skatelife memphis

Helmet Ordinance Update

2011-12-20T10:16:00.001-08:00

I received written confirmation via email from the MPD that the Helmet Ordinance requiring users to wear helmets at the Memphis skate park, will go in full effect starting January 1, 2012. Users not wearing a helmet will receive a $50 ticket.

Instead of waiting to get a ticket, take that money and go purchase a helmet at a local business such as Cheapskates , Blue City Skates, or the MG Skateboard shop . Your brain and pocketbook will thank you.

1st Annual Memphis Food Grind !

2011-12-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Join the holiday spirit and help us get some food collected for MIFA!

Here's the scoop:

Skatelife Memphis, Cheapskates, local area businesses and churches join forces for 1st Annual Memphis Food Grind in Support of MIFA (Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association)

Volunteer members of the local Skateboard advocacy group SkateLife Memphis along with Cheapskates Skateboard shop want to help restock MIFA’s pantry shelves this holiday season through their 1st annual Skatelife Memphis Food Grind to benefit MIFA.
The week long event kicks off at Dec 17th ,10am, at the newly constructed Memphis Skate Park in Tobey Park.

Skatelife Memphis Food Grind engages our youth within the communities they live to support MIFA’s efforts to continually feed 55,000 Memphians and families in crisis on an annual basis and especially during the holiday season.

During this weeklong effort, individuals can drop off nonperishable food items at the following locations Dec 17th through Dec 23rd.

Memphis Skate Park – Tobey Park Dec 17th 10am-4pm One day only at this location
(Located directly behind the Memphis Board Of Education)
Cheapskates skateboard shop 1576 Getwell Rd Dec 17th – Dec 23rd
Greenlaw Community Center 190Mill Ave Dec 17th – Dec 23rd ( 1-7 pm)
Blues City Skates 569 S. Highland Dec 17th – Dec 23rd
Mid-Town Bikes Shop 517 S main Dec 17th – Dec 23rd
Advent Church 1879 N. Germantown Pkwy Dec 17th – Dec 23rd (10-4 pm)

Helmets: Wear one and show some gratitude

2011-12-07T08:35:00.001-08:00

The issue of wearing helmets at Tobey skate park has been inthe news a lot these days. You can read about the ensuing incidents in the Flyer,CA or see it on Channel 5 or ABC24. Basically a number of skaters have been ignoringthe mandatory helmet rule and as a result several news stories have been aired,covering the consequences of skaters not observing that rule. As of yesterday,that rule is now a law since the Helmet law/ordinance passed unanimously in lastnight’s City Council meeting. Users of all ages are required to wear helmets orrisk receiving a $50.00 citation ( Check out the Flyer story).

Three days after the park opened, a skater seriously injureshis head and the news was all over that story. Thankfully he’s going to be ok. Thenseveral news stations and local papers covered another helmet-related incidentwhich involved the handcuffing of a 12 year old skater. I don’t want to get into the details and the nuancessurrounding the circumstances that led up to these events. Rather, let’s justsay these events would not have happened if users were wearing their helmets. Period.

Perspective and history

As a skate park advocate that has been working on getting a skatepark for our City, I find the disregard of the posted rules very disappointing.The City spent well over $500,000 for this incredible park to be built and howdo a number of skaters thank the City? They give them the collective finger byblowing off the rules and next thing you know we’re in the media looking like abunch of spoiled ungrateful brats.

On the other hand I am not surprised. As a friend of minepointed out, gratitude is an elusive character quality that takes years tocultivate. Few of us have it in our younger years. Many skaters have no idea of how much time aneffort went into getting this park so showing gratitude is low on the prioritylist- especially if being grateful means looking “uncool” to your friends or “limitsyour ability to creatively express yourself.”

It’s also important to keep in mind that the helmet rule isnot enforced in any of the local area skate parks so what we have is a youngergeneration, perhaps two generations ofskaters that have grown up not wearing helmets. Even within most California skate parks, whichalso have similar helmet ordinances, you will find the majority of userswithout helmets.

I am encouraged to see a number of skaters that are wearinghelmets, especially the younger kids and older skaters that have been involvedwith taking the Tobey skate park project to fruition.

I hope that City is able to get users to wear their helmets, it'sfor their own good mind you, but based on what I have seen in most parks, itwill be an uphill battle.

In the meantime, Skatelife will continue to slowlychange the skate culture’s attitude towards wearing helmets as we work withteaching skateboarding to kids and their families at the park on Saturdays. One day, I hope, the next generation ofskateboarders will see wearing a helmet no differently than wearing theirseat-belts.

In the meantime wear helmet at the park and show some gratitude to our City. After all they made us an awesome first rate skate park!

Blues City Skates donates protective equipment for kids learning to skate

2011-05-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday Emily Ward-Markle contacted me and indicated her interest in having her new business help out the skate community. Emily and her business partner ( and fellow Derby girl!) just opened up Blues City Skates.

I asked Emily how she found herself starting a skate business.

This was what she had to say:

" I started doing roller derby about a year and a half ago and instantly fell in love with it. However, as I progressed I realized there were no local businesses where I could buy skates, get skates repaired or anything that catered to roller derby, even though the modern movement has flared with a vengeance."

So there you have it. If you are a looking place that really knows their skates and are also is very passionate about what they do then you need to check out the new shop. You can also find the shop on FB here.

As you know from a recent post on the website, Skatelife received a lot of skate helmets from the Tony Hawk Foundation but we're still in need of pads especially children's wrist-guards. Thanks to Blue City skates we'll be receiving a bunch of wrist-guards! If you come to our May 14the family "learn to skate" clinic you can thank Emily for providing the wrist-guards for your children.

We are very grateful for Blues City Skates becoming our 2nd official sponsor!

Council moves skate park project forward

2010-12-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

For more details check out the Memphis Daily News report on Tuesday's City Council meeting.

I think the gist of the vote was a motion to approve the Tobey skate park design. We're getting closer!

