Making the Connection

From Issue 146, February 2001

People are hypocrites. We pride ourselves on how progressive and open-minded we are, while at the same time we are still threatened by what we do not understand. Teenagers and young adults are practically expected to be rowdy and out of control. Kids will be kids, right?— But give them a skateboard, the ultimate outlet for nervous energy, and they instantly become a nuisance and a threat. This is the number one problem with being a skateboarder in America (and worse yet in Utah): you are stigmatized. By choosing to ride a skateboard instead of a bicycle, rollerblades or one of those god-damn scooters, you become an outlaw and inadvertently lower your position on the totem pole. This dosn’t happen because skateboarders are any more cretinous than the average sample of young people. It happens because, in the age of diversity and political correctness, people are still prejudiced.

Much like in the mid-to-late 80s, skateboarding is experiencing a surge of popularity. Wow! Has the status quo actually realized the skill and dedication it takes to be good at skateboarding? Nope. America has simply noticed that hooligans spend money too. Little kids see an extreme Mountain Dew commercial on TV and want a skateboard for Christmas. Not only do thousands of cases of soda get sold, the local skate shop can afford to pay its lease and taxes. Hooray for economics. Even though this  quasi-acceptance of skateboarding was brought about for all the wrong reasons, there is one benefit that all skateboarders can appreciate. A boom in the skateboarding population has inspired the construction of hundreds of public skate parks across the country. In fact, just about every piece-of-shit town with a parent of a skateboarder on the city council has built a free cement park for the kids. The only problem with this is that most people, skateboarders included, don’t know shit about building skate parks. In most cases in Utah, a Parks and Recreation committee has a group of junior high school kids design the park. The result is a fun-proof, and virtually skate-proof, waste of time and money. A month after the grand opening, the pre-pubescent engineers realize that they can’t skate their Playstation-inspired monstrosity, and the park becomes a home for tumbleweeds and crappy graffiti. Thanks, but no thanks.

I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that there is a conspiracy at hand against skateboarders in Salt Lake City. There is a free public skate park in almost every ass-backward, shallow-gene-pool town surrounding the city. Every single one of these parks is an embarrassment to the skate scene. Farmington, Tooele, Grantsville, Stansbury, Provo, Park City and Brigham City all seem to be designed and constructed for the sole purpose of making everyone who goes to these skate parks want to quit skateboarding out of pure frustration and shame. The Taylorsville and Ogden parks have some redeeming qualities, but they don’t stray far from the realm of disappointment.

My conspiracy theory goes like this: The city attempts to crack down on skateboarding by establishing, and constantly widening, business districts and raising fines for skating in prohibited areas. More and more “public” places, such as schools and parks, are putting up no skateboarding signs or installing brackets and knobs on their curbs, ledges and handrails. This coerces skateboarders to go to one of the many public skate parks that the city councils have sprinkled everywhere except Salt Lake. A twenty minute drive, or an hour and a half long bus ride, takes you to the Taylorsville park; the newest, closest, and, come to think of it, the only public facility in the valley. Welcome to hell. Booters, Paperboys, Razor scooters and dozens of Gen-X clad spectators are already there, ready to salt your game. You try to tough it out and end up having a nervous break down, throwing your shoes at a kid wearing a Utah Jazz 1998 Champions t-shirt. Sorry, little buddy. After this happens over and over (and it will), you realize that it’s just not worth it. You get a ticket every time you go street skating and all the cops are Dick Butkis. Your will is broken and you quit skateboarding, Operation Nephi Delta is a success.

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