Skateboarders in Line for New Parks

Helmeted and heavily padded, scores of skateboarders and in-line skaters took over the concrete at the Thousand Oaks Community Center on Wednesday, enjoying the first week of publicly sanctioned skating in the county.

“This is better than I thought,” said Tony Murca, a 14-year-old freshman at Thousand Oaks High School. “The ramps are really big. At some places, they’re small and cheap, and you have to pay 20 bucks to use them.”

The Conejo Recreation and Park District has launched three temporary skate parks, which are open a few hours on different days during the week, either after school or on Saturday.

Borchard Community Center opened first, on Tuesday. The Thousand Oaks Teen Center’s site opens today.

Although the skate parks have to be set up and taken down after each use, they are the only public sites of their kind in the county. Ventura and Camarillo are designing permanent parks in their cities.

If the temporary parks work well in Thousand Oaks, the park district board said it is considering building a permanent site.

The parking lot at the Borchard center needs to be redesigned, board member Mark Jacobsen said. If all goes well with these temporary parks, plans for a full-time site there could one day materialize, he added.

Youngsters--all of them boys, except for 18-year-old Rachel Norkin, a freshman at Moorpark College--could be seen Wednesday politely passing each other, sharing the various ramps called “street spines,” “banks” and “quarter pipes.”

They were hot and sweaty, showing off their fancy tricks: flipping their boards through the air, skating on one leg or on the tips of their wheels, as well as flying over the wooden obstacles.

Organizers of the skate park were pleased with the initial turnout.

“It went fine,” said Dennis Gass, recreation supervisor at Borchard Community Center, where more than 60 skaters showed up Tuesday for the skate park debut. “There were no injuries. And the kids seemed to have a good time.”

There were, however, some logistical problems.

Since so many people showed up to skate, park employees had to limit the amount of skaters on the concrete to about 12 at a time. Skaters can be out on the rink for 15 minutes, while the rest of the youths must wait on the sidelines until it’s their turn.

“It’s no big deal,” Tony said. “You get tired after about five minutes of skating anyway.”

Because park officials had no way of knowing how many skaters would show up on the first day, it was a bit chaotic Tuesday with youths storming over ropes onto the skating arena, said Karen Lindsey, park district recreation services manager.

So employees wised up Wednesday and put up lightweight orange fencing around the basketball courts--which become the skating rink for four hours a week--at the Thousand Oaks Community Center to ensure that the appropriate number of youths skate at a time.

“We’re happy with how things are going today,” Lindsey said. “It’s much more peaceful today. This is how it should be.”

Another glitch was that the casters on the bottom of the ramps were of low quality, which made it hard to roll the equipment into its proper storage containers, Gass said.

“Setup wasn’t too bad because it was the first day and the truck dropped the apparatus off,” Gass said. But pushing the ramps about 150 feet on cracked sidewalks took about two hours. “Skating closed at 7:30 p.m. and some of the kids stayed to help until about 8 p.m. But with about four other people, I didn’t get home until about 9:15 p.m.”

Learning from their colleagues’ difficulties, staff at the Thousand Oaks Community Center went out and bought new casters for Wednesday’s skating session.

The park district is considering hiring extra staff to supervise the parks as well as help with setting up and removing the equipment.

Skaters were properly attired in helmets, and knee and elbow pads on both days, as required by the park district. If the skaters didn’t bring their own, the district bought extra safety gear to lend. Skaters also had their parents sign a waiver, accompanied by a $10 annual fee to use all the parks.

The fee will help offset what it cost the district to create the skate parks: $10,000 in liability insurance and nearly $6,000 worth of plywood-and-Masonite skateboard ramps and equipment, bought from Rob-o Ramps in Newport Beach.

The district didn’t expect to make money off the parks, Jacobsen said, but hopes to recover some of its costs.

“We have soccer and baseball fields that are of no cost,” he said. “We are a park district that provides services to the community.”

Although they are appreciative of the new community services, some of the youths--mostly the in-line skaters--complained that the equipment was geared toward skateboarders. Some had hoped for a rail, a low, horizontal pole that skaters use to do tricks.

“There’s not enough stuff for us,” said Norkin, an in-line skater. “It’s not all that fun.”

But it’s “better than nothing,” said Beau Lambert, a 15-year-old sophomore at Westlake High School.

“It’s close by and it gives us something to do.”

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FYI

Here are the times and locations of the new skate parks:

Borchard Community Center

190 N. Reino Road, Newbury Park

Tuesdays 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Saturdays 4 to 6 p.m.

Thousand Oaks Community Center

2525 N. Moorpark Road

Wednesdays and Fridays 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Thousand Oaks Teen Center

1375 E. Janss Road

Thursdays 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Saturdays 3 to 5 p.m.