Thursday March 9, 2000 by Miki Vuckovich
continued...
"For all they endured throughout the process, the Teen Skateboard Committee members were granted the first official ride on the skatepark they literally built. In early October, before the public was allowed to touch it, Matt Kramer, Dave Goldman, Nick Hardy, Paul Skelly, and Nik Westman got to session the pyramid, bowl, three rails, and several banks and ledges that comprise the Claremont Skatepark. The park officially opened a few days later, with a ceremony attended by about 250 people, including 150 skaters and several pros.
During the dedication speeches, each member of the Teen Skateboard Committee spoke and received a plaque from the City of Claremont decorated with a piece of rebar. The skaters also awarded Dick Guthrie a skateboard for all of his efforts. A city official who has seen several civic building projects move from inception to dedication, Guthrie is a solid supporter of the concept of municipal skateparks, despite lingering concerns over liability.
"We�ve adopted the Huntington Beach [California] approach, where you don�t enforce it [pad rule]," he says. "It�s a matter of personal responsibility. We have a lot of folks in the community calling us and complaining, saying that they want it enforced. So we�re saying, �We�ve gone to the city attorney, and we�ve gone to our insurance carrier, and they say the onus has to be on the user, not on the city to enforce.� I will guarantee it will be our busiest [city] park facility, without a doubt."More important than the need for a safe skating facility that the park satisfies, says Guthrie, is the process of involving the youth of a community in projects like this: "I�ve known these guys since they were thirteen, when we started this thing. I look at them now at sixteen and seventeen, and these are the five most influential and well-known people in Claremont, easily. I get constant phone calls, and notes from people writing me who have referenced them by name because they read their names in the paper. They�ve spoken to the League of California Cities Conference, and I think if you asked any of them three years ago if they would be able to stand on a public stage and make a speech, it wouldn�t even have been in their frame of reference. The skateboard park is what they�ve started with. We support the facility, and think it�s a great addition, but for us, this is what it was all about�a way to get them involved.
"The skatepark and the notoriety of Claremont�s Teen Skateboard Committee have continued to attract national attention. "A week doesn�t go by that I don�t get calls from three or four cities," says Guthrie. "They want you to come talk to them, and we have a whole packet of stuff we send them now. At every conference for cities I�ve been to in the last two years, the biggest attended session is always on skateboarding, whether it�s a professional conference for people like department directors, to the elected-officials conferences like the League Of California Cities - everybody�s trying to get into it."Not all efforts to build a public skatepark are successful, and the model suggested by the Claremont example may not work everywhere, as each town has its own unique political climate. But it does demonstrate what the will of a few skaters and at least one like-minded city official can accomplish.
For information on public skateparks, check the following Web resources:
International Association of Skateboard Companies (IASC)
www.skateboard.com/iasc
Consolidated Skateboards (The Plan)
www.consolidatedskateboard.com
Team Pain
www.teampain.com
Ramptech
www.ramptech.com
Legalskate
www.summersault.com/legalskate