Published: May 14, 2008 12:17 am            

COMMENTARY: Skateboarders and others like them still misunderstood

LOCKPORT — If you’re wondering who’s causing all the property damage at Lockport’s once glorious Community Pool at Outwater Park, I can assure you, it isn’t the dedicated kids next door who spend so much of their free time enjoying the new Rail Yard Skate Park on Corinthia Street.

Having talked to so many of these young men and women over the years, I’ve learned a lot about them — most importantly that they’re quite normal and they’re almost always responsible (though daring). Like any other talented teens, these kids found their groove in something that my generation of Lockportians and generations before that — as a whole — never quite got into.

But skateboarding, rollerblading and bicycle tricksters arrived like a thunderous lipslide in the Lock City not many years after I saw pioneers like Nick Southard and Jim Quinnones rollerblading around the city with smiles on their faces a quarter century ago.

My old city summer jobmate Nicky — the guy I scaled the escarpment with on a bet from the good guys at the Lockport Wastewater Treament Plant (we won, scaling the hill where the trestle bridge is today in under a minute) and my old friend Jimmy — a wirey guitar player and athlete and one half of the legendary “Q Brothers,” were ahead of their time.

And they share something in common with these young Lockport daredevils of today who leap airborne effortlesly, twisting and turning their bikes, skateboards and bodies in a variety of directions — a genuine love for extreme sports. I always thought extreme sports were fun to watch. Imagine what it’s like actually doing just one of these gravity-defying tricks ...

One of the problems today locally is the misunderstanding about extreme sports that began with the infamous skateboarding issues of the early 1990s that split the community in two.

It was a Mother of All generation gaps. The adults wanted the irresponsible kids to quit damaging their properties by skateboarding on them and to stay out of the streets. The kids said absolutely, but please give us someplace to go.

In the meantime, people kept reading and hearing about these “nasty” kids wreaking havoc and destroying property and soon lawmakers got involved. The Lockport Police Department was directed by the Lockport Common Council to confiscate the skateboards of children who were caught on city streets and unfortunately, the LPD ended up looking like the bad guys to some.

Skateboarding wasn’t a major problem as I recall, but it certainly garnered a lot of emotion from all generations throughout the city and in neighboring communities facing similar issues with the explosion in popularity of extreme sports.

That all culminated last year with the construction of the Rail Yard Skate Park on Corinthia Street, which I think we all can agree was a genuine, positive reaching out by the city to these youths.

After school and throughout the summer, the place is packed with some of the most amazing, athletic, thrill-seeking teenagers you’ll find anywhere.

They’re telling me it isn’t any of them throwing rocks through the community pool windows next door and causing other problems, it’s other kids who like to hang out at the rail park or nearby but don’t use it.

And I believe them. The youths I’ve met aren’t the type to try and ruin a situation that people have fought for patiently all these years. They’re a lot smarter than that.

Most said they’d like to see the city do more by perhaps expanding the facility. That’s not saying they don’t appreciate what’s been built for them. They just think the sky’s the limit in life.

What a world it would be if we could all think like they do a little more.

        

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