001: No Skate Parks

My personal experience with skateparks and how I came to view them as inadequate.

In 2016 my friend Max moved to Brooklyn, where I’ve lived since 2004. Every time I would suggest we skate a skatepark Max was adamant about no skateparks. He had just moved to the city and was more interested in seeing different parts of the city’s five boroughs rather than seeing skateparks in the different boroughs that look roughly the same. 

When I moved to Brooklyn in 2004 I felt the same way. Although in 2004 there were only a few parks that I knew of in NYC and none of them had what I was interested in skating, plus they all required helmets. For the next 6 or so years I didn’t set foot in any of those parks and instead my friends and I spent most of our time skating as many parts of the city as we could. Then around 2010 the City of New York began building new concrete skateparks. They had some similar obstacles you could find in the plazas and streets of NYC and no helmet or pads were required to skate these new parks so I was fine with often forgoing street skating to skate the new parks. Though I had my gripes with design choices in skateparks the hassle free and pedestrian free environment was a welcome change from the cat and mouse game of dodging security guards, cops and pedestrians while skating places that weren’t built for skating.

However in 2016 I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I had been a permalancer for a set designer for the past five years so I had been steadily busy with work. But my work had recently slowed to a trickle. I had to transition back into the regular freelance world. All of the sudden I had plenty of free time. Why not forgo the skateparks and instead go re explore the streets of NYC with my buddy Max. 

After a few skate missions to the far reaches of the outer boroughs I was hooked again on hunting out and skating new and old spots in different neighborhoods. The thought of spending a day in a skatepark seemed dismal and uninspiring. Fuck skateparks was how I felt. They suck. They’re like a cage. Too many people. The designs are terrible. But if you would have asked me to elaborate on those sentiments back in 2016 I would have had a hard time doing so in a thoughtful and clear way. Even though I know plenty of other skaters feel that way about skateparks because it’s not that uncommon of a topic amongst skaters. But try to explain this disdain for parks outside of that circle of skaters currently having that conversation and any explanation of why skateparks are inadequate or poorly designed comes across as assholish and ungrateful for the parks we do have. And to be clear I’m not saying that skateparks are wholly unenjoyable, terrible places to skate. I eventually started skating parks again. And I still do to this day. It’s just that they could and should be so much better. 

Around this time in 2016 I had started getting into reading books about urban planning and the history of our built environment. It started off with a history of New York City coffee table book, which lead to The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which lead to The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. And so on and so forth from there. 

Through reading these books from a skateboarder’s point of view I found the language and perspectives needed to clearly and more objectively explain what skateparks lack, how they came to be designed in such a way, and how they can be built and designed to better suit the enjoyment of all skateboarders. 

In the next installment of Skait Brane I’ll be writing about a concept I came across in a book called ‘Welcome to your World’ by Sarah Williams Goldhagen that I think relates to the flawed and repetitive design of skateparks.