Innovative edge lives outdoors

2010-12-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

CEO for cities wrote the below post that suggests a relationship between a city's outdoor recreational options and its "innovative edge." It's not an earth shattering type of finding since it's already been shown that exercise greatly enhances brain function, but still it's useful and meaningful data that further supports our need to foster a healthier community full of outdoor recreational options to chose from.
Doing this also means healthier more creative kids which is what excites me even more than boosting our "innovative edge."

"A recent analysis of Portland’s athletic and outdoor cluster released by Portland Development Commission may also shed light on clusters.

Joe Cortright, a collaborator on the study says:

“The athletic and outdoor cluster is remarkable for many reasons. The jobs in Portland are at the apex of a global industry. Firms in the industry depend heavily on the local talent base, which is producing entrepreneurs and spinoff firms, and also attracting businesses to locate or relocate here. And the industry's innovative edge draws heavily from its close connections to the region's outdoor culture. Athletic and outdoor firms learn from and extend the region's "hybrid lifestyle"--blending work and play, and turn this knowledge into new designs and products. And the athletic and outdoor industry is a critical component of the region's creative industries.”

A tour of the Tobey skate park design

2010-11-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Our preliminary skate park design has been posted on the web! Shown above is the bird's eye view of the Tobey skate park design. If you would like to see other angles of the design, go to the Wormhoudt Inc website where Zach Wormhoudt's firm has posted images showing multiple views of the park. Check it out.

Let's a take a little tour of the lay-out so we can fully appreciate the careful thought that has gone into designing our skate park.

Terrain is all inclusive

One of the big mistakes commonly seen in skate parks is the absence of a gradual transition from beginner features to advanced features. Sometimes a park will host mostly beginner terrain but then have few intermediate or advanced areas or you will see parks that have beginner and advanced elements but lack intermediate terrain. For example, the Oxford skate park has an incredible advanced area that is 6-10 feet high that abruptly transitions to a beginner area that is only 3 feet. Going from 3 to 6 feet requires huge jump in skill level that few will make at a younger age. Ideally you would have some 4 and 5 foot terrain mixed in as well.

As shown in the image below, the Tobey skate park lay-out is designed to have a diverse type of terrain that caters to a large range of skill levels and skate styles.

The green squiggled line marks the beginner/intermediate area. The yellow line marks the street area which is for intermediate and advanced users. The black line marks the intermediate advanced area.

The beginner area hosts a feature known as the snake run. For a teaser/preview of what we can expect the snake run to look like, check out the Venice beach snake run being skating by six year old Asher Bradshaw in the this YouTube video. The snake-run is about 40 seconds into the video. Pretty amazing feature and kid!

In the picture below the the "snake path" is shown as a green line while red dotted arcs indicate areas in the snake run that will be used by more advanced users. These dotted arcs represent places where users will jump or "ollie" over sections of the run.

There is another beginner area outlined with a black circle. This area hosts a mini-halfpipe feature that will allow 4-5 year old kids to learn how to skate while also keeping kids out of high traffic areas. This is an important feature to have in order to minimize collisions with younger children.

Intermediate/Advanced bowl Area

There are two bowls in the area that are connected to each other. There is a five foot intermediate bowl (circled with the red dotted line) and there is the advanced bowl ( circled with the solid red line). The advanced bowl ranges from 6 to 10 feet in height. All levels of skateboarders will enjoy this area, however what makes this area advanced is the height of deeper bowl. Beginners and intermediate skaters will roll around the bottom of these bowls while the advanced riders will actually ride and grind on top edges of the large bowl. Advanced riders will also be able to launch 2-6 feet into the air because of the height and the design of the two interconnected bowls.

Street area

There are eleven street features ( circled and numbered below in yellow) which include a flat rail (1), a low down rail (2), step-up fun box (3), snake-run ledge (4), table-top step down (5), hubba ledge (6), return flat-bank (7), gap ledge (8), back extension ledge (9), a bank to bank (10) and a curved hubba ledge combination (11). It's quite amazing that Zach could squeeze these many features into a 10,000 square foot space.

All in all, we are going to have a fantastic park! Although our park will not be big, it will be packed with stuff that will be fun for all different ability levels. My guess is that parents who have not skated for years will have a hard time just sitting there and watching there kids skate-it will turn into a family affair. Let's get this park built!

Still here!

2010-11-05T07:15:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it's been six months since my last post.

My apologies for letting my vast reader audience down ( all two of you ).

Despite not blogging for awhile, it's been busy here in Memphis skateland.

We had a public meeting in September that was kicked-off by our own Mayor, one of our collaborators, Splinter Youth inc won a Give365 grant and MAM had a demo at Greenlaw with the Untitled skate team! Congrats to Mark Jannetta on pulling down that grant. He'll be using the grant funds to build a portable skate-park set-up that he will use to bring skateboarding to kids in other community centers through out the Memphis area.

Faithskate and and Advent Session finished their 3rd and 1st season(s) of hosting bi-weekly skate sessions for the Bartlett and Cordova youth. Well done and much appreciated.

In September, Zach Wormhoudt, our skate park designer gave a thorough presentation at the public meeting of what type of skate park we should expect to see when the park opens next fall.

A big thanks to everyone who took the public skate park survey and attended the public meeting. Your voices were heard and are reflected in the preliminary design that is now up on the Wormhoudt Inc website. Check it out here. It's still preliminary and has to be approved by the City so we won't "officially" celebrate just yet..

We're stoked on the design and certainly hope you are too! The park design has a lot of beginner terrain in it that will make the park very friendly to small kids and families. I'll get more into layout details in another post soon.

The Final 3 day push in May to win a skate park for Binghampton!

2010-04-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

We are still rallying for April but we'll push hard the first three days of May to get into the top two positions.

If we hit the top two spots in the first three days we will vote the rest of the month to stay there. If we don’t hit the top two, we’re done voting.

Vote for our partners too! They are voting for us.

We have 9 Pepsi partners so we have nine ideas to vote for each day. The “ideas” that won in April used this strategy.

To win, each partner MUST vote for the other 9 ideas.
Voting for 9 partners will take you about 1 minute:

The first time you vote for the 10 ideas, it will take you about 5 minutes. However, the Pepsi refresh site remembers what ideas you voted for so the next day you can vote for all of the ideas of our 9 partners in about a minute.

