Why Silver Spring Skaters Are So Frustrated

Here's a list of some of the things we've been told over the past year (since we lost lower Ellsworth Drive for skating):

• We were supposed to get an area behind whole Foods, and that was supposed to happen in early '09, weeks after we lost Ellsworth. Never happened.

• In February '09, we were told we could have the alley beside the DTSS security office. That DID happen...for all of two weeks, before it was taken away and they started kicking us out.

• We were told DTSS was working on getting us the pavement between Whole Foods and Hollywood Video. Never happened.

• In May AFI asked DTSS to host a skateboarding event, to promote a skateboarding movie AFI planned to screen. Never happened. (After a 3-month fiasco of trying to help DTSS plan this thing, with the date being changed from June 21st, to July 21st, to August 21st, we were finally offered such a low-budget tired-sounding event that no one would have bothered to come.)

• We were supposedly on track to get a skatepark in the space the library currently sits on, once that's torn down. Not gonna happen.

• We were supposedly going to have a tiny "skate spot" in Woodside Park this January. We were asked to support it. We did support it, asking skaters to send supportive emails, and asking skaters to attend the meeting (30 did), and I even attended a 'pre-meeting' that I initiated on November 4th, the day of the community meeting. Construction on that skate spot has now been delayed, and I'm not convinced it's actually going to be built.

Skaters for Public Skateparks: Response to Just Up The Pike

In response to Dan Reed's phenomenal post the case for a downtown skatepark (this time, with numbers), Publishing Director of Skaters for Public Skateparks Peter Whitley, commented on that blog post, making the point that "skate spots" are not meant to replace skateparks, but to augment them:

I was thrilled to see Skaters for Public Skateparks' material used so effectively. As the co-author, along with Kent Dahlgren and Miki Vuckovich (both of whom are with Tony Hawk Foundation, though Kent was SPS' founding Director) we couldn't be more delighted to see this information being used exactly how we intended.

When we began talking to communities about "skate spots" a few years ago we were concerned that some would see them as the "perfect solution" to their skatepark needs. While the idea of augmenting the neighborhood skateparks with satellite facilities is fundamentally sound, many budget-minded bureaucrats see the skate spot as a "miniature skatepark." They're not. They are meant to extend a skatepark's level of service into isolated or underserved pockets...NOT as a bedrock facility for a whole community.

What may happen is that the skate spot fails due to over-use; a victim of its own success. In their enthusiasm to use the spot, the skaters may spill out to the nearby parking lots or simply move back to those inappropriate spots that are popular now.

That can lead to two public reactions:

1. "Look at all those skaters trashing up the place. They don't deserve a better skatepark."

2. "The skaters are STILL skating on my ledges! That new skatepark apparently doesn't help at all!"

The losers here are the very people the skate spot was meant to benefit. The solution is for the local advocates to continue to push for a long-term plan that acknowledges the community need and sets into motion plans for meeting it. Thankfully you guys have some AWESOME advocates on that task.