The Case For BMX Advocacy
February 23, 2011 
14 Comments
BMX needs a new perspective on skatepark advocacy.
From ESPN December 8th, 2010
By Mike Hines
About two years ago, a new skatepark was being built in my city, minutes from my house. Almost all of my friends were excited to hear about a new place to ride, an actual concrete park. We all just assumed bikes would be let in. Everyone knows BMX uses skateparks, right? If they didn’t allow us right away, we’d just make a big stink and they’d have to let us in. Yeah right. About 4-5 months prior to opening, I called the local Parks and Rec to find out if BMX was going to be allowed. The woman said “BMX? You mean bikes? No, there’s a racetrack in town for that, this is a skatepark.” I said, “I realize that ma’am but we do freestyle BMX and there’s tons of us that could use this facility.”
She really had no clue. This would be the common theme I ran into up until the park was opened. After the park was opened and we received no word on BMX being allowed, we decided to stage a protest in hopes of making our voices heard. We were only asking for two nights a week for BMX only sessions. We went before the city council, met with the city manager, met with the director of Parks and Rec, all to find out that the builder/designer claimed the park wasn’t built to withstand the wear and tear caused by BMX. It made me angry, but my anger wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and that was something that took time to realize.
Let’s look at BMX advocacy, skateparks, and the two sports as a whole. The two biggest reasons for not allowing BMX is: Liability and maintenance.
The liability issue stems from concerns skaters have about collisions with BMX, which is a valid point. Bikes go faster, higher, and take lines few skaters could only dream of doing. Being a BMX rider myself, I don’t want to collide with anyone, I could hurt someone, or I could get seriously hurt. Collisions though, are a part of the skatepark reality and can be avoided. Proper etiquette within the park should be taught, if not in a class, then by an older adult figure who is willing to teach the younger guys. More importantly, collisions come from either poor design that creates blind spots for the users, or a park that is overcrowded. Overcrowding to me is the main issue we face when it comes to liability. If the community does not do the proper planning for the park and build one that’s far too small for the amount of users, there’s a huge problem, and guess who’s the first one to get cut from the park? You guessed it, BMX.
Maintenance is the easiest issue for us to overcome in BMX advocacy. Do bikes cause more wear and tear in a skatepark? Yes, of course they do. Think about it, if you suddenly doubled the amount of skaters at one of these parks, would they see more areas getting damaged or in need of repair? Of course they would. Now, I’m not saying that pegs don’t cause damage, because they do, and they do cause more than a skateboard, it’s just common sense. Is it enough to keep children safe, rather than having them riding near busy streets? Nope. The whole wear and tear issue is easily avoided when the park is built properly, even more so when bikes are in mind as intended users. Not to mention we can now run park friendly pegs, plastic bar ends, plastic pedals, literally making us lighter and less of a threat than the aluminum trucks on a skateboard.
The big problem in BMX advocacy today is, BMX has no idea how to do it. We show up late when the park has already been built, we barge parks making us look like punks and bullies, we protest, we burn things, and cry like babies when we don’t get our way. It doesn’t happen every time. A small community near me just built a park that is BMX friendly because the BMX riders went to the meetings, helped with the design, and raised awareness the right way. I say all this because I’ve been the guy to show up once the park was opened and whine about not letting us in, I’ve been the guy that protested the parks, I’ve been the guy that yelled “my tax dollars” or “this is a civil right issue.” It’s taken serious time and help from skateboard advocates for me to understand what really needs to be done to get safe and legal places, and what shouldn’t be done.
First off, hating skaters for building a reputation with communities and getting parks built all over is not the problem. Neither is protesting once a park has been opened. If anything we should be stoked for them; they have built the road that we must travel now. They should be our examples, not our enemies. Protesting has helped get bikes in parks (I will admit that), but it was mainly from the awareness it created within the community. Plus, it’s a lot easier to get all the riders out to yell and make signs then it is to get them to write an e-mail to their parks department. Am I wrong?
Yelling out absurd ideals like, “It’s my tax dollars” or “civil rights” is the absolute worst way to go about it. My tax dollars paid for the street in front of your house, pays for your trash to be picked up, that soccer field down the street, but you don’t see me walking around holding up a sign that says “That’s my asphalt,” or “I should be allowed to do donuts in the soccer field because my money paid for it.” That’s just not a proper argument, because if we do want more parks to be built, we all better hope golfers and old people don’t start complaining about the money that’s spent on them.