How?

The next day ‘sign-in’ at the bottom left part of the pepsirefresh.com site. After you “sign-in” the “sign-in” will disappear and be replaced with “Your profile.” Click on it and a new webpage will load with all the ideas you voted for the day before. Vote for all ten ideas. Repeat daily.

We'll vote for you!

Thank you all for your dedication for voting each day in April. If you would like to continue to vote but are a bit tired of voting we'll vote for you. Send us your name, email and date of birth and we'll vote for you. You can send your info
here

Here is are the vote buttons for our project and our partner's projects:

Diversity rules in skateboarding high school competitions

2010-01-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

Here is an article taken from the LA Times. Consistent with it's national passtime status, skateboarding is quickly gaining popularity in high school sports. The article reports that three years ago there were only three high schools that offered the sport. Three years later there are over 40 along with a new competition between schools.

Read on:

"Southern California is the place where alternative sports flourish because on any given day, thanks to wonderful weather and diverse geographic offerings, the sports options are overflowing.

Let's count the diversions: surfing, roller hockey, motocross, ice hockey, rugby, cricket, boxing, rowing, bowling, sailing, rock climbing, skiing, fencing .

Skateboarding growing in popularity among high school sports
HIGH SCHOOL NOTEBOOK
The National High School Skateboarding Assn. began with seven high schools three years ago and has 40 schools represented this season, and it continues to gain participation and sponsorship.
May 04, 2009|ERIC SONDHEIMER, ON HIGH SCHOOLS

Southern California is the place where alternative sports flourish because on any given day, thanks to wonderful weather and diverse geographic offerings, the sports options are overflowing.

Let's count the diversions: surfing, roller hockey, motocross, ice hockey, rugby, cricket, boxing, rowing, bowling, sailing, rock climbing, skiing, fencing . . .
Ads by Google

So there I was Saturday morning in Culver City seeing the adventure spirit of teenagers exploring, experimenting and enjoying the adrenaline rush of skateboarding.

This was the Southland at its best, kids 14 to 18 from seemingly every ethnic background showing the magic of what can happen when diversity and ingenuity converge.

They came from Los Alamitos, Palmdale, Venice, Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Santa Monica, Riverside and Long Beach to represent their high schools and compete as individuals in the fledgling National High School Skateboard Assn.'s Future AM Series, where by the end of June, the top 20 individuals will be invited to skate this summer in an X Games "best trick contest" on the X Games street course.

Last season, the top individual was Jeremiah Bohnet, a 5-foot-9, 130-pound junior from Palisades High whose shiny braces can be seen each time he flashes his friendly smile as he maneuvers his skateboard among the rails, banks and ledges on the concrete course.

"I love to skateboard and do tricks," he said.

"It's never-ending, a lot like video games, but you can never beat it."

There were free snow cones and free energy drinks, a DJ playing loud music and even some parents sitting in bleachers.

But mostly, there were kids from different stripes and communities, some with short hair, some with long hair, and all committed to engaging in a day of fun and games in a sport they cherish.

"When I skate, it's not for money or product," Bohnet said. "It's for the love of skating. All my troubles go away. It's almost another world."

Sports are known for bringing together people from different backgrounds, and the diversity among skateboarders is striking. And they even follow directions, such as putting on helmets when asked.

"A lot of people think skateboarding is about destruction and vandalism of private property," Bohnet said. "I think it's an art form. You're expressing yourself in a different form."

Bohnet really nailed what skating is all about. Skating is a different world where one can go an freely express themselves and forget for just a few hours all the pressures that come with growing up or having a job or whatever.

One of my favorite quotes is from Liz Kerr a Philidelphia Mom of three teenagers who says it this way: "skateboarding is a panacea for the problems of the American teen — racism, classism, crazed sideline parents, epidemic obesity, drugs, alcohol, and the isolation of video and computer games."

We'll keep pushing.

In the spirit of transparency- what's going on??

2009-11-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

Today AC Wharton signed an executive order that will promote a more open form of government where public records and government officials salaries would be available for public viewing.

I would like to add to that list. How about we make certain public projects available online so that people can track the progress of that specific project.

Perhaps not every project but ones that are known to have a significant level of public interest associated with them. The public skate park, a project that was funded since July 2008 with $440,000 CIP money, would be a model project.

What type of public interest? We had 300+ skateboarders and close to 400+ people show up to show their support for a public skate park in April 2008 and the project has been written up in both the Flyer and the CA.

Almost a year and a half has passed and at this point, all I can tell ( all I know ) you is I think the skate park will be at Glenview park and I don't have any idea when groundbreaking will occur. I tell people all the time that "hopefully" we'll have a skate park by next summer but honestly I don't know. This has been a bit frustrating for the skate community and a number of the skateboarders doubt it when I tell them we are going to have a skate park. If only I could point them to a government url and say "see here is what's happened so far!"

Perhaps an online document would help encourage a more efficient collaborative process between the public, parks and rec and the department of engineering. I can tell you this much, the construction takes only 6 months for a small skate park, what happens before that is a big "?" that could be answered by bringing the project online......

Update: Looks like other cities could benefit from this system too.

"Green" skate decks

2009-11-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are looking for a local socially and environmentally minded skate deck company, look no further.

Comet skateboards is the first company to step up to the challenge of making a "green deck."

The company is also a B certified corporation which is a big deal since there are only a few hundred companies that have passed the B criteria. Check out the other companies, you'll be inspired!

I ordered my Shred City 35" deck yesterday so we'll see how that goes.

If the deck "shreds" perhaps we can coax CBS, Desoto Sk8 or Cheapskates into selling some Comets. Look for a product review coming soon....

Take the final Mud Island Land Use Study online survey : our two cents

2009-10-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well the final survey is out for you to put your two cents on the three proposed land use study maps. Keep in mind this is a map that the RDC will use for the next twenty years to determine what will be on the Island.

When I took this survey here are the few key thoughts that guided how I responded to the survey questions.

1. Less is more: The City has invested $60 million into the existing River Park so let's invest the least amount of money on key facilities that will allow us to be good stewards of that initial investment.

