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Sunday, June 08, 2003

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon, and McKinley Park is crowded.

Well, not exactly. No one's on the athletic field, and there's only a single couple playing tennis on the courts at the park, which lines Bausman Avenue in Beltzhoover. But at the skateboard park, it's standing room only.

	Graham Beck, 12, of Highland Park drops in to the bowl portion of the halfpipe at Polish Hill skate park. Beck has been skateboarding for about a year. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Most of the crowd is teenage boys, but there's not really an all-purpose label that works. There are black kids. White kids. Hispanic kids. Asian kids. Kids with BMX bikes. Kids with skateboards. Kids with in-line skates.

There's no adult in charge or paid monitor to keep the crowd under control, but that doesn't matter. Skateboarders, aggressive skaters, bikers alike -- 20 or 30 this afternoon, which is typical -- they police themselves, taking turns on the ramps and halfpipe.

On this day, when a father brought his tiny son to gawk at the big kids and ride his little bike around, all of the older athletes took a break. No one complained. In fact, several applauded the little boy's effort, rewarding him thumbs-up signs when he managed to ride in circles in the lower part of the halfpipe (imagine a giant pipe cut in half lengthwise) without falling. They encouraged him equally when he did fall; one bike rider smiled and told the little boy, "That's a good crash."

Among the crowd was Ryan Courtney, 28, an assistant with the Shepherd's Heart youth group, who has skateboarded since he was a teenager in Baltimore. Several times a week, Courtney brings a handful of boys to skate here or at Citiparks' other skateboard park, at the West Penn Recreation Center in Polish Hill. The boys he works with have little interest in baseball or soccer, and he can't imagine what he would do without a skateboard park that is easy to get to, challenging and, best of all, free.

"Some of these young kids get no affirmation," he said. "At home, no one's saying, 'Son, you're doing a good job.' They get it from the guys out here. It's the cheapest psychiatry I've ever seen."

In short, it's exactly what Eric Van, a Citiparks program supervisor, told the skeptics to expect when the city's Parks and Recreation Department, responding to concerns from city business owners who didn't want skateboarders practicing on their sidewalks, stairs, railings, planters and parking lots, opened the McKinley skate park in 1999.

A second park opened in Polish Hill last summer, and a third is about to open in Sheraden.

"You're doing your teenage population a huge service," Van said recently at a workshop at the Polish Hill skate park to educate other recreation and parks personnel about such parks.

Ray Montell Williams, 18, of Polish Hill discovered the challenges and fun of cycling just four months ago. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

The seminar, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society, focused on risk management, which is of particular concern to recreation departments that want to meet their community's needs but don't want to find themselves swamped with lawsuits, either.

"Councils are reluctantly starting to understand that more kids skateboard than play ball in the U.S.," said Doug Wyseman, a risk management consultant from Woodstock, Ontario, who addressed the seminar. "There's more need to accommodate them. The last five or six years, it's been a really hot topic."

Which only makes sense. As youth sports have become more structured and children have developed other interests, the concept of after-school pickup games has all but died.

For instance, when Wyseman -- who identifies himself as a baby boomer -- was a kid, he spent his summers meeting his friends in the park to play ball, his winters on a patch of ice with a puck. He figures that were he growing up now, of the dozen friends he played with, 10 would be playing Nintendo and the other two watching movies.

And he knows from experience how sports have changed. His son plays hockey, and he's got a game or a practice about 150 days out of the year, and there are always adults around.

"There's very few things that kids can do that are unstructured, without adults," he said. "Skateboarding's one of them."

Which is exactly what concerns municipalities. With skateboarders, aggressive skaters and BMX riders attempting such difficult maneuvers, solicitors have nightmares over the thought of building such a park. But all evidence to the contrary, Wyseman said, having skate parks doesn't put municipalities in any additional danger for being sued.

Sure, skateboarders get hurt. But they do not sue anyone because of it.

Van has discovered this first-hand. Since the city opened its two skate parks, not one lawsuit has been filed.

Most people agree that kids who skateboard -- and parents who allow their children to skateboard -- are simply less litigious by nature. Others think that skateboarders who sprain an ankle or hit their head are less likely to go to the hospital and therefore are not counted in most studies of injury rates.

Said Courtney, "It's like it says on the shirt -- if you're not hurt, if you're not falling down, you're not trying hard enough."

Safety on wheels

A study in the October 2002 issue of the Journal of Trauma found that in 2001, more than 100,000 people went to emergency rooms with skateboarding injuries. The lead author of the study was quoted in The New York Times as saying that skateboarding was less risky than some sports, including basketball and football.

Skate parks attract all levels of athletes on wheels, including high-flying Brina Bastardo, 22, of Mount Washington. Cheering him on at McKinley Park are, from left, Cameron Clayton, 22; Charnetta Reed, 11 (hiding face); Eric Gathers, 22; Chris Brown, 10; Ryan Andrews, 10; and Booka Wade, 10. On most fair-weather days, the park is busy with dozens of skateboarders and cyclists. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Locally, Dr. Barbara Gaines of the Benedum Trauma Center at Children's Hospital said one person was injured severely enough while skateboarding to be admitted to the hospital in 2000. The number increased to 16 in 2001 and 19 in 2002, numbers comparable to in-line skating and nonmotorized scooters.

Last year, 100 children came to Children's Hospital with bike-riding injuries.

