, I don’t care. I like watching them. Some of those dudes rip.
Welsh Pete
there’s been jocks in skateboarding a long time. let’s not pretend things were any purer back in the precious ’80s.
and fitz, don’t get any ideas about showing up at gabriel on your mountain bike, trying to prove a point. those rolling green hills look perfectly fine for your type.
skaterdave
I like watching bikes too, and think what they can do is rad. I just want to see them do their own thing. They have the whole rest of the planet to ride ; if they crave parks, let them build parks. The vast majority of bikers I know are good people, and if they ride their skateboards they’re welcome at my local skatepark.
Prickly Pete
The BMX community won’t show up until it’s open. To them I say, you’ll have nothing and like it!
skaterdave
So can’t the “two wheeled community” pour concrete?
skaterdave
I thought BMX meant bicycle motocross, and what does that have to do with copying skateboarders?
Talentlessquitter
…and there’s a Bier Markt!(typo).Never heard of that one.It’s ‘Beer Market’ in english.Great beer menu.If anybody wants a recommendation….
Wait,all beers that are actually from Belgium are very OK!
Talentlessquitter
Another erotic post to attract more readers?
That park is designed as a giant push-up bra…
baade
It’s the South Jordan park at 10900 S Redwood Rd, Grindline was subbed to build the bowl and bank wall, local crew did the rest. Super fun but hear the coping is a little chunky now in a couple spots.
idahosk8gringo
I think that’s Grindline’s Jordan River, Utah skatepark superimposed against the Cleveland skyline.