Skatepark killed the skate scene

I am a user of social networking site Facebook. Today on Facebook, one of my friends passed on a post from one of her friends:


There's a council meeting 7am next Tuesday
at Leichhardt Town Hall (Norton St, Leichhardt) to get gather support
for a skatepark in Balmain. Should also be a good opportunity to get
some initial design ideas across. If anyone is free, the more support
the better!


This post came following an extended conversation I had had last night with one of my oldest friends and long time skateboard pals about the effects that building skateparks has had on skateboarding culture and on youth culture in general. While I think the writer of the Facebook post meant to say 7pm and to use either the word get or gather and not both, I was excited that such a comment had come following what had seemed like quite a personal conversation.

The conversation last night began with a drive past some teenage skate haunts, leading into some stories of other spots, until we arrived at the fortress like nature of schools, places that almost always provide the teenage skater some useful terrain. We reminisced about times spent arguing with security guards and being continually kicked out of skate spots but agreed that it was great fun and very much a part of the thrill of skateboarding.

Conversation turned to the building of a huge skatepark in our suburb. About five years after we left high school our council came together and made plans to build this park. By that time we had been skating in the area for years and knew many of the other skaters. We were all excited about it and my friend along with others who had achieved some kind of ‘olde skool’ respect were actively involved with the design and planning of the skatepark.

At the time it seemed like a dream had come true. For years skateboarding had been a renegade pastime, a dangerous, risk-taker’s, trespasser’s pursuit. Now the council was spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars building us a tailor made spot, designed by us? Fucken gnarly! Up until that point our town had always had a decent skate scene. The boom of the 1980s had convinced an earlier council to build a very inadequate, but often frequented, ‘Mexican Hat’ style bowl around 1989. Of course this bowl was not built by experienced labourers and was not designed by skaters. The huge new park, opened in 2000, was a drastic improvement in design and execution, as well as a milestone in the ability of local skaters and the council and legal bodies to communicate effectively, to plan and negotiate and achieve a result that everyone was totally fully stoked on.

Fast forward, or maybe skip to 2010 and there is no skate scene in our town anymore. None, says may friend. Maybe a lone rider on a beaten up Santa Cruz from the 80s riding barefoot to get the milk. Maybe one kid standing tentatively at the side of the skatepark, while scooters and BMX riders take full advantage of what was designed and created by skateboarders for skateboarders. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not bitter that scooters are using a skatepark, I’m glad its being used at all, because it’s certainly not being used by skaters.

What happened to all the skateboarders? Did tricks become so difficult that there is little chance of ever rising above the level of amateur without doing oneself many serious injuries? Is it that there are almost no new tricks left to be invented? My friend suggested something more challenging. That the skatepark had killed skating. No longer did teenagers have to climb fences, or explore drains, or quickly take a run at a flight of stairs before the security guard came chasing after them, instead, all they had to do was to go to the skatepark for all the thrills and spills of skateboarding, without the thrills and spills of being a teenage larrikin at the same time.

We talked this out for a while and agreed that an essential part of our experience was that we were often getting into trouble, or were in places we weren’t allowed to be, often in places that no other person would even want to spend their leisure time in. There was an element of adolescent mischief, of defying authority, of exploring new places that was as much a part of the experience as was personal development and enjoyment of the sport. The idea of finding a new but secret spot was what drove us to continually search out vacant buildings, carparks, schools and other urban spaces.

At that time, the mid 1990s, the skateboard ‘culture’ was in its second puberty. In its first puberty, in the mid 1980s, skateboarding had become hugely popular in the United States and had infiltrated nearly every home with a TV set in some form like Stacey Peralta in Charlie’s Angels or The Bones Brigade in Police Academy. After this boom, skateboarding styles changed from ramp to street skating and the culture also changed. The sport experienced a slump in popularity, followed by a steady regrowth that seemed to peak in the mid 90s. It was this period, this second puberty, which saw ‘skater’ culture become defined as a distinct subculture, with an identity quite different to the skater of the 80s and unique from the other ravers, b-boys and punks who overlapped in fashion sometimes. Being a part of that culture as it evolved, seeing the demise of Powell Peralta and Vision and the birth of World Industries and Girl, seeing an entire new fashion evolve out of the death of another: Skateboarding had died and boomed again but for us there was nowhere legal to skate except for the old bowl, which was awful at its worst and extremely limited at its best.

In 2010, with skateboarding being regularly seen in ugly forms like the X Games it is much more visible, much more corporate and feels like another Sunday afternoon sports program for dads. It is presented in similar competitive formats to other sports with huge amounts of sponsorship, branding and endorsements, all watering down the individuality of the sport and at the same time watering down any teenage rebellious appeal. The X Games looks safe and controlled, organised and boring. As adolescents, skateboarding provided us the thrill of doing something prohibited and dangerous but also made us feel part of something new, or at least a new part of the evolution of a subculture steadily defining itself through history, industry, technique, equipment, technology, fashion, media and popularity.

Without the associated dangers that unlawful street skating provides, the skatepark functions only as a training ground to learn tricks. Tricks that usually become more impressive when performed in raw or less perfect street situations. While the obstacles in skateparks can be more or less difficult, larger or smaller, rougher or smoother, or identical replicas of street spots, they are in one way inadequate in the satisfaction they can provide. Like the legalised graffiti mural, immediately impotent because of its deliberation and its sanction, the teenage graffiti artist will never be satisfied with only legal walls. What excited myself and my old mate Frogger to ride skateboards was more than just learning tricks or riding a piece of concrete or a flight of stairs, it was an entire adolescent mythology.

So maybe the skatepark killed the skater. Or at least killed the skate scene. Making skateboarding too accessible, made it completely unappealing. Removing the danger, removed the fun. Sponsored by Boost Mobile? Rad, dude. I don’t think I will be attending the meeting at Leichhardt Town Hall next Tuesday, I think skaters have quite enough parks at the moment. Rarely, do I see anyone skating them anymore. Is it a shame? I don’t think so. Hopefully just the beginnings of a new movement, call it a third puberty.