o7AT ISSUE: The city’s charge for adult...

o7AT ISSUE: The city’s charge for adult nonresident users of Verdugo

Skate Park.

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Regarding “Not a free-for-all park,” Aug. 11: All over the country, public skate parks are being built and “sessioned”

relentlessly as the basketball courts crack away in the sun, the ball

diamonds weed up, and the tennis courts go ignored. And as word

travels that good structures are ready to be ridden, local residents

in places like Glendale, Calif.(and Lincoln City, Ore.; and

Louisville, Ky.; Springfield, Mo.; and Denver, Colo.; and hundreds of

other locations), come out and show their appreciation for the

consideration of their local municipalities who have stepped up and

given them a place to ride.

But our nation’s skate parks are by no means walled off from their

surrounding communities, or even from the rest of the congruous

states.

Rather, they are points on the map, weekend visits, travel

destinations and vacation spots for the massive and swelling

population of skateboarding’s die-hard participants.

And when the skater from the next town over, or the next state

over, or the next time zone over, comes to ride the contours of the

parks they’ve heard about, read about, and dreamed about, they do

exactly what they need to do to support the local economy: they spend

money.

Gas, food, hotels, movies, bowling, you name it, they spend money

on it.

Though it’s nearly impossible to track, local business other than

the skate shop making money when a legitimate skate park is built in

their area, and that alone should be enough to justify a park’s role

in a community that already has one, or that is thinking of building

one.

Glendale has a captive audience in their skate park users --

figuratively and physically (the ridiculously over-built iron fence

that surrounds the place lends it the air of a prison yard) and

targeting frequently visiting nonresidents and traveling enthusiasts

with a tax to pay for the salaries of apparently disgruntled

baby-sitters or for injuries that haven’t even happened yet, is just

a little too tricky for my taste.

Skaters have had a direct hand in effectively keeping the doors of

local business open, benefiting Glendale and its residents far more

than any kind of skate park surcharge ever could, and your city’s

parks and recreation department would be smart to realize that.

People will not pay to visit what they once visited for free. And

if they don’t visit, they certainly won’t grace Glendale businesses

with their spending money.

I’m in the Los Angeles area once a month and I’ve skated the

Glendale park a couple times since it opened. I actually have plans

to drive out today and skate it with a friend. Interestingly, my

tank’s on empty and I’m most likely going to have to fill up in

Glendale before heading south for the weekend. I’m going to go out to

eat while I’m there, too. The two bucks that Glendale Parks and

Recreation wants to start charging me next month is not that much

money, but I’m afraid it will keep me from visiting Glendale to skate

in the future. If I don’t come to Glendale, I won’t be filling up my

tank there and I won’t be eating dinner there. It’s simple economics,

brothers and sisters.

Show some class, support your locals, exhibit some forethought,

and drop the skate tax.

KEVIN WILKINS

Nebraska

o7* EDITOR’S NOTE: Wilkins is editor of The Skateboard Mag.f7

I’m a Glendale resident, and I find charging nonresidents absurd.

Especially adult nonresidents? Adults? So they have to pay some kid

who’s younger than they are to baby-sit them while they skate? That

doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s just disgustingly insulting to

skateboarders everywhere. No one’s baby-sitting the basketball court

right next to the skate park.

It’s all the more absurd when you consider National Electronic

Injury Surveillance System -- a division of the Consumer Protection

Safety Council -- statistics for 1998, which show that skateboarding

is no less dangerous than other sports.

A football or basketball player is more likely than a skateboarder

to visit an emergency room, yet you can walk onto a basketball court

or a football field anywhere in the U.S. without fear of being

arrested and your ball impounded for not wearing safety gear. And

most skateboard injuries don’t even occur in skateboard parks. “It

should be noted” the study reads, “that many accidents occur during

street skating and involve collisions with pedestrian traffic as well

as motorized vehicles.”

I’ve been skating for almost 30 years and I’ve skated everywhere

from New Zealand to South Africa, to Australia, to London, Paris,

Munich and nowhere is skateboarding the problem it’s imagined to be

here. Skateboard parks around the world are most often unfenced,

unregulated, “at your own risk” facilities.

And as far as I know, at least no one has been able to show me a

skateboarder who has ever sued city over an injury sustained in a

skate park. Yet the prevailing notion is that skateboarding is an

extremely dangerous activity (one woman I talked to took “extreme

sport” to mean “extremely dangerous”) and that skateboarders fall

down all the time, “crack their heads open” and sue whoever owns the

ground they fell upon.

It’s simply not true. It’s time to start treating skateboarding

for what it is: a fun, healthy, recreational activity.

DAVE CARNIE

Glendale