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Northside Community Council: December Meeting

Lew attended and presented for a minute, fielding questions from the floor. Northside remains the most supportive and energized neighborhood in all of Cincinnati. We are now working to form a base of local skaters to design and push for the park, while scanning for local businesspeople and neighbors who can vocally/politically push for the park.

Thanks for the overwhelming support. We look forward to presenting our design in either the February or March meetings. Hopefully we'll be deep in fundraising and final tweaks on design, with full support of the CRC, by April.

Overarching Goal

development of quality skateboarding parks that lie within easy access of Metro routes.

Last Northside Council Meeting

Well, Ali had to cover the meeting without me. I missed it for the coming of this little dude. Some of you know I'm a pastor, right? So that's what's getting in the way sometimes with making the meetings: people before stuff...

At the meeting, Ali presented a cad drawing and fielded questions, the best of which was, "Where are all the skateboarders?"

Odds are, there will not be a serious presence of skateboarders at the meeting. This initiative on behalf of the Northside Community Council needs to be founded, not on demands made by the skateboarders (although design should be managed by competent skateboarders), but on the desire of the Council to incorporate the energy that skateboarding has consistently brought to everything it touches into the fabric of that needy area of the community.

Skateboarders will get involved, as they always do, as the process gains momentum. Looking at the skateparks around us in communities like Delhi, Florence, St. Bernard, Wyoming, Lawrenceburg, Fairfield, Middletown, Kettering, Georgetown, Lexington, Dry Ridge...
Looking at these other skateparks (...Anderson...) we'll see that the benefits of a skatepark are worth the work that go into them...

Looking forward to the next meeting...

Northside Community Council considers drawing

This coming monday there'll be a sketch of the proposed skatepark. Come see Ali Calis present it.

Picking up again...

Well, it's been months since my last posts...

I'm still in the game, with a more finely honed vision for what I want to see happening with skateboard facilities in the city I live in.

In short, to be elaborated later on, I'd like to see skateboarding facilities embedded in "at risk" neighborhood as a positive alternative to the "Big Three Options" that face most kids I know here in Northside:

1. Pro Basketball Player
2. Rap Star on BET
3. Dealing Drugs on the corner with my cousins

Let's face it. There are parks available in the Cinci Area, but how many of them are even on the bus lines? Those that are are not within an hour of these kids. Skateparks are going up like wildfire in the midwest, but they are a SUBURBAN, AFFLUENT, PHENOMENON.
Adding insult to injury, most of these fine skateboard companies and people who push for parks are drawn in by some amalgam of "hardcore", "outlaw", "urban rough" cultural trappings. Dressed as something revolutionary, yet truly available to only the richest americans.

You have to have access to a CAR to use the Skateboarding Facilities around Cincinnati.

So let's do something really cool. Let's get grants and scrape together philanthropic donations to get high-quality, durable, low-maintenance, concrete skateboarding facilities incorporated into the city-scape of Cincinnati. We can do this in neighborhoods and properties that would otherwise breed crime.

Frankly, skateboarding will provide "Option 4", plus exposure to people from all walks of life. Skateboarding will become a vehicle of exposure for people from all over to meet and interact with kids and people in the inner city.

Racial Barriers
Social problems
will be exposed and eroded...

Potential Help
will be discovered
as people come to enjoy the park and meet children there who exist on social programs...

advocacy can be generated by such exposure...
crime can be reduced in neighborhoods as higher human traffic "hardens the target". And Skateboarding is a perfect vehicle for it, as skateboarders tend to be willing to take small risks lightly... a park in a difficult neighborhood will be heavily trafficked, provided that it is high-quality.

Some thoughts with more to come.

Anyone want to coalesce? drop me a comment.

Philosophical Question:

In this month's (May) issue of SLAP Magazine, a skateboarding publication, there is an article on p.12 that is worth considering. It is a short piece that simply asks:

Why is it acceptable, even commendable, to receive injuries in school sports? Why is it Okay for my young friend Cliff to blow out his Knee in football? Nobody minded.

And in juxtaposition:

Why is it so unacceptable, almost universally condemned, to receive injuries while skateboarding?

Please comment.