Thursday, October 26, 2000

To all our skateboarder comrades, don't banish your brothers on bikes.
author: Allan Mcnaughton

essay by Allan McNaughton

Banned from the Parks

There's a skatepark gold rush going on right now. All over the country (the world?) each month ground is being broken on a glorious new cement playground. Never before have cities been so in tune with what skateboarders want and need from a skatepark. They form committees with local skaters. They bring in professional skateboarding consultants from out of state. They hire actual skaters to design and build the parks.

The one thing that the local skaters, the professional consultants, and the hardcore skatepark builders never fail to demand?

Keep bikes out.

Whatever the reason – overcrowding, safety, damage to the cement – our four-wheeled brothers and sisters, with whom we have shared many a secret street spot, backyard mini ramp, and abandoned pool throughout the dark, skatepark-free years, have turned against us at the first whiff of legitimacy. They have their parks now, and they're intent on keeping them to themselves.

I don't want to suggest that they're the only ones keeping us out – the liability laws that apply to bike riding and skateboarding are different, although plans are afoot to bring them up to par – but the issue starts when skaters start telling their city managers (without the benefit of facts or research) that bikes are dangerous, that riders don't look where they're going, that our pegs damage the concrete. So the signs go up, bikers ride anyway, and kids get tickets. Occasionally, voices are raised. Sometimes, fists might even fly.

I'd ask my skateboarding friends to consider this – the skatepark, although designed and built by skaters for the purpose of skateboarding, is usually also perfect terrain for riding a BMX bicycle. If a new office park went up in your town with the latest in modern architecture – banks, ledges, stairs, rails – you'd ride it. It wasn't built to be skated, but you'd skate it anyway. So maybe the skatepark is a skateboarder's office park. It wasn't built to be ridden by bikers, but we ride it anyway. It's always going to be that way.

There are plenty of parks throughout the world that accommodate all types of users. Some new parks are being built with bikes in mind at the earliest stages of planning. Also, not all skaters are anti-bike. Many people like to do both activities. Still, there seems to be a lot of misinformation, selfishness, and prejudice left to counter.

So the next time you're meeting with a city manager to talk about a new park, whether you're a local skater, a professional consultant, or a skatepark designer and builder, ask yourself whether it's better to encourage that city to build a park big enough and designed well enough to accommodate everyone – skaters, inliners, and, yes, bikers, or to continue to take the short-sighted route of denying one set of kids access, and policing the ones that are going to ride it anyway.

- Allan McNaughton