Respect Authority

Why aren’t there more skate parks out there like this one they’re planning to build in San Francisco? Oh, right, probably because most of the time, skate parks are designed by oblivious city planners whose last experience with a skateboard was when they stepped on one twenty years ago in high school, fell in front of a crowd of laughing and jeering assholes (skateboarders), and vowed to make their hecklers pay by building parks with layouts so confounding that finding a line in them is like navigating The fucking Grape Escape.

San Francisco deserves a beautiful park full of realistic street obstacles considering the once mecca of street skating has slowly seen all its great ghosts of skateboarding past knobbed, destroyed, or otherwise exorcised. After all, most cities’ primary function is to crush hapless skaters back into the asphalt from which they came… unless of course they’re making the city a ton of cash for two weeks during the X-Games.

Skate parks are necessary considering the transient and nomadic nature of skating — this nature applies to spots as well. They come, they go, they’re infested with kooks on Razor scooters or security guards or, ugh, stupid pedestrians. Skate parks provide a haven for skaters who are but a tiny island in a sea of curbs and cracked pavement, and realistic street courses are essential for skaters looking to hone their skills in a place where they don’t have only two tries before a scary fat guy in a uniform comes lumbering over to ruin the fun.

Unfortunately not all cities are as lucky as San Francisco. Even New York City, where there has been a thriving and influential skate scene for well over a decade, has a dearth of parks and the few there suffer from debilitating overcrowding. That’s why, ultimately, skaters can’t rely on city governments to provide safe places to better pursue our addiction. Just like how they gave us the crack but then forced us to smoke it in darkened stairways on St. Marks… this is before it turned into a frozen yogurt strip mall, obviously.

In the end it comes down to looking at your environment creatively — keeping an open mind about a given spot can open up all kinds of new opportunities. Create your own spots; rearrange garbage if you have to for Christ’s sake. Daewon’s been doing it for years. Dude must have been nasty at Lincoln Logs as a kid, I don’t think he even skates anything that doesn’t involve picnic tables stacked on top of each other anymore.

Remember, one of the core tenants of skateboarding is, in fact, creativity. Hard to believe, I know, but you may not have heard of it since on the list it comes way after drinking, tight jeans, and lurking at spots talking shit but never actually stepping on your board. Brave pioneers forging across the unknown on a piece of wood with urethane wheels under it made skateboarding what it is today with their creativity. Imagine if no one had ever thought, “I wonder if I can slide down that handrail on my board.” Well… if that was the case, most of us might still have a shot at being good at skating.

When I was 15, building an impossibly steep quarter pipe in my driveway, with a PVC pipe for coping, was a great alternative to feeling sorry for myself at the park watching kids half my age spin 720s out of the fun box. Plus, even though the ramp was way too skinny and resulted me in falling onto the hood of my car more than a few times, its construction served as a way to bond with my father, which would come in handy a few years later when I would ask him to pay for a college education that I would ultimately resent and find relatively worthless. Actually, that’s not entirely true… it made me about 15 times more bitter and jaded than ever before — and like learning the ins and outs of skateboarding — that’s an education you just can’t put a price tag on.