2. The theme of the park is a safe family friendly place to visit : Let's build on that with recreation.

3. We have an excess of retail and restaurants in our city: Walk down Main street and count the number of vacant retail spaces. Then think about the River Park which is far less accessible and consider how well a business would do. Focus on utilizing existing River park retail space that will meet the specific needs of visitors of the River park such as a Skate shop, skate rentals, snack shop, coffee shop, canoe rentals, boat rentals, fishing gear rental etc.....

4. Access: A land pedestrian bridge from Beale Street Landing would make the South tip of the Island for more accessible. The bummer part is the cost of the bridge, but that doesn't take away from the need for one.

5. Heat: It's hot !!! A splash park, water park or a flow rider ( standing wave) or a combination of the three would be a complement/heat alternative to the skate park on the South tip when it's too hot to do anything else.

6. Playground: While the big kids skate the Moms and small kids have the playground or greenbelt path.

7. Extension of the Greenbelt: This is a no brainer even if the green built does not extend pass the security gates at least it could extend from the Auction Bridge to the Security gates. However, this is a Land use study so that means it could eventually extend all the way to the tip.

8. Skate park on the SOUTH TIP: The skate park should be highly visible and serve as the focal point of the island.

9. My favorite land use study map: is #2 then #1 and I simply don't support #3. Map two has the skate park or recreational space on the South tip.

Here are my top 4:

1. Skate park on South Tip
2. Playground
3. Extension of the greenbelt
4. Splash park/water park

Have fun!

Final public meetings for the Mud Island River park land use sutdy- come!

2009-09-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

The final Mud Island meeting is upon us and this will be the grand finale for the public master planning process that started last March.

For those who were not able to attend the first two rounds of meetings, please try to attend one of these final meetings. We need you there. We especially need families and their children to attend since we only had a few in the past few meetings. The new River park plans are about kids too!

The final three master plans will be shown and we will have our chance to speak up and let the planners know what we think about the plans. Expect to see some exciting presentations with skate and family friendly space as key themes in these plans.

See you all there!

Meeting Details:

1. September 29 meeting: Memphis Botanic Garden (750 Cherry Road), 5:45 pm
2. October 1 meeting: Mud Island River park ( Inside the Mud Island River Park) Harbor Landing, 5:45 pm

Skate park 101: Lessons for Mud Island

2009-09-16T12:56:00.001-07:00

Last year an article came out that reported on less then stellar skate attendance numbers at one of the "larger" parks in the Atlanta area. The article was pointing out that the city was not making it's budget numbers on the newly minted Brooks run skate park that opened in 2007.

Let's do some investigating to see if we can come up with some answers that might help this community address some of these concerns.

Misunderstanding the role of a skate park

First of all, as the past proved, skate parks are not good sources of revenues. Many of our finest concrete skate parks closed down in the 1980's because they could no longer afford the liability insurance. The re-emergence of skate parks can be largely attributed to the migration of skate parks into the public realm. Cities can afford the lighting and umbrella the liability into their existing insurance policies. Bottom line, most of the best skate parks in the country are free and talking about revenues associated with a skate park is like talking about how much money you can make charging people to play baseball at your local neighborhood park.

Skate parks are public space and should be free, especially neighborhood skate parks. The return on your investment for skate parks is an improved quality of life for its citizens.

Overblown or unrealistic expectations

This park was touted as a premier park when in reality it was an oversized neighborhood park that became very unappealing to the skaters because of the availability of nearby skate parks that had no fees or pad restrictions.

Kris Gurley says it best:

"I see this as an idea that got blown out of proportion and then executed in a half-assed fashion. They state that it was originally conceived as a small park and then expanded it later. I think it's a combination of someone filling their heads with pipe dreams and the powers that built it whittling it down to just an average park while still expecting to sit back and rake in the money. Brook Run doesn't offer enough incentive to pull people away from the other parks in the area."

Or perhaps you like a food analogy. Kris says:

"If you wanted a milkshake and you saw a guy selling a 16oz. shake for a dollar or you could get a 14oz shake for free just down the street, which would you chose?"

The lesson learned is if you have a number of quality competing parks that are free, you had better offer a pretty amazing skate park if you expect to charge for skating.
Memphis is in a great position for now since we really don't have any high quality skate parks to chose from but that will change as we continue to advocate for and build more skate parks in the region. The Mud Island skate park will need to be sizable and offer a skating experiencing that will not be duplicated elsewhere. It will have an entirely different role then a small to medium sized park.

Brooks run is nice midsized neighbhor hood park for an outlying suburb town of Atlanta, not a premier destination skate park as it has been touted. The article simply reports this reality and then suggests the park is struggling.

Location

If you are going to build a premier skate park , assuming that it actually is a premier park, then build it where it can be seen by many. A large skate park belongs downtown where it is visible and can be enjoyed by the viewer and the participant. This skate park is 18 miles from downtown Atlanta.

The civic bottom line: Quality of Life

IMHO a skate park on Mud Island is there to bring people back to the Island and allow River park and Downtown businesses to flourish as a result of that influx of new visitors. Perhaps the River Park will charge a nominal fee, but if we design this park as ALL of US want it designed then it will be worth it.

Personally I would like to see the park have no fee but a small fee could be a good compromise if it means the park is safer and we can keep the lights on. The critical task for the RDC is to clearly articulate the role of the skate park. The project is more about improving the quality of life of it's citizens and less about making a big buck on the island. That's what was promised the first time around.

The RDC will need to inspire the City Council and Memphis citizens by helping them see success as having a wonderful River park that shouts out to travelers going buy that Memphis "get's it." We already know we are a cool city but why not let them see it from the M-bridge?

Car Collisions

2009-08-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

When I signed up for skateboarding Google alerts the last thing I expected to receive were numerous updates on collisions between skateboarders and cars.

In the past three weeks there have been 4 fatalities and just yesterday a 9 year girl was killed while skateboarding in her drive way.

