Defying Laws (of Physics)

It’s still a crime in many places. Yet skateboarding, once seen as an outlaw sport of hooligans and underachievers, is becoming downright legitimate. So popular is the sport, cities across Southern California are scrambling to build concrete skateboard parks for kids--and even adults--who prefer midair 360s and half-pipes to a ball and bat.

Twenty-one cities in Orange County have built or are planning public skateboard parks, where residents who can’t even ollie--jump a curb--can practice free of charge.

“There must be 40 [parks] built or under construction now in Southern California, with more on the drawing board,” said Dick Guthrey, director of human services for the city of Claremont, which helped form a coalition of area cities to help share information on skate park issues.

“Skateboarding never went away, but over the last five years, it has just exploded due to the popularizing of the X Games.”

The phenomenal popularity of extreme sports, featured in the ESPN-sponsored alternative Olympics held annually at locations nationwide, has burst into the marketplace, where skaters and other sports fanatics have their own lines of clothing, music, even language.

You can spot them almost anywhere--kids like Will Cain, Robby Jones and Jimmy Stewart. The Brea teens sport loose-fitting clothing and usually wear their hair short, spiked and bleached. They carry their boards like most women sport handbags.

Jones, 17, used to get ticketed by police for skating where it wasn’t allowed. “I even got a ticket for going in the street,” he said. “Seventy-five bucks.”

The trio now practice almost daily at a designated skate park in their town. They take advantage of the flat rails, pyramids, bowls and quarter-pipes built with public funds--and with police officers’ blessings.

Huntington Beach built the first public skateboard park in the county in August 1993 and opened a second the following year at Huntington Beach High School. Since then, dozens of cities have grabbed the idea.

“It’s a growing phenomenon,” said Dominic Oyzon, a landscape architect for Purkiss-Rose, a Fullerton company that has been commissioned by several cities to design public skate parks.

The drive for public skate parks picked up after a 1998 law, pushed through by Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), which declared skateboarding a hazardous activity such as rock climbing or surfing. As a result, cities and counties can’t be held liable for injuries at skateboard parks to anyone 14 or older.

This month, Lake Forest capitalized on the craze by agreeing to name its proposed 40,000-square-foot park, one of the largest public courses planned in the county, after a skateboard apparel-and-equipment company. The firm will pay the city $100,000 for the right to call the facility Etnies Skatepark of Lake Forest.

San Clemente also received funds from corporate sponsors to build its park, which opened last month.

Laguna Beach entered into an agreement with the YMCA last month to build a park on Laguna Canyon Road, and other cities--including Westminster and Fullerton--plan to open parks of their own in the next couple of months.

It’s not unusual to have as many as 100 skateboarders practicing their sport at a public skate park, officials from several cities said.

That’s 100 fewer kids out skateboarding in the streets or in shopping centers and schools, where they may be injured or damage property. Most cities have laws prohibiting skateboarding in those areas. Skateboard parks provide a safer, less disruptive--and legal--place for kids to practice their ollies.

Brea, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Costa Mesa, Laguna Niguel and Seal Beach also have recognized the value of skateboard parks and have built or are building their own concrete courses of ramps, bowls and curbs.

Among the cities planning or looking into a skate park are Anaheim, Cypress, La Habra, Santa Ana, Stanton, Tustin and Yorba Linda. The Fountain Valley City Council will hold a public hearing this month on a plan to build a course at Mile Square Regional Park.

Most city-owned skate parks range in size from 8,000 to 15,000 square feet. They are usually unsupervised, and there is no fee for their use--much like a public basketball court or a baseball diamond. The parks also attract in-line skaters and roller skaters.

Vans Inc., an apparel and footwear company specializing in extreme sports gear, has taken advantage of the sport’s popularity. It built a private, 46,000-square-foot course at the Block of Orange in November 1998, where skaters pay to play. Vans has since built six parks nationwide.

At most of the smaller public skate parks, the courses are almost constantly in use during the day, according to officials of a number of cities.

But there can be a downside to drawing a large number of skaters.

A lack of supervision at San Clemente’s 2-month-old park left the concrete slopes open to graffiti a day after the park opened. Officials ordered increased police patrols.

“We’ve also had some problems with people driving up near the course and using their headlights to use it at night,” said Dennis Reed, San Clemente’s beaches and parks manager. Fencing has helped alleviate many of the problems, and additional landscaping will prevent cars from driving up close enough to shine their headlamps.

Brea slaps a hefty fine on anyone caught breaking the rules at its skate park, which opened in September at Arovista Park.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy,” Community Services Manager Chris Emeterio said. Anyone caught breaking the park rules is fined $100 for a first offense. The penalties go as high as $500 after that, he said.

“Word is out that Brea expects you to wear safety gear and not skate after dark,” he said.

Although skate parks bring problems of their own, city officials say the benefits of having teens skate in a designated area outweigh the problems.

Huntington Beach has seen a drop in illegal skateboarding since it opened its two parks, police Officer Steve Overcast said.

“It’s gone down, especially near Huntington [Beach] High School,” he said. The campus had been damaged by skateboarders, who chipped concrete from curbs and damaged handrails by running their boards over them.

“We had a lot of problems inside the school until they put the park up,” Overcast said. “Now everybody just goes over there.”

Skaters themselves have been included in the process in Brea, Claremont and elsewhere, deriving unexpected benefits.

“We had a bunch of 13- and 15-year-olds involved in the process,” Claremont’s Guthrey said. “They got to help plan it, they got to leave a legacy. Some of them literally helped to build it. Now their names are on a permanent marker at the park.”

Many of them went on to speak at conferences and be interviewed by local and national media.

“Most of them are in college now,” Guthrey said. “They made that decision to go to college based on that experience. For us, it was as much about youth development as it was about development of a facility.”

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Investing in Wheel Estate

More than a dozen Orange County cities have or will have municipal skateboard parks.