"What we tell kids who are using any kind of wheeled sporting device is that helmets are the single best protection that they can offer," Gaines said, citing studies that say helmets decrease head injuries by 85 percent. "It's a no-brainer, no pun intended."

Gaines also recommends elbow pads, wrist and knee guards.

Equally important, she said, is where people skateboard. Many of the most severe injuries occur when a skateboarder riding on the street collides with a car.

"In general, when it's car vs. skateboard," she said, "skateboarder loses."

A place of their own

In the late 1990s, the number of skateboarders and aggressive skaters locally grew. Wanting to challenge themselves, the athletes, mostly teenage boys, scoured the city for good venues.

"It was just like if you were not providing a golf course for people who wanted to play golf," said Chris Shields, 20, of Point Breeze, who competes nationally as in what the participants call "aggressive" skating for its more experimental, challenging maneuvers.

"You'd have people playing in the middle of the street. 'I didn't mean to hit that golf ball in the middle of your windshield, but I didn't have anywhere else to play golf.' "

Property owners became irritated. If their staircases had brass railings, those were scratched. If they had planters made of marble -- the very best surface for skating -- they were coated with a buildup of wax.

They were worried, too, that an aggressive skater or skateboarder would hit a pedestrian. Or a BMX cyclist would be hit by a car.

As the number of complaints grew, particularly from businesses, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, Mayor Tom Murphy found himself under pressure to do something.

Meanwhile, property and business owners called the police. The police took aggressive skaters, skateboarders and BMX riders into custody, then called their parents to take them home.

"As a parent, you yelled at the child, yet you understood what the child was going through," Van said. "They really started to get a chip on their shoulder about the police. And the small municipalities were the worst.

"It created an underground skate culture that resented authority. They did not like me very much, either, because I was representative, sort of, of the police."

Greg Sumida of Plum said friends introduced him to the fun and challenges of McKinley Park. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

The way Van saw it, the boys were simply trying to practice their sport, to push themselves to new accomplishments. He figured there should be a legal way to do it.

And so Van, who has spent much of his life working in parks and recreation, became an advocate for public skate parks.

It's not that there weren't skate parks around -- ShadySkates, for example, was the local hot spot place for years. And there's 885 Skatepark, an indoor park on Route 885 in West Mifflin. But those sorts of facilities charge a fee, and Van was adamant that cyclists, skaters and skateboarders be able to play and practice for free, just as basketball or baseball players do. At 885, the cost for a three-hour session is $7.

The free parks were a tad controversial.

"One of the problems they tend to have is that they don't really have too many people in positions of authority that champion their cause," Wyseman said. "If I'm on a city council, and a bunch of 14-year-old kids in baggy pants came to ask for money for a skate park, part of me thinks, 'That's not a real sport.' "

Municipalities also worry about the danger factor. People such as Wyseman try to calm those fears. Which don't always go away, although his research has never turned up a case in which a public skateboard board lost a liability case.

"I always tell them, when my kids turn 16, I know it's going to cost me a rack of money for car insurance, and if I scream, 'Why?' there's a lot of statistics about how teenagers have more accidents," he said. "But I ask the same insurer, 'Why are you afraid of skateboards? Show me a claim where you've paid skateboard liability. And they can't.

"It's sort of an excuse for not wanting to let somebody do something. Let's say liability, because what the heck, it'll probably go away. But when you really look at it, the liability isn't there."

Now public skate parks are spreading, although they aren't as common here as they are in California, where they are commonplace.

Skate park No. 3

Norman Keen, 12, of Carrick has been coming to McKinley Park almost every day since the skate park opened.

He plays linebacker on a football team. Pitches for a baseball team. But his favorite sport is skateboarding.

"Because you can do your own thing," said Keen, who attends Rogers Middle School for the Creative and Performing Arts in Garfield. He watches the older, bigger kids, and then he imitates their moves. "It takes a while to learn them," he said.

The popularity of the parks, and the resulting decrease in "street" skateboarders and skaters, means that a third city skate park will soon be opening in Sheraden. Van would like to have even more, but he knows finances are tight.

The parks haven't been problem-free. Graffiti, in particular, has been a problem, and Van had to discontinue use of the lights at McKinley Park because late-night bikers were tampering with the timer system, enabling them to continue riding until the wee hours.

Citiparks is planning to relight McKinley Park, enabling skaters to practice from dawn to 11 p.m., and at Polish Hill, the light from the nearby baseball fields enables skateboarders and bikers to be there until as late as 2 a.m. The new park in Sheraden will be open dawn to dusk, because residents don't want lights.

Signs at each park strongly encourage users to wear helmets and other safety equipment, but it's not required. Safety equipment is not required because there is no one to enforce the rules; such a combination, Van said, would increase liability.

None of the parks are monitored full-time by staff, and occasionally, there is discontent among the users, too.

"But 99 percent of the problems were worked out" by the athletes, Van said. "We like that. You don't want parents around telling you what to do all the time. Eventually, you're going to be out in the real world."

Police still confront aggressive cyclists, skaters and skateboarders on streets and in parking lots, and they often assess the $300 fine. But they also steer the offenders to the skate parks.

And the parks are busy whenever weather permits.

"There is no mastery," Courtney said. "There is no 'too good.' "

Which is why, 12 years after he started, Courtney still rides his skateboard a couple of times a week. And why he's trying to expose his charges to the sport.

"The people who are here a lot, they aren't here to sell dope or be in fights or run with gangs," Courtney said. "They're here with a different group of people."