As far as a “right” to use the park goes, you do have every right to use a skatepark. All you have to do is go get a skateboard, then you can use it all you want. You just don’t have an argument there either. If you think about it, almost everywhere you ride your BMX bike is illegal. I think it’s one of the few products put out and designed for kids where you’re not allowed to do it anywhere, unless you have a park that allows it. Your jumps are private/city land, the street spots are off limits, you have to have lights on your bike, you can’t ride on the sidewalk, blah blah blah. Complaining that the skatepark is a civil right shouldn’t be the argument. The argument should be with BMX manufacturers, who haven’t stepped up to the plate to help us get places to ride safely.
Skateboard companies have, they see it as a future investment in their company.
In conclusion, what does BMX need to do to get safe legal parks to ride? BMX needs to start advocating for BMX, not for skateparks or against skateboards. We’re in a time right now where we can capitalize off the hard work done by skateboard advocates and get our own parks built. Wouldn’t you rather ride a park that was designed and built by a BMX rider? It’s a lot easier to bridge a gap between two parties when there’s something on both sides of the bridge. I’m not one for segregation and I hate to sound somewhat greedy, but there’s nothing wrong for wanting a park that only allows BMX. I have a good feeling that if BMX riders started getting good parks built that skaters would want in, and when that time comes we can make a deal with them. But, as it stands right now we have brought little to nothing to the table.
No wonder they don’t want to share. We’re just another guy in their way.
“You do have every right to use a skatepark. All you have to do is go get a skateboard” Really? skateboarders and city council have really made you their b***. You’re representing bmx in all the wrong ways.
Nobody has a “right” to use a skatepark, regardless of what kind of wheels you use. It is a privilege. Until we understand that, we’re already two steps backward.
Rights are oulined in the bill of rights. Check it here:
http://www.billofrights.org
Regarding skateboarders making Mike their “b***”, I don’t really understand what you mean. We’re bike riders here, not skateboarders.
And you would make all these comments have to be approved before being posted.
Lucas,
There is a very good reason for this. This site is not just for riders, it’s for parents, park and rec people, city council, etc.
I curse like a sailor all the time, but we need to maintain a bit more professionalism here than on a normal BMX site.
Keep on riding,
Sam
Actually, I listen to city council members and skaters to try and compromise a solution. They are called “skate parks” for a reason. Majority of our community leaders have no idea that BMX likes to use such facilities, most think we just race, so it’s our responsibility as BMXers to educate them about this. If you go in screaming civil rights and skaters are jerks, you probably won’t get far.
I agree with Lucas. He’s probably young, but his instincts are right. If we go talk to city leaders like we’re their humble subjects with an “aw shucks” attitude, I know from personal experience we don’t get near as far as if we assert ourselves to them and demand that they treat us fairly. City officials work for us, and they need to be treated as such. Of course we can’t go in screaming and calling skaters names. But we need to assert ourselves and insist on fairness and what is right. The 3BC has gotten 20 skateparks opened to bikes in Arizona this way.
We’re not saying BMXers should be humble subjects asking ‘pretty please’. I think the point is that we do not want to approach city officials as an ‘opposition’ that we need to fight. We want to be allies that can help them solve problems.
Prohibiting bikes from parks is not the same as infringing human rights. Sure, banning bikes is offensive to us but, not a travesty that needs to be protested.
We need to go to city officials saying (assertively), ‘You have a problem, BMXers want to ride the skatepark. Maybe we can work out a deal with skaters and city managers to let us ride together or separate hours. If not, then we get busy starting a new park for BMX.”
Our attitude should not be ‘you city jerks screwed us, we demand access.’
Our attitude should be ‘We have a bunch of BMXers who want to ride parks, it’s a problem that needs to be corrected, we have solutions, we’ll work with you every step of the way.’
Jason, sounds like you’ve got a lot accomplished working with city people in AZ. Cool, to see you’re posting up here on BRO.
Hi Den,
I agree that we can work with city officials as allies if they are open-minded. Our best chance to work with them is always before the extremely biased skatepark designers get to them and put discriminatory ideas in their heads. Sadly, that is very rarely the case. In Arizona, we have had to go in to work with officials that had already been turned off to the idea of bikes in skateparks by the skatepark designers. To make matters much worse, the officials took the illegal riding of the parks by bike riders as a personal attack. Ask Mike Hines in Tucson what he’s dealing with as far as the Ott YMCA goes. I believe Suu has taken the cutting of the fence and the riding of their skatepark very personally. In fact, it is a tiny fraction of bike riders that do that. But she refuses to work with bmx riders who want to fix the problem for good.
This is why we’ve had to to take an aggressive approach in Arizona. I could go through example after example of how we’ve had to deal with each city, but I’ve kept a detailed log of our our efforts already. I encourage everyone on here to read them. I hope you can learn from our successes (and our sometimes failures, like in Scottsdale and Goodyear). Go to http://www.psychicflyingmonkey.com/The3BCpage.htm
Hi Jason,
Regarding designers. BMX is usually a little late to the table (not true in your case obviously) so they have little incentive to push for BMX in the parks, much less any features we like such as sub boxes and street spines.