What all this points to is the need for smaller kids and teens to have a safe place to recreate while skateboarding especially as skateboarding's popularity continues to increase among younger kids. Skateboarding collisions with cars continue to confound skateboarding injury rates. Case in point: the injury rate goes down ten fold when a person skates within a skate park.

IMHO it would seem a city would be more liable for not having skate parks.

Admittedly, we all in our youth have done stupid things, but stupid behavior shouldn't be fatal in consequence. So....don't tie a rope to your friends car and pretend you are water skiing on your skateboard! Parents-keep a close eye on your kids.

Memphis needs Skate parks where stupid can be safe, constructive and fun.

Vote for N. Memphis youth to win the Nike Backyourblock grant

2009-08-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

We have signed up for the Nike BackYourBlock online grant contest.

Whoever gets the most online votes for the Nike store in their city wins between $2500-$5000.

If we win, 100% of the money will be used to build ramps for the North Memphis youth that are participants in the GoldenChildMinistry organization which operates out of Greenlaw community center.

This is a big deal for us since we currently can only take a few kids skateboarding- maybe 1 once a month. With ramps at their center they will be able skate everyday.

Take 30 seconds to vote for the Nike BackYourBlock grant. Here is the link

Note: You can vote more then once if you have more then one email. We recommend using the facebook voting option since you can share with your facebook friends that you voted.

Be sure to share this with your friends, it's the easiest and shortest community project you'll ever do.

Go vote!

Mixing Portland civics + skateboarders = "skateboarding capital of the world!"

2009-07-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

Portland's Skate signs

An article published today in the Wall street journal gives you a glimpse of what the future will look like when skateboarders grow up and go into politics.

Thanks to Tom Miller and a active passionate skate community, Portland has not 1 skate park but 19 proposed skate parks! And they have trails with little skater stick-figure dudes letting you know when you are entering a skateboarding area (see above). Note: Portland also has a smaller population then Memphis.

Their master plan includes 13 neighborhood skate spots, 5 district parks ( similar in size to our proposed public skate park for Midtown Memphis) and one large Downtown Anchor park. Message to Memphis Park and Recreation: Large anchor skate parks play their own unique role just as stadiums do for other sports.

This seems a bit over the top but Portland's parks department is simply responding to the national demand for skateboarding facilities. Portlands Mayor says it best " the power of the city’s skate community comes mostly from the sport’s growing numbers. Portland’s parks department was pumping out services that were based on antiquated views."

Parting shot: Skaterboarders are growing up and when they become of age, you will see more successful cities taking on similar strategies.

Notes: Portland population was 578,000 in 2008 as compared to our Memphis population of 670,000. Tells you there is a little room for just one public skatepark and a big park on Mud Island. Take notice Memphis and prepare accordingly for the future.

The promise of Mud Island: Looking back 10 years

2009-07-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

I found this article at The Gathering at the Riverfront archive.

"Thursday, June 17, 1999
You Bet, Herenton Says, Mud Island Ought to Be Free, Riverside Tamer
Commercial Appeal
By Deborah M. Clubb

Mayor Willie Herenton on Wednesday quickly embraced two tough recommendations for the Memphis waterfront: Make Mud Island River Park free, and subdue the traffic on Riverside Drive.

Herenton joined members of three citizen focus groups and other city leaders aboard the Island Queen to hear results of the groups' discussions.

About 60 people participated in the sessions Tuesday and Wednesday organized by the mayor's Riverfront Steering Committee and funded by the Plough Foundation. They were asked to focus on solutions to development issues raised during a larger February workshop. Led by Matt Arnn of The Waterfront Center in Washington, the groups focused on solving problems related to access, docking, cobblestones, Mud Island River Park and other waterfront parks and public spaces.

All three groups concurred that the river park should not have to make money, that it should be free and easy to access.

Part of increasing access would be to ``calm Riverside Drive traffic'' and make several pedestrian crossings over it from east-west streets, the groups said.

Despite any costs, Herenton said, "Absolutely, Mud Island must become user-friendly (with) free access to families. Looking at this list, I'm excited about calming Riverside Drive traffic."

In earlier remarks, Herenton vowed to develop "the unique terrain we have on the Memphis riverfront. . . . We're going to make this happen." City Public Works Division staff explained their drawings of concepts that arose after the February discussion. The ideas included a land bridge to Mud Island from Court Street; a drawbridge and a 1,900-foot pedestrian bridge from Beale; a dock on six acres of Tom Lee Park and a new dock notched into the cobblestones.

After animated discussions, none won rousing support. But the drawbridge and dock concepts drew calls for further consideration.

The other points on which all three groups agreed were.

-- Water taxis in the harbor.

-- Continued docking of small excursion boats at the historic cobblestones.

-- Phase out automobile parking on cobblestones.

-- Add "new generation" activities to the river park.

-- Add private amenities and activities to waterfront parks, such as bike or skate rental, food vendors or a conference center hotel.

-- Upgrade design elements along the riverfront to create connections. Increase animation, security and maintenance in parks and public spaces.

The steering committee will consider the recommendations July 28. They are to present a final proposal to Herenton by year's end.

Copyright (c) 1999 The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN

Labels: Deborah-Clubb, Land-Bridge, News, Steering-Committee, Waterfront-Center

posted by freshbits at 6/17/1999"

Friends, the time for waiting is over. We have the data, we know what successful cities are doing to make themselves standout and we are fortunate that at this point in the game that every city does not have a major skate park so let's get this done.

A word from the founder of FaithSkate Memphis

2009-07-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

History

FaithSkate founder, Matt Wright, along with his wife Missy, prayed for and financially supported SkateChurch Portland for three years until led to start a similar group in the Memphis area. Matt spoke with anybody that would listen for another THREE YEARS until God finally opened the doors to start FaithSkate.

In June 2008, Matt started in the Faith Baptist parking lot with one ramp and 5 kids. The ministry quickly grew and Matt brought on Brad Wood, a long time friend and fellow skate enthusiast, to partner in the effort. Within 3 months, FaithSkate averaged 25 skaters and developed a good team of volunteers to help with the effort. The ministry now has 5 ramps, 2 fun boxes, 2 rails and a dedicated space to house all the skate equipment. This June FaithSkate hosted its first skate competition and had over 125 people show up!

