Friday, March 25, 2011

The Two Americas

John McDaid:

And to round out the trifecta of wacky, Portsmouth Police Chief Lance Hebert has an item, "Request Council Direction on how to Proceed re: Signage - Skateboarding at Island Park Playground/Police Dept." If you've read the coverage in Patch, you'll know that a new sign banning skating appeared in the Island Park playground, and my guess is that the Chief is going to ask the Council for an ordinance to back it up.

Meanwhile, this video captures pretty well the scope and scale of the public skateparks spreading outward from the Northwest:

The only thing America hates and fears more than its young people is its public spaces. And young people in public spaces. And liability insurance. And the liabilities incurred by young people in public spaces. Yet somehow these massive, beautiful public skateparks are being built and for the most part nobody even seems to care if you wear a helmet. I cannot explain this anomaly.

Although I guess this quote in Juice #68 from Shaggy, one of the guys building these things, sums it up pretty well:

This superficial, artifuckingficial world that we live in is ours for the taking. These people aren't strong enough to hold us back. They're trying to control and structure every inch of this universe and it isn't happening! It's our job as skateboarders to take it back.

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