Skate Park?

What I do know is that much of the stone work surrounding the GAR memorial has been damaged.

I love skaters. Def part of the urban fabric. Skaters-as-pests is so 1985 😛

Besides property damage, I have the impression that I am going to witness a skater seriously becoming hurt. Aslo, another place that is a skate area, is 7th between, H & I by the Asylum Wake Skate Snow store. By Asylum the risk is being endangered by someone skating to close. There needs to be someplace else to “offically” skate.

i like watching them but i always wonder why they dont just head north a bit and hit up on the skatepark on rhode island avenue.

They jump the boards onto the stone–and you can hear the boards, not the wheels, scraping along the stone. They do the same thing at the Navy Memorial.

I have never, NEVER, seen a skater sucessfully complete a skateboarding trick. They ALWAYS fall off or trip. I don’t know whether they are tenacious or just foolish. In fact, the only sport in which, in my experience, there is a lower success rate of actually completing a fundamental maneuver by a regular patron of that sport is hacky sack. The question isn’t, should we want them to be skateboarding, but rather, why would they WANT to skateboard?

It’s not as annoying as other activities in the neighborhood.

rather have skateboarders than the influx of tourists and bums anyday!

I just think the skateboarders are lame, period. Skateboarding is like one of those bogus Olympic sports they keep adding each year so as to ensure a high US medal count (the “Flying Tomato”?).

The skaters are a nuisance, not only are they loud their most notable quality is their narcism and arrogance.

While not the most desirable group for a neighborhood, I’ll take skaters over homeless and panhandlers anyday.

If all that they’re damaging are stone steps and benches, I don’t see the problem. That stuff (1) suffers as much damage from people walking and sitting on it as it does from getting scraped by wooden boards, and (2) can be repaired quite cheaply by semi-skilled laborers. Now if they’re messing with complicated masonry, the waterworks, or art — or if they’re knocking over people — that’s a different story.

As for why the skaters prefer 7th & Penn to the Rhode Island park: 7th & Penn is much more accessible by transit. Also, just a guess — their parents probably don’t mind them hanging out at “the monuments”, while some parents might still think of Rhode Island as a dangerous area.

Oh they’re a regular occurrence? I saw them by 7th & Penn and just thought they were there for the Pride Parade…?

=P

One thing I do not miss from living adjacent to Indiana Plaza are the skate board gangs. They not only damaged the granite, but seemed to believe that they had a right to do so. It is not all park property – I know of at least two condo volunteers who asked them not to skate on the association plant work who were attacked by skateboarders using the boards as clubs.

Chris – skaters as “part of the urban fabric” is so sixties. Skaters are the human pigeons of urban life. You couldn’t create a social system out of them, you’d have all parasites and no hosts.

Anon – Just because you’re not aware of a social system does not mean it doesn’t exist.