When I meet some of the young skateboarders, I half jokingly tell them that I am an "Old School Skateboarder" from back in the day. When I was a kid some 50 years ago, we built our own skateboards. We would take a long piece of 2x4 (about 30 inches or so) and nail the wheels from a steel skate up through the board using 16 common nails, bending them over on the top to hold them in better. One pair of skates, two skateboards! In those days we had no helmets, no knee or elbow pads, no gloves to protect our body parts. We would grab our primitive boards and head up to suicide hill hoping to get in 3 or 4 runs before trouble reared its ugly head in the smell of smoke...about the time we would smell the smoke is when we would notice the first few ball bearings bouncing down the hill in front of us. At that point it was just a question of do we ride it out and hope for the best, or bail before the wheels came off...those were heady times.
Skateboards and the sport have come a very long way since those early days.
Hardly a day goes by when I am out walking with my camera that I do not see the younger generation out on their boards, risking life and limb to perfect their board tricks. Go out to almost any public street in town with a decent incline and chances are you will find 3 or 4 teenagers racing down the hill attempting various and assorted maneuvers on their boards, all the while keeping a eye out for on coming cars...which begs the question, "Where is our Skateboard Park in Nyack?"
Seriously, there are hundreds of communities around the country, maybe even thousands who have skateboard parks, and most of the communities I am talking about are not near as financially blessed as Nyack is. How many people in Nyack live in million dollar homes? How many millionaires live in our community? How many households in Nyack earn 2, 3 or more times the average household income for an American family? Yet, we cannot afford a skateboard park?
Am wondering...are we waiting until someone's child is seriously injured or killed before we as a community decide that a skatepark is a good investment for the community? We have a basketball court, and a baseball field down at Memorial Park, but how many of you know that more young kids under the age of 18 skateboard than play baseball?
Just a thought...down by the river there is a clean up going on at a Superfund site...you know, one of those horrid sites where a company polluted our environment for decades. Rumor has it that the site will be finished and cleaned up by the end of December...instead of the site then being sold off to some developer, maybe the polluters and responsible parties should donate the land to the city for another river side park with the stipulation that a part of this new park be set aside as a safe haven and park for our skateboard enthusiasts.
Just an "Old School Skateboarder's" two cents worth on the subject.
Editor's Note...skateboard parks can be built for as little as $50,000 and some of the most incredible parks can be built for under $300,000. Maybe someone should consider putting a skateboard park as a business up on Jumpstart and see if the money could be raised that way. One way or another, it is time we stop discussing skateboard parks, and build one before one of Nyack's children is hit or run over by a car.
According to the census Nyack has around 6800 citizens...if each citizen were to donate just $5.00 we would have enough money to build a world class skateboard park for Nyack's kids.
According to the census Nyack has around 6800 citizens...if each citizen were to donate just $5.00 we would have enough money to build a world class skateboard park for Nyack's kids.
