By Dan Abbott
Video by: Darlene Bouchard
Skateboarders can be seen around San Francisco damaging public property because they don't have much of an alternative. Since only one skate park currently exists in San Francisco, places such as the historic music concourse in the heart of Golden Gate Park, have suffered damages from decades of grinding and jumping.
It was proposed in 1998 to transform the deteriorated horseshoe pits in Golden Gate Park into a skateboard park, but it hasn't been until recently that the funding for it surfaced in our government.
The proposal reached another small milestone earlier this month when the San Francisco Youth Commission’s Recreation and Services Committee passed a non-bonding resolution in favor of the proposed $100,000 project, part of an ambitious budget proposal submitted to Mayor Gavin Newsom Feb. 23.
“It’s still a really early piece of legislation”, cautioned Anthony Ayala, 16, one of three youths who sit on the Recreation and Services Committee. “The rec and services committee really took it under their wing.”
Ayala and two other commissioners petitioned the mayor, asking his support for the project. Newsom, who heaped praise on the Youth Commission when he appeared at its recent meeting, has been especially supportive of Youth Commission projects, Ayala said, and approved 90 percent of the commission’s budget requests last year.
There is already a skate park in San Francisco, a small concrete structure in Crocker Amazon Park, near the Cow Palace, ringed by imposing wrought-iron fencing. Critics complain that the park is inaccessible, poorly maintained, and well… lame. Caliskatz.com, an online guide that rates skate parks statewide, gave the skate park a tepid review, calling it “a pretty weak skate park for the skateboarding capital of the world.”
“It’s dilapidated,” Recreation and Services Commissioner Anthony Albert agreed. “Very poor. Plus it’s way the hell at the edge of town.”
Albert, 17, said he feels confident the project will eventually be approved. Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Jake McGoldrick, whose district includes Golden Gate Park, have both voiced their support for the proposal. Albert said it may be months before the Board of Supervisors actually vote on the idea. So far, though, people seem to at least tacitly favor of the plan.
“We can’t imagine any opposition to this,” Albert said. “Because it’s seen so much support, it’s pretty much guaranteed.”
Carol Sloan, a parent and longtime employee of Skates on Haight, a skateboard store in the Haight-Ashbury district, loves the idea, but realistically doesn’t see it happening.
“In the last 20 years I’ve been here, there’ve been a lot of proposals for this kind of thing,” Sloan said. “I don’t know if it has a snowball’s chance in hell.”
Sloan, whose 18-year-old son is an avid skateboarder, said the city’s reputation as a skateboarding mecca demands a better park than the one currently available. Crocker Amazon Skate Park consists mainly of three smooth, swimming pool-size concrete “bowls” laid in a row. She called the bowls lame and said experienced skaters need more challenging surfaces than that to keep them off the streets. The accessibility of Golden Gate Park, Sloan said, would attract young skaters, and help set parents’ minds at ease.
“Before (Sloan’s son) was 18, the only thing he could do was go all the way (to Crocker Amazon skate park) on MUNI, or take the ferry across the bay to Alameda,” Sloan said. “As a parent, those weren’t really great options.”
Nate Bernot, an avid skateboarder, agreed that a world-class skate park would provide a haven for skaters like him, dismissing the Crocker Amazon facility as “garbage”.
Chris Duderstadt, a retired engineer who has lived near Golden Gate Park for three decades, came up with the idea of converting the horseshoe pits in to a skate park. He brought it up at a Jan. 9 meeting of the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority, but was told it was an issue for the Recreation and Parks Department. Nine days later, at the SFRPD meeting, he brought the idea up again.
“I don’t think it’s fair to tell skateboarders to go away if there’s no place provided for them,” Duderstadt said. “My feeling is that if you build a skateboard park and hassle skateboarders in the concourse, they will come here (to the horseshoe pit).”
Many skateboarders, Duderstadt said, are just looking for a place to skate without being ticketed. The natural wear and tear of the pastime, as skateboarders slide and grind along marble and concrete edifices, cause unsightly scratching in public areas, which gets them unjustly labeled as vandals. One such place is the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park, whose smooth, flat stage and lax enforcement attracts skateboarders.
“The concern is that the Music Concourse, which is one of San Francisco’s two historic landmark landscapes - and truly the most significant, is suffering immensely from skateboarders,” Duderstadt said. “Sadly, they don’t have a place to go. They’re there because it’s the only place they don’t get harassed. And, in being there, they’re doing irreparable damage to our history.”
One issue looming over the proposal is the abundance of homeless people who live near the horseshoe pits, which lie near the base of the Panhandle. While vagrants are common at Crocker Amazon as well, any large project like this, aimed at providing a safe place for minors, will inevitably have to deal with the issue, Duderstadt said.
“Most of the homeless in the park are not offensive or looking for trouble,” Duderstadt said, “but at the same time when they diminish the park for everyone else then you have to make them leave.”
One of the few people who could be found to oppose the skate park idea is a homeless man named Eric, who wouldn’t give his last name.
““I like this spot because it’s real quiet here,” Eric said of the languishing horseshoe pits. “I think they should just leave it.”
Duderstadt said the construction of a skate park would go a long way in soothing tensions between potentially law-abiding skateboarders and city authorities.
“Why are we harassing them and making them criminals? It doesn’t make sense. If the city builds a skate park, the skateboarders will come.”
Bryan Cheung, Darlene Bouchard, and Doug Morino contributed to this story.
