Music and sport roll out at skate festival

There’s shredding, and then there’s shredding. The first is rock-and-roll slang for vigorous guitar solos and whammy bar antics. The second is skater slang for vigorous skateboarding and grind-rail antics.

Both forms of shredding were on display at Burbank’s Valley Skate Park Friday night, during the annual “Spring Break Skate Fest,” which featured skate contests and performances by local youth bands.

Skating was free — daily passes normally run $3 for Burbank residents and $5 for nonresidents — as were the hot dogs and raffle tickets for door prizes that included hats, T-shirts and skateboard decks — the bare boards.

“This is a really good turnout,” said Mike Graceffo, a recreation coordinator at the park who helped put together the event. “You have moms, you have babies here. It’s a true community event.”

PHOTOS: Spring Break Skate Fest

Chris Babchuck was there to watch her son, 13-year-old, Tucker, shred on the concrete skate course. She said it’s a great place for skaters to practice responsibly under supervision.

“I think it’s great, first of all, that the city even allows it,” she said. “The staff here is one of a kind.”

Babchuck said she’s at the park pretty much every day anyway. Tucker’s been skating at the park daily since he was 5 years old and he now competes in the California Amateur Skateboard League.

Without skating, Tucker said, he imagined life would be “um, boring.” Without Valley Skate Park’s skate fests, his mother said, he might not be skating and he probably wouldn’t be competing — his first win was in a previous “Skate Fest” contest.

Last month, he took third place in the 14-and-under age bracket at the “King of the Groms/King of the Ams” West Coast Championship in Simi Valley.

“It gives the kids confidence,” Babchuck said, adding that if Tucker hadn’t competed at the Burbank skate park first, “he would never have had the confidence to do any of that stuff.”

The Babchucks donated a skateboard deck for the raffle as a way of giving back to the community where it all started for Tucker.

First-, second- and third-place medals were awarded for best trick, best bump-to-bar — going from a “bump” in the course onto a rail feature and grinding — and best all-around performance, known as the “park jam,” in three age brackets that included kids under 12 and those older than 15. Some of the youngest skaters were 7-year-olds.

This year, Tucker won two first-place medals in the 13-to-14 age bracket — one for the bump-to-bar contest and one for the best trick coompetition.

The event also brought out seven local amateur rock bands from Neighborhood Rock School. Don DeSimon, who operates the business that provides music lessons and band coaching for kids — and adults — said musicians as young as 8 years old performed for the crowd.

Unlike venues in the days “when rockers were troublemakers,” DeSimon said, events like the skate fest offer a “wholesome environment” where kids can shred.