I see several was of dealing with this problem:
1. BMX gains a voice, becomes effective advocates and therefore cannot be ignored otherwise it may hurt their bottom line.
2. BMX pushes ‘good’ designers, those that support BMX.
3. We develop the list of favorite BMX features so that hopefully over time we start to see them pop up more in the parks.
More importantly, the issues we are dealing with (wear and tear, safety) are real issues in the minds of many designers. These are OUR issues, because they effect us. Problem is, someone else owns the conversation. We need to take ownership over the issues, deal with them in a credible way and that is what we are hoping to develop over time.
I think we may be a bit off topic here, maybe we should take this to the forums.
Sam
Sam,
While your methods seem good intentioned, and sometimes even work (such as in my local town where I got the ball rolling), we are working from behind the 8-ball almost every time.
The skatepark in my town wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for me proposing it to the local government twice, and during the entire presentation process for building/redoing entire parks not one skateboarder was in attendance (with that said, only 3-4 bike riders were there because I dragged them with me). Then once the skatepark got approved and word got out in the newspaper about the meetings for the design process, everyone and their mother showed up to get what they wanted built. That is when you really started to see just how far behind the 8 ball bikes are when it comes to these things.
The designer openly talked about how bikes damage the park, go too fast and take over. When I brought up that damage is going to happen either way and that you can help alleviate the problem by designing things properly such as placing metal/angle iron behind the coping, it was essentially brushed aside. From that point forward, what I said was met with resistance by the designer, so I had to choose very carefully about what I requested be within the park. So after the design process was finished and the park is built, we show up the opening day to be told that no pegs are allowed within the park. At no point was it ever brought up that it would be an issue. So after requesting the use of plastic pegs and being denied because there is no scientific proof that they won’t damage the concrete (apparently common sense doesn’t count), we got into the real reason pegs weren’t allowed. The company who built the park told the town that they wouldn’t insure their work if they were allowed. Somehow there are 8 other parks within 30 miles who don’t have such limitations.
But BMX companies involved or not, most of the companies out there building parks are run by skateboarders who don’t want us in these places. That, along with the law in California that says skateboarding is a hazardous activity and therefore doing so means they aren’t liable if you get hurt doing it while bicycling is not considered a hazardous activity is what keeps bikes out of skateparks, not so much that we aren’t trying or that companies aren’t more involved. While I agree that the industry would be better suited to step it up somehow, that isn’t why we aren’t allowed in 50% of the parks in the country.
Doug,
This was a great response and thanks for sharing your story. Would love to talk to you more about the situation. Although it didnt work out perfectly (the peg ban), it is still a success story for BMX and it’s due to your dedication. Which park are you talking about by the way?
I totally agree we as BMX riders are behind the ball and what we want to do here is get riders out in front of the issues, so that they know best how to deal with them as they come up. Every situation is different and unfortunately, the average BMX advocate will need to work harder than the average skater, as I am sure you know.
I wanted to clear up a couple of things:
1) I don’t need think we need the BMX industry to get this done. And I dont recall that any of us ever said that.
Industry support would help but it is really up to the riders, parents and supporters to get the job done. People like you, in fact.
2) CA section code 831.7 declares bike jumping as a hazardous recreational activity, exempting cities from liability. That’s what the 20-30 parks in California that allow bikes use for liability protection.
3) Designers can be a huge problem and we are trying to develop a strategy around this. I think that the main thing here is that, as you pointed out, we are so far behind and under represented in skatepark advocacy, that the designers feel they have nothing to lose by excluding us. But if more guys like you come out and represent BMX, they will have no choice but to work with us. Otherwise they will lose business.
But yeah we are open to any and all ideas for dealing with this problem. It should be pointed out that many designers (even skate owned and operated) build for BMX and do it well. So maybe we try to promote those guys. But that is a irony issue, because then BRO could be seen as marketing shills for certain companies. So we need to think this through carefully.
We need more BMX designers, in fact I would love to see more riders do it like Nate Wessel doing it. Why should it just be skaters as the designers/builders? We have been around skateparks since day one!
Anyway, thanks for joining up and I would love to talk more.
Sam
Hi Sam,
You and Doug are on the right track with these posts. I think one of the best things BRO can establish right off the bat is a vetting process for park designers and builders. Set up qualifications that must be met before BRO will endorse the designer or builder.