Skating on Faith

Here is what Matt Wright has to say about founding Faithskate:

"Faith plays a large role in my life as a Christian and it really played a large role when I felt led to start FaithSkate. Faith is simply doing or taking action without really being guaranteed of a certain outcome. We all exercise faith to some extent, such as going to college without really knowing if we will get a good job or marrying someone without knowing what our spouse will be like in ten years.

As our biography shows it took years, literally, to have someone say "yes" to the ministry instead of "no." My Christian faith is not much different from dropping in on a big gnarly ramp. You have to have faith that your board will catch you rather then splatting on the bottom.

When you look down from the top of the ramp , you think "no way man, I'll fall and get hurt." But when you gather up that courage to do it and it works there's no feeling like that in the world. At age 13, I accepted by faith what the Christian Faith was offering- a free gift. A free gift to hang out with God, for forever, was too good to pass up. So, I accepted by faith that God existed, that he knew what he was doing and could run my life better then I could. That doesn't mean I'm perfect, and just like dropping in I screw up all the time, but I still have faith that God's there for me.

Here are some of my favorite verses from the Bible that pick me up after having a “life splatting” experience.

I Peter 1 6-9
"(6) So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. (7) These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold-though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
(8) You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. (9) The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls."

Faith is the driving force that sustains a new idea or skate trick from its conception to reality and what I am trying to show the skaters is that if you think putting your faith in those tiny four wheels is a thrill, come and see what thrill awaits you when you check out what Jesus Christ has in store for your life. "

Introducing Faithskate Memphis!

2009-07-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

Imagine a skate scene that just happened to be a church as well. This is what happened almost twenty years ago when the first skate church formed in Portland Oregon. It was a scene similar to what happened when the early church existed within the culture rather then apart from it in it’s own strange little isolated world.

We have some Memphians that were inspired by the Oregon Skate church. They took their inspiration and put it to action.

In 2008, Matt Wright and Brad Wood started FaithSk8 Memphis in order to reach out to large group of youth. Skating youth. They figured that with skaters so passionate about skateboarding, perhaps they could share their own passion for their personal Faith through skating. By the way, Matt and Brad skate too!

I truly admire what Matt and Brad have started and I know they that their efforts will continue to grow both in number and in the lives changed by encouragement and love that they bring to the youth. Their sessions are simply a place where youth can come skate or just hang out and have a place where someone like Matt or Brad can sit down and listen to them. Thanks to their efforts, they are redefining "church" and making it relevant to a group of youth that don't relate to or are even offended by the modern day “church culture."

If you are looking for a positive and safe place for your kids to go and skate, then perhaps consider checking out one of Faithskate.org's Friday skate events. Even if you don't consider yourself a "religious person" or are uncomfortable with the “church culture” I think you will be encouraged by what they are they doing out there. You can check out their website here or their Facebook group here.

Faithskate also takes groups of kids on day trips to local skateparks including Nashville, Tennessee, Oxford, Mississippi and Marion, Arkansas.
All in all, the organization has skated with and built relationships with well over 100 kids.

As a result of their dedication to these youth, many of the skateboarders have heard and seen a more compassionate, relevant and accepting side of the Christian Faith that they may have never experienced growing up in the mainstream ‘church culture.” A culture that often labels and discards the same misfits and losers that Jesus Christ befriended, loved and hung out with 2000 years ago.

In the next post, Matt will give his own account of his experience with FaithSkate Memphis.

21st Century skate park design : Fusion of skating's surfing and urban influences

2009-07-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

Skateboarding has had a lot of challenges thrown at it, so much that you would think the activity would have died a long time ago. It’s still outlawed in most cities with the exception of Vancouver, Canada. Thanks to these challenges, we have seen skateboarding persistently evolve into an activity that has become a host of many skating subcultures that surfaced by its mechanism of its survival. Because of this diversity, it is critical that that both our urban and skate park architect’s designs reflect their awareness of these various subcultures and the skate styles/designs associated with them.

However, depending on who is advocating for the skate park, one subculture’s preferences can weigh in heavily, at the exclusion of the other. Today I read an article that exemplified this.Here is the link to the article. A follow up post can be found on the author's blog.

Shown above is the impressive design of the proposed Paine park skate plaza. Click on it for a better look. For more pictures go to the design page for the project.

Below is a response that I sent to the author who was espousing the amazing design of the future Paine skate plaza in Philadelphia. This skate plaza like it’s Love park predecessor (R.I.P Love) will likely be hailed as the new urban design standard for naturally integrating urban skating into a modern city park.

“I just finished reading your article you published last year in the Philadelphia Enquirer about the need to embrace the skate culture by re-evaluating our approach to urban design.

The Paine's park project that you are working on will clearly demonstrate to other city planners how to effectively design urban parks that will accommodate, encourage and withstand the wear-and tear of the growing population of urban dwellers that skateboard.

Currently in Memphis, we have a new urban park, known as the Beale Street Landing that is being constructed that looks similar in concept to the Philadelphia’s Paine park plans. The main difference being that it was not intentionally designed for skateboarding. Hopefully we will have a more civil outcome then what was experienced for Love Park since according to a number of our "street" skateboarders our new park looks like a world-class skate plaza.

Clearly with your involvement in the Paine project, you have become a major "non-skateboarder" advocate for the Philadelphia skate community, kudos to you for serving in a role that every city needs- Philadelphia has needed one for a long time. I have found myself stepping into that role here for the Memphis skate community while working as a full time scientist at St. Jude.

You mentioned that skateboarding has largely evolved from away from its surfing roots to more of an urban movement. This is absolutely true especially since 99% of the skate population lives somewhere besides the coast. What I did want to clarify with you was your claim that self-contained skate parks have become an "outmoded" form of skating and that skateboarders these days largely are looking for natural urban terrain. It’s not that simple. This switch was not a natural evolution. Back in the 1970's most of the concrete “self-contained” parks that were built to emulate surfing (i.e. snake runs, interconnected bowls) were owned by Mom and Pop set-ups as well as a number of investors who thought they could cash in on the huge wave of popularity. Skate parks as they found out, were not profitable endeavors so most of the parks became more Mom and Pop set-ups which was fine for awhile until liability insurance started to sky-rocket and forced a lot of the skate parks to close. The same thing happened in our city last year when we lost our only skate park which was a privately owned indoor park-their rent doubled. We lost most of our skate parks in the 1980's and skateboarders had no choice but to go to the streets. Thankfully today, most skate parks are public domain.

