Andrew Paul

Half Pipe Dream | Nate Syska and Ben Miller smile at the prospect of a new skatepark downtown.

What’s awesome about skateboarding is the feeling you get while watching a flock of pigeons eat bits of your flesh off the sidewalk after you wipe out on a staircase.

What’s not awesome about skateboarding is when a police officer informs you that you’re being fined for using public space.

The conflict between skateboarders and property owners, security guards and police has existed since skateboarding’s inception in the early 1970s. What the whole debate boils down to is that skateboarders want to skate, and property owners don’t want their benches, handrails, and ledges vandalized, or to be held liable for personal injury on their premises should a skater bail and leave pigeon food smeared on their sidewalk blocks. Nowhere else in the city is this conflict more apparent than downtown.

“You get kicked out of a lot of spots,” says Cory Forster, manager of the Whyte Avenue skateboard shop Plush. “Especially Churchill Square, where the cops hassle you and threaten to give you tickets and stuff. So that kind of sucks.”

Ben Miller, a sales associate from FS Skate and Snow, agrees. “Skating downtown right now is sketchy,” he says. “Between the crackheads, cops, and other assholes, it’s pretty hit-or-miss.”

The downtown skate scene sounds grim, but skateboarders and the community at large may be about to catch a break. Mayor Stephen Mandel has requested a report on the feasibility of building a skatepark downtown — something the skate community has been wanting for years.

Ward 4 city councilor Ben Henderson also thinks the idea is pretty sweet.

“It’s crazy to me,” he says, “with Winston Churchill Square and other places like that, that are heavily used at certain times, but at other times they’re just not getting used at all. To have people who are keen and interested in using places like that and saying, ‘No you’re not allowed’ is nonsense.”

The proposed park would be built in the plaza between the Stanley A. Milner Library and the Westin Hotel. The idea came out of a think tank session Henderson had with the Downtown Business Association. Henderson wound up sitting at the same table as Edmonton Public Library director Linda Cook, and the idea to discover a better use for the plaza arose.

Henderson believes the plaza area is a good opportunity to help make the downtown core a more attractive place for young families to raise children instead of moving out to the suburbs.
Initially, Henderson offered up the idea of building a playground in the space and the two decided to look into the matter.

“Linda said she’d explore things on her end and I would explore things on my end,” he says, “and that’s where we are right now.”

Though the initial idea was to build a playground, Henderson says a skatepark is definitely something that could also work in that space. Which leaves the door wide open for possibilities and the skateboard community has a few ideas of what the new park should look like. And city council and taxpayers might like what they have to say.

“I think it should just be nice and mellow,” says Darcy Watson, who also works at Plush. “A few benches, a couple of flatbars and flatboxes. But definitely some benches that people can sit on and we can still skate on would be nice. Just real simple — we don’t need anything complex.”

Miller and Forster echo Watson’s sentiments; what many skaters want, they say, are spots that resemble natural street obstacles such as benches, ledges, staircases, and handrailings. That’s what they’d be skating on downtown anyway, if it weren’t for the hassle from the police and business owners’ attempts to skateproof their property.

We’ve all seen those “little hater things,” as Nate Syska from FS Skate and Snow calls them — little metal nubs and bars that property owners weld to anything that a skater might be tempted to grind or slide on. Sure, it keeps the benches and ledges from getting scratched up by skateboarders, but the aesthetic cost is high. Who likes sitting on a bench with a metal nub shoved up their ass, Syska asks?
The desire for natural obstacles means the space could work as a multipurpose area resembling what much of downtown looks like already.

However, no decisions will be made until the report is made available. As to when that might be, Henderson says skaters and property owners will have to continue to butt heads for a while.

“We don’t do anything at the city quickly, I’m afraid,” he says.