Bare minimum, these requirements must be met:
1) The skatepark designer/builder must not design ANY skatepark that does not allow bikes. We’ve got to set a drop-dead date for this. Maybe today would be perfect. So any skatepark designer/builder that designs a skatepark that is opened after March 1, 2011 that does not allow bikes, will not be endorsed by BRO. A line must be drawn. And their word isn’t good enough. A few skatepark design companies promised the PDX guys in Oregon that they wouldn’t build any more parks that didn’t allow bikes, then promptly opened more skate-only parks in the years to come. So they told a bald-faced lie.
2) No designer/builder can lobby to city officials at any time against bikes in the skatepark. I have a witness that overheard builders from California Skateparks telling Goodyear Parks and Rec officials that bikes were causing “damage” to the park, and they must be kicked out. Bikes were kicked out of there soon afterwards.
3) The designer/builder must have a statement on their website that they endorse bikes in all their skateparks. No ifs, ands or buts.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any skatepark designers can qualify for this designation at this point. Probably the one that’s the closest is Action Sports Design. That’s Mike McIntyre’s company, formerly SDG. Heidi Lemmon says he’s for bikes now, but he’ll have to pass this vetting process before I really believe him.
As far as Sam’s comment on wear and tear and safety, those are just excuses not to allow bikes, made up by biased skatepark design and build companies. They are just as bad excuses as one I heard concerning Louisville Skatepark. A skater said that bikes leave ugly black tire marks in the park, so they should be kicked out.
The issue is not “damage”, “safety” or “ugly tire marks”. The issue is who has the ear of city officials, and who has more political power. That’s what it boils down to, and that’s ALL it boils down to.
I don’t agree that it’s about political power, Jason. Skaters have very little political power and every skatepark is the result of a lengthy, multi-faceted advocacy process. I am familiar with several dozen skatepark efforts that are more than 10 years old and still going. That’s not political power; that’s tenacity. It’s tenacity that gets skateparks built.
While it may be true that some skatepark designers and builders make recommendations against BMX use, you should be careful that you do not overemphasize this “reason” that BMX aren’t allowed in more parks. It should be clear why but here’s what comes to mind:
• If the designer recommends against BMX, it’s the BMX community’s responsibility to improve their influence in the process.
• Creating a list of skatepark designers that have never built skate-only facilities will be an empty list. If you’re lucky you end up with one or two inexperienced designers. I don’t think this is good for BMX riders.
• ALL of the better skatepark designers and builders are mostly staffed by skaters. Some have BMX riders. Encouraging BMX-fueled DIY projects and (eventually) BMX-focused design firms is a positive, long-range goal.
• There are something like two-dozen skatepark design firms in the world. Their market is supported by skatepark advocates. There are no BMX-park designers that I know of because (it stands to reason) that there are not enough BMX advocates to support them. Incubating more advocacy IS something that BMX can and must do.
ASD may be your go-to designer but do you think they’ll turn down jobs offered by communities that aren’t interested in including BMX? It’s a business and, like any business, will respond to market draw. If BMX presents a compelling and potentially lucrative market, they’ll respond appropriately…as will Grindline, California, Dreamland, SITE, Newline, and all the rest.
(I’d recommend not endorsing any specific builders. As a nonprofit organization you may open yourself to risk by influencing commercial activity…not to mention the risk of libel for statements, true or not, that have a negative impact on a company’s revenue.)
As a former Parks&Rec board president, I disagree on the civil rights and right to use arguments. They have a place, but you need a champion on the Parks&Rec board to support them.
I also disagree with the standard damage and safety arguments that have been thrown around since the beginning of BMX advocacy.
Trucks break and those damage the ramps as much as a missed peg grind… its impossible to observe long enough to determine whether a board, bike or scooter with a tail dragging caused it, so how can you blame one user group?? Maintenance (and inspection) is an expense in any park, especially one designed primarily for children.
Also, park etiquette is park etiquette. From my experience, you can have the most timid bike rider who goes slower than almost any skater and you can have a boarder that goes faster, bigger and harder than 96% of bikers at the park. Learning to wait your turn and be aware of your surroundings is an important skill. When these kids start driving, will their defense for running over a motorcyclist be… he was going too fast and didn’t wait his turn?? No. (We had two SKATEBOARDERS banned from our park for recklessly running into other kids, so they wouldn’t get in their way in the future. This issue isn’t about choice of activity.)
BMX could use some more advocates… only cause their numbers are still so much smaller than skaters. But I believe that the common goal of both user groups is to encourage healthy, aerobic activity for kids, rather than inactivity or worse, illegal activity. Isolating certain user groups hinders this.
And what’s really more important?? if we aren’t going to teach kids to accept differences and possibly (although we never had to) spend a little money to get there, then are we really fully serving the public?