However, the surfing roots of skateboarding run strong in our skateboarding community and most of our Memphis skaters are frankly tired of solely skating on the street and crave skating elements that are not found in the streetscape. We had a meeting with 20 skateboarders, all “street” or urban skateboarders, with the Germantown (a local suburb) Parks staff last year. They had received $100K to update their skate park and wanted to know what the skateboarders wanted. Unanimously, all 20 youth asked for a skate bowl. My main point is, as one advocate to another it's important to realize that while some venues may appear 'outmoded", in reality the evolution of skating venues was simply a mechanism of survival. “Self-contained” skate parks are just as critical a component to a skate friendly city as is designing new urban elements/architecture that accommodate skateboarders that work, live and skate in the area. A “self-contained” park, when carefully and thoughtfully designed, provides a family friendly area where kids can safely learn to skateboard. At these parks, elements can be designed so that new participants, young or old, can incrementally increase their skill levels without making dangerous attempts to master urban skate elements that they are not ready for.

In reality, we have a heterogeneous skateboarding population some of which as they become more skillful will be drawn to the “street” design, others will be more drawn to surfing curvy-linear design while most of us will cross-pollinate and skate a little of both.

As advocates we should clearly articulate the importance of each design/facility and be certain to promote both so that future generations of kids and potential users have access to the full skate experience.

Thanks again for your dedicated efforts to make a Philadelphia a great place for people to skate!

Gratefully,

Aaron”

Bottom line: Building a 21st premier skate park means to design the skating elements to be inclusive as possible to diverse range of users- both skateboarders and participants in other activities such as skiing, snowboarding and roller skating who could benefit from cross-training in a park who’s design allows for that option. This is particularly important in Memphis where outdoor recreation enthusiasts have limited options.

When our youth are in engaged in a public process: let's listen to them

2009-05-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Sherman Willmott, Stax Museum visionary recently posted this comment on the Smart City blog. It's worth a repost since no one puts the truth more succinctly then him. Needless to say I hope as with Sherman that some of our Chamber folks were in attendance because this meeting was all about planning for a Memphis that will attract the talent that is so sought after by cities and by our Chamber.

Best said in his words:

"I wish (hope?) the Chamber of Commerce was at the meetings the RDC held last week. What I saw at the Mud Island meeting was the future of Memphis: approximately 50-75 teenagers (most with their parents!) showing up on a weeknight at a downtown government planning meeting for the future of their city!

If the Chamber understands anything about how communities grow & thrive, they will understand (from this community involvement) the importance of this skate park on Mud Island to the future of this city.

Think about it! I have never seen teenagers engaged in our political process on this level before. The group attending was just the tip of the iceburg lettuce for whom would utilize a world-class skate park on the south end of Mud Island.

I hope the Chamber "gets" it finally and gets behind this important Memphis project."

Memphians: Seize the opportunity!

2009-05-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

We now have an opportunity to leap-frog Memphis to a level shared by some of the most recreationally rich cities. This opportunity is again available in the form of the second round public meetings hosted by the Memphis Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC).

In these meetings unlike the Phase I meetings in March, the public will be narrowing down all ideas suggested by voting on 10 different master plans. We want to make sure that the skate park, snake run, childre's play ground, splash parks and year round access are well represented by our votes.

At the core of the revitalized Mud Island is the skate park. All other amenities will be built around it's powerful repeat draw which we know is a given considering the high repeat nature of the activity and its ranking as the # 3 national pass-time.

Dream and build it but first show up

This facility would be large enough to host the X-games or the Mountain dew tour-both of which are hugely popular events. What many are unaware of is that skateboarding and other “actions sports” such as rollerblading are now mainstream activities in cities across the U.S. In 2004, Sports illustrated called skateboarding the “greatest influence on the American youth culture of the late 20th century.”

Please join Skatelife in making Memphis as rich in it’s recreational outlets as it already is with its food and music culture.

The most critical factor right now for this project to move forward is your presence at these meetings. It's all about holding our officials accountable for doing something with the $400,000 dollars they are spending on these meetings!

There will be two meetings

1.Memphis Botanical Gardens
Tuesday May 12th, from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location: Memphis Botanic Gardens, 750 Cherry Road (near Audobon Park)

2. Downtown Meeting
Thursday May 14th from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location:MIRP Harbor Landing, 101 Island Drive (gate security will give
directions) Basically drive to Mud Island and go through the security gates. It's
on Mud Island.

Public support needed at Mud Island Meetings

2009-05-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

I can say without a doubt that there are few institutions that provide the wealth of scientific support that exists at the St. Jude campus.

Yet, for all the recruiting efforts of our top Memphis companies such as St. Jude or Fedex, there is an issue that undermines these efforts. It’s a quality of life issue. Where a recruit moving from another city would expect to find a diverse range of fun outdoor activities for families, singles and youth, he/she instead discovers a recreational void. Memphis needs these positive physical outlets to help people achieve a better work/life balance. We need fun places to go outside and blow off some steam. More importantly our teenage youth, and eventually my two young boys, need more outlets to help them cope with all the pressures and temptations that come with growing up. In their words -they get bored and do stupid stuff.

We need to foster a new culture of exercise- Memphians know how to have fun with food and music, now we need to learn how to do the same by promoting, supporting and building fun outdoor recreational venues. In top U.S cities, interconnected walking or cycling paths as well as skateboarding /roller blading parks have become integrally woven into the urban fabric of the area. While Memphis has ample recreational space for traditional team-based sports it has no safe space available for activities that have in some cases surpassed in popularity some of the traditional sports. For example, in 2004 the number of skateboarding youth eclipsed the number of youth participating in baseball.

