What Happens at the Skatepark
A reminiscent look at my teenage hangout
I kicked against the concrete halfheartedly, just enough to keep my skateboard rolling. Physically I was at the skatepark, but my mind was elsewhere. I was waiting for a response from a girl. She was out of my league, but for whatever reason she had been reciprocating my text conversations. It was late fall, and I decided to shoot my shot and ask her to go on a carriage ride.
Why I decided to shoot my shot while I was at the skatepark is a valid question, but it’s the wrong one to ask. During my mid-teen years, I spent a considerable amount of time at the skatepark. So asking why I did anything there as opposed to anywhere else would be like asking why people eat dinner at home. That’s just where you are.
2004
The freedom that came with getting my driver license at 16 was only as meaningful as the places I could go. I lived in a small town, so instead of driving through the suburbs, crying, like Olivia Rodrigo, I went to places like Wal-Mart, school, church, The Sev (7/11), and the happy bump (a slight but smooth ramp-like bump where the gutter met one particular driveway—speed being a key ingredient). But the place that eventually became my favorite destination was the skatepark.
In 2002, Deseret News reported on the uptick in skateparks being built around Utah to “offer a truce in the form of war-free zones.” Using language that was out of touch even then, the reporter explained that these parks were places to “get totally stoked” where “shaggy-haired youngsters” were “trying Tony Hawk’s infamous totally radical ‘boarding moves.”
[Break for laughter]
At my local “war-free zone,” I spent hours rolling around the smooth concrete, but I also spent hours doing other things.
I watched kids five years my junior go bigger than I dared.
I admired the latest graffiti, including Sharpie’d phone numbers with instructions like “call for some manly lovin’.”
I showed my proverbial out-turned pockets to a 10-year-old who just wanted to “bum a cigarette.”
In a dark variation of the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” I saw blood seep out of heads, elbows, knees, and hands.
I politely declined an invitation by giggling elementary school kids to gather around a math book with lingerie ads taped inside the cover.
And I developed deeper relationships with friends and people I only knew at skatepark.
1999
My memories at the skatepark begin long before I was in high school. Seven years before I would graduate, a group of “shaggy-haired youngsters” successfully petitioned the city council in Brigham City, Utah, to build a skatepark. That same year I moved twice with my family: from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Sandy, Utah, and then again into a rental house in Brigham City. The moves were so close together that I went to 5th grade in three different cities.
Moving to Utah meant I was closer to my cousins, and some of my cousins were into rollerblading. Not one to be left out, I picked it up too. In a way, I believe it became a way for me to find something that I could control amidst so much change. All of that lined up perfectly with the completion of the Brigham City skatepark, and I began to experiment with this new space (as often as my mom would drive me there). Had Deseret News been reporting on location in 1999, they would have been blown away by my totally rad moves. However, my interest in rollerblading followed a similar downward trajectory to the popularity of the sport in general.
The peak of rollerblading’s popularity was (arguably) in 1998. That year, Disney jumped on the trend with the release of (not arguably) the best Disney Channel Original Movie of all time, Brink. After defeating Team X-Bladz in the final competition, Team Pup ‘N Suds and soul skating had a grip on the hearts of many 90’s kids, but even they couldn’t keep rollerblading from fading into a fad.
2004
On a warm afternoon at the skatepark with some friends, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it because this was back when you could answer an unknown number — before people were the worst and created robots to spam you about extended car warranties.
But the moment I answered, I knew I made a mistake. I was living a trope from an action movie — the one where the self-appointed detective dials a mystery number he found in his dead friend’s phone log and watches from a distance to see who answers. I looked up and made eye contact with a portly figure in the parking lot a few hundred feet away. I tried my best to skate around and pretend that I didn’t know what had just happened, but there was no escaping it: I had called a number written in Sharpie on the bench and jokingly asked for some manly lovin’. As requested, my manly lovin’ was on the way.
A large, blonde-haired guy a little older than me strutted over, and like Elmyra in Tiny Toons, he picked me up off my skateboard and hugged me back and forth.
“Here’s your manly lovin’.”
I was terrified and yet oddly comfortable in his large, soft embrace. But as quickly as it happened, he put me down and walked back up to his car laughing. I stood motionless as my friends looked on in disbelief. After a beat, they also started laughing. I have never called a number inked on concrete again.
1999
In the midst of my excitement about rollerblading, with the iconic lines of Brink still resonating in the zeitgeist, I made a new friend who would change everything.
As kids do, we bonded over video games. I had a new PlayStation and the era-defining video game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Our friendship grew stronger as we spent hours making skateboarders on the screen do rad tricks while music from Goldfinger and Primus echoed through my basement. But one point of friction in our friendship was our skate choices off the screen. He was a skateboarder. And he was getting good. He could do a kickflip. He said his mom even saw it once.
I remember vividly the day he broke the silence. We were laying on his trampoline enjoying the warm afternoon air.
“You have to choose.”
He wanted me to decide on a future of rollerblading or skateboarding. And for whatever reason, it seemed monumental enough that I couldn’t turn back from whatever I chose. To sweeten the pot, he offered to let me borrow his old skateboard, which was partially held together with Duck Tape.
I don’t remember how long I deliberated. But the fact that he lived down the street, and my cousins lived 30 miles away, definitely swayed the decision. The move was clearly to hang up my skates (or, more accurately, abandon them in the basement storage room) and start riding a board.
2004
My phone vibrated, and I knew it was the girl texting me back. I nervously pulled the phone out of my pocket, careful not to even glimpse at the message. There’s no rejection in the unknown. I wanted to embrace the nervous excitement of the brief moment where I was in control: where I had not been accepted nor rejected, and I could choose when I found out. When I finally decided to look, my fears were confirmed. She wasn’t interested in going on the carriage ride.
I don’t remember if I responded right then or not. But I remember how I felt, and I remember standing still on my skateboard in the middle of the park.
The skatepark was the first real spot I could call my own. A place I could exist completely independent of authority figures. A place to skate through whatever was going on in my life. A place to practice growing up — with good times and bad, injuries and achievements, and a wonderful parade of unexpected encounters.
