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the coping while borrowing some
British dude's skateboard-the
Chap Stick Lip Bomb.
TOW HEAD
Charles Duncan
East Hartford, CT
One day I was kicking back, wat-
ching TV and I saw a commercial for
Channel 4 news. It showed a guy on
a skateboard holding on to the back
of
a motorcycle and trying to jump
off a ramp over 5 cars. So I stayed
in and watched the news. Then it
finally showed the guy. He cleared
the cars (with luck) but didn't land
it. I never even heard of this guy.
Well, I guess it's cool to grown ups,
but not to me!
A Pissed Skater
Los Angeles, CA
A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL
I'm a lot older than your average
reader, but I used to have a blast on
a board made out of a 2x4" and an
old rollerskate. I was listening to
Black Sabbath when the only trucks
most of your readers knew were on
their strollers. Being a dyed-in-the-
wool metalhead, I started picking up
Thrasher a couple of years ago for
the music news. Anyway, I'm a
maintenance man for the local
school board. One day, when the
kids weren't in school, I was discuss-
ing some work with a principal when
I heard the familiar klip-klop of
boards on pavement. I looked up
and saw three clean-cut young
skaters just grooving and enjoying
their day off. You'd have thought
that a Libyan Death Squad had just
landed, the way the biddy I was with
came unglued. She took off down
the sidewalk as fast as her stubby
little legs would carry her, shrieking
at the top of her lungs. "No
skateboarding on school property!"
The skaters just shot on by her
laughing all the way.
So this left me to listen to this old
bulldog rant and rave about how "all
skaters are vandals and
what's wrong with parents
these days allowing their
kids to skate, blah, blah,
blah, etc. etc." It's a
crummy job, but the pay
is okay, and I have little
skaters to feed, so I had
to stand there and bite my
tongue. All the while I was
thinking, what's wrong
with a system that allows
an old witch with such
open hostility toward kids to be in
control of 600-700 young minds a
year? Skateboarding is not a crime
(yet), but this principal's reaction
sure doesn't teach kids any respect
for authority.
S
Amazed and Confused
Tallahassee, FL
GO PUBLIC
or re-development. The first step
was to circulate petitions asking the
city to listen to skaters and consider
their recreation needs along with the
needs of the other sports the city
provides for. Copies of completed
petitions were mailed to all five of the
cities' mayors. So far I have gotten
responses from three cities. I have
met with the Parks and Recreation
Department Director for the city of
Glendale, Arizona, and he seemed
enthusiastic about including skate
contests in the parks' programs for
89. He said that a successful con-
test would be one step toward a per-
manent skate structure. The one
thing I don't have is enough informa-
tion on how other cities built skate
areas. The main questions I get from
Parks managers is "How do cities
handle the liability?" and "How
much did it cost?" If anyone has any
information on public skateboarding
areas that they could share with me,
it would be greatly appreciated.
Please send it to Citizens for Public
Skateboarding Areas, 4112 North
4th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85013. This
information will be shared with
anyone who wants to start a similar.
organization. Armed with the proper
information it is quite possible to get
the parks dept. to include skate-1
boarding in the master plan. When
the Mesa, Arizona, parks depart-
ment held public meetings for park
planning, there were groups repre-
senting tennis, softball, swimming
and other sports, but no one was
there to give a pitch for skating. This
campaign is not a quick fix to the
problem of nowhere to skate, but if
we maintain the effort, in the future.
there will be a bowl or a ramp next
to every public tennis court or
baseball diamond.
In reaction to the increasing num-
ber of skate spots being declared
off-limits or destroyed by local
authorities, I formed Citizens for
Public Skateboarding Areas in the
spring of 1988. The goal of the
organization is to get the five main
municipalities in the Phoenix metro
area to include skateboarding in the
master plans for park development
Michael Cornelius
Phoenix, AZ
Who was it that said, "The best
defense is a cultural offense"? T-ed
DOGGED
First of all I'd like to compliment
Jason Hinkle on his letter. Too bad
everyone doesn't think like you.
Secondly, I'd like to congratulate
Dogtown Skates for living up to their
name by putting the five ugliest
chicks I've ever seen in their ad.
"Russ"
El Paso, TX
NON-TRENDY TREND
I think that people who go com-
pletely out of their way and go.
through the trouble to scrub the
graphics off their wheels, etc., are
the real posers. I guess that trying
not to be trendy is the latest trend.
Not Trying to be Trendy
Novato, CA
(Continued on page 100)
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