How to Fight for a Skatepark – By Todd Taylor. Additional photos by Mary Clare Stevens Posted 5-28-08
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Look Like You Know What You’re Doing
A Good Life Lesson
I’m a lurker. I’ve gotten it from my Dad.
Passing by the unopened skatepark, I struck up a conversation with a guy who asked me not to walk over the landscaping.
“When is it scheduled to open?” I asked, remarking on the pressure-washed concrete and aggressive graffiti removal that gave the concrete a nice sheen.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Concerned citizen. I’d like to skate it.”
“Come back in an hour. Grand opening won’t be for another week or so.”
An hour later, I walked right in the middle of a group of obvious bureaucrats (they were admiring the new plaque; probably looking for their names) and asked, “Still on? Can we skate it?”
In that millisecond it takes to gain speed, to the first little hush of wheels clicking over tile, the bureaucratic rodeo became a distant memory. It’s amazing how cleansing just shutting up and skating can be. Hats off to California Skateparks’ concrete-pouring abilities. The bowl’s a rocket: deep, fast, big, smooth.
“How’s it ride?” the builder asked.
“Better than I can skate it.”
It’s not perfect, but in a part of the world where it’s surprising if The City can dig a hole in the ground for under $5,000, I would have taken a lot worse.
A week later was the grand opening ribbon-cutting ceremony. The park was packed. Speeches were made. Kids were bored of the speeches, snickered at Dr. Dick Dyke’s name, and became visually anxious for a chance to skate.
It was nice that the Highland Park Skatepark Coalition got its due during the speeches, yet it’s always a little odd when the banners of community involvement are raised so high and wagged so vigorously by the same bureaucrats who consistently insulted and ignored the coalition, only to grudgingly accept-through constant badgering and being scrutinized in their practices-that a well-built skatepark would help the entire community of Highland Park.
A stampede of kids tore up the landscaping between the time the ribbon was cut and an attempt was made to enforce the mandatory helmet rule. Every inch of the park got christened by urethane wheels, baptized by barking trucks, and polished by the sweat of fallen skaters.
Finally, the second largest city in America, Los Angeles, got its third cement skatepark. (Another one, Belvedere, opened in East L.A. before the Garvanza park). There were many times when I truthfully didn’t think we’d get this one, and I have to go walk over there to stare at it sometimes to make sure that it’s really built, that all wasn’t just some long dream.
I don’t have any expansive statements to finish this off with. I don’t feel like hugging everyone involved, but I feel good that I was part of a group that prevented skaters from getting the bare minimum. I feel good that, in some small, but real, way that I had some say in the concrete that got poured in my neighborhood and it wasn’t for a new mega condo or in the name of gentrification. Hopefully, some kids – who’ve never kick turned on transition before-will begin ruling the bowl. Some kid will start skating tomorrow and never stop.
Mostly, it’s nice to see that ordinary citizens, when tenacious enough, can positively change the environments in which they live; can stick their heads into the toothy political maw of one of the most frustrating bureaucracies ever created, and achieve a modest, but very real goal.
Hats off to The Highland Park Skatepark Coalition and community members, Heinrich Keifer, Nancy Wyatt, Rosa Rivas, Rick and Irene Alaniz, Dr. Stan Moore, Michele Harnsberger, Dr. Dick Dyke; and skaters Andy Harris, Lance Mountain, and Ben Schroeder (even though I’ve never met the guy, I understand he yelled at the construction workers).
How to Fight for a Skatepark – By Todd Taylor. Additional photos by Mary Clare Stevens Posted 5-28-08
This article was originally static html. Original comments can be found here.
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