Calabasas Skateboard Park

“Plan for Skateboard Park Moves Ahead,” Oct. 9.

I just finished reading the article on the proposed Calabasas skateboard park in which skateboarders are characterized as “kids that enjoy risk” who would otherwise be “sitting in front of a TV eating Chee-tos” if it were not for skateboarding. I am fed up with image of skateboarding as a children’s sport that is quickly forgotten about at the same time the kid gets his drivers license. I am a 26-year-old college graduate with a good job, a car and my own house. I have been an avid skateboarder for nearly 13 years and continue to pursue this extremely demanding and competitive sport. I drive nearly 1,000 miles each month to skateboard Southern California’s bounty of skate parks, empty swimming pools, ramps and city streets.

There are many people who competitively skateboard all through their twenties and into their thirties. The current vertical skateboarding world champion, Tony Hawk, is 33 and continues to set the pace for competitive vertical skateboarding.

Also, the thought of building skate parks to keep skateboarding out of the streets is absurd. True, building skate parks will keep many of us in the parks instead of in the streets, but skateboarding was born in the streets and will remain in the streets no matter how many skate parks are built or laws are passed attempting to legislate skating.

AARON G. GEDDES, Long Beach