Re: Re(2): From Greetings to skateboarding

From: Bill Barowy (wbarowy@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 04:26:12 PDT


I got into the skatepark thing, because we were the only residents in the
neighborhood who supported it -- others not wanting it in their backyard. My
youngest son skates, and after being chased around town, being told he could
skate neither here nore there, he was an early advocate for the park, getting
involved in meetings to promote and plan its location. After several years of
rejected sites, he gave up with the local protest of the middle school site.
He is now 17 with quite a lot of early experience in community work. So,
feeling his despair, I became involved and helped with translating impact
studies and making noise calculations for the park advocates. When the park
was passed, mostly due to the work of a lot of dedicated citizens, it seemed
natural to do the photo shoot as part of the documentation of the process.
BTW, the kids raised a substantial portion of the $100,000 to build the park.

Geth and the Airspeed team, despite being only in their 20's, are highly
skilled in community change, as they were involved too, in advocating the
design. When I said later during construction, "This is a revolution!", Geth
replied "yeah" and the several others of the team nodded in agreement.

There is a chain-link fence going up around the park, due to the concerns of
the neighbors, and I mentioned to Lenny that it is too bad that such a
beautiful design has to be surrounded by fence. He replied "I think its just
going to be an obstacle. They're going to try to launch off that hip and ollie
over it". Meaning, the kids will use a projected contour after gaining speed
to try to jump over the fence. Martin is absolutely right about how
skateboarders practice is about transgressing the normal use of space and
structure. And the skatepark designers (who started as skateboarders) have
taken the art of transgression to the social level.

I think Jay's multiscaled/multileveled interest is right on target.

gotta run,

=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]

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