Respect Authority

A part of skateboarding is rolling up to your favorite spot one day and finding it “renovated” — whether it’s a ledge covered in skate stoppers or simply an increasingly grumpy security presence on location, spots getting busted is part of the game. The shitty part of the game, that is. …Well, one of the shitty parts, along with missing tricks, breaking boards, falling, getting hurt, running from dogs, running from the police, and being the old guy at the skate park that everybody suspects is a pedophile. Sometimes skateboarding is so easy to love, it’s like having cancer for a girlfriend.

Nonetheless, for as much of a pain in the ass and relative heartbreak it can be to see a cherished spot go, skateboarding folklore from days past tells us that although classic spots will be lost to the sands of time, new spots will rise in their wake in a sort of eternal skateboarding Buddhism. The tranquility and balance here doubtlessly provides a needed counterpart to the kind of bottomless rage skateboarding can also inspire.

Who knows, maybe the next time you chuck your board across the street because it made you miss that kickflip, it’ll happen to roll over to a virgin spot. You guys will get to know one another a little bit, and that’s when the real fun will start. And then one day the spot’s asshole dad will come along and put a chastity belt on your beloved handrail and it will be time to move on to a new fling.

The loss of some spots hurts a bit more than others, particularly if it felt like it would always be there. After the city of Philadelphia raped skateboarding, or as some people refer to the event, the 2001 X-Games, Mayor John Street decided if he wasn’t profiting from America’s most illegal legal past time it wasn’t nearly as much fun, and began enforcing the long-ignored Love Park skateboarding ban. Fines were issued, security guards were stationed there 24 hours a day, and skateboarding largely disappeared from the park while aggressive crackheads made park goers nervous in newfound peace and quiet. An $800,000 remodeling of Love, which seemed as intent on making the park unskateable as it did on making general repairs and renovations, effectively put the park to rest, forcing Alien Workshop and DC riders to actually film tricks somewhere else for the first time in possibly their entire lives.

Kerry Getz, notoriously angry skateboarder, with a gap to nosegrind that's no doubt making somebody notorious angry. Photo: Ryan Gee.

However, in a recent interview on DVS’ website, while discussing some of Love’s history and impact on 90s’ skateboarding, Love legend Kerry Getz also lets on that the historic park is loosening up again.

“When they really banned it there, there was a ranger sitting there 24 hours a day,” Getz explains. “Now the rangers leave around five or six and on the weekends there’s nobody there.” He notes that the past few times he’s been there, a couple dozen skaters are also taking their chances at getting free room and board at one of downtown Philadelphia’s premier holding cells.

“I don’t think skateboarding will ever be legal there,” Getz says. “But it’s back to being how it used to be where you can still run from the police.” Sounds downright convenient.