The bottom line: Recreation is a core attribute and priority among top U.S. cities. Consider these statistics: The cities that ranked number one as the fittest and safest cities also have the largest and most number of skate parks in the U.S. Colorado Springs is the current fittest city and has the most number of skate parks. It also just opened up the 4rth largest skate park in the U.S. San Jose has held top honors as the safest city from 2002-2007 and has the largest skate park in the U.S. Denver, America’s favorite city this year, built the 3rd largest skate park in 2003. Louisville, KY was host to the largest skate park in the U.S until San Jose surpassed it last year. More importantly, it’s the top city for recruiting families. Louisville also invested hundreds of millions into revitalizing its parks.

While skate parks are not solely responsible for these rankings, their presence reflects the leadership’s understanding that recreation is strongly linked to the quality life of its citizens.

We now have an opportunity to leap-frog Memphis to a level shared by some of the most recreationally rich cities. This opportunity comes to us this March and is being made available by the Memphis Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC). RDC will be partnering with the public to form a master plan for Mud Island. This master plan could be a game-changer for Memphis. I am asking Memphians to join me in advocating for a competition sized skateboard and rollerblade park.

This facility would be large enough to host the X-games or the Mountain dew tour-both of which are hugely popular events. What many are unaware of is that skateboarding and other “actions sports” such as rollerblading are now mainstream activities in cities across the U.S. In 2004, Sports illustrated called skateboarding the “greatest influence on the American youth culture of the late 20th century.” Skateboarding also transcends different cultures- the movie “Sour” documents friendships formed between Israeli and Palestinian skaters. Case in point, Memphis has a large diverse skating population that you will see first hand if you come to one of these meetings. Please join me in making Memphis as rich in it’s recreational outlets as it already is with its food and music culture.

Your support is needed:

To turn this project into a reality the support of the public is needed-now. Your presence is needed at some public meetings that the RDC will be holding in May. Here are the details:

Phase II meeting times.

There will be two meetings

1.Memphis Botanical Gardens
Tuesday May 12th, from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location: Memphis Botanic Gardens, 750 Cherry Road (near Audobon Park)

2. Downtown Meeting
Thursday May 14th from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location:MIRP Harbor Landing, 101 Island Drive (gate security will give
directions) Basically drive to Mud Island and go through the security gates. It's
on Mud Island.

Come and make a difference!

Skatelife Memphis' take on Phase I Mud Island River park Report

2009-05-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

The RDC sent out the results of the the Phase I Mud Island River park today.

Here is the report

Here is the highlight of the report: We showed up!!

Here are the number of people that participated in each meeting

1. Mud Island meeting- 125 people
2. North Memphis- 8 people
3. South Memphis - 8 people
4. Memphis botanical gardens- 125 people.

We promoted only the first and last meetings and it showed!

The report is long, so please take your time to go through it.

Setting the record straight

We would like to clarify some of the statements left by one of the focus groups.

What surprised us further is the statement they made just prior to this statement.

Here are the statements:

"The distance of MIRP from Downtown is a real challenge, and both
increasing accessibility and creating a “draw” for repeat visitors is very
important. "

We agree completely. So chose a recreational magnet where the user demand outpaces the supply, where access is no concern for the user and chose an activity that has one of the highest repeat-user bases.

And then this statement....

"A large skate park in MIRP would not be the best use; instead, smaller
skate parks located in parks around the city is a better way to motivate
resident involvement in skateboarding and is a trend seen around the
country."

Comparing large and small skate parks is like comparing apples and oranges. Regional size competition parks serve a different purpose then the smaller residential skate parks. The regional park is for competitions, weekend visits by residents and out of town visitors. It's a place to draw fans for skating competitions.

The residential park is for the local residents living near the park. If you build only small parks, particularly in a region like Shelby county where the demand is high, smaller parks become overcrowded from visitors coming in from all over the county. We will see this effect when the first Memphis pubic concrete park is built. It's basically the same as saying the Redbird Stadium is not good for Downtown because we are trying to draw residents into baseball through local baseball fields. Both are needed and serve unique roles that complement each other.

Building smaller parks in residential areas increases the user base which then creates a further need for a larger park. Colorado Springs has 5 skate parks with a population of 600,000. They could not keep up with the demand so the last park they built was their largest at 40,000 square feet. Reports from residents in that area indicate that this park is now over-crowded as well. Cities simply can not build enough skate space because of the overwhelming demand.

Secondly, there is no motivation needed to get kids to skate parks. You build them and they are packed from opening day onward.

What about duplicating efforts?

Another focus groups was concerned about duplicating efforts. For example what if they build a skate park at the Fairgrounds or in Shelby Farms?

Let's do the numbers. Nationally we have 4.5% of the population that skates. That's 45,000 users in Shelby County. A typical sized skate park, at 10,000 square feet, can safely accommodate 30 users. That gives you 333 square feet of space per user. Now if you have 45,000 users you will need 333x 45,000= 14 million square foot park needed. Let's say you over-crowd the park with 60 users. Now you only need 7 million square feet of skate space.

Let's say that we only have 1/10th the national average of skaters. Now we only need 700,000 square feet of skate space for 4500 skaters. 80,000 square feet on Mud Island and perhaps 10-20 10,000 sqft skate parks in Memphis' residential areas starts to make sense. Which is why we have 40 baseball fields in the City because at one time baseball participants had similar participant numbers as the current skateboarding population. So, chances are we won't be duplicating efforts for a long time, especially since each skate park is built with it's own unique elements thus providing a unique riding experience found only at that park.

Our overall take: Building a skate park on Mud Island is far from a done deal. We know that Mud Island needs a skate park to bring back numbers that will sustain the park with visitors year in and year out. We know that skateboarding is the # 3 pass-time in the country but for many skating is an unknown and is perceived to be an activity enjoyed only by the fringe. The Mud Island skate park will become a reality only through overwhelming the next public meetings with your support.

Come to the phase II meetings.......

A "Sneak Peek" into the future

2009-04-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

About a month ago Eric Mathews from Launch Memphis put me in touch with a lady by the name of Salisha (a.k.a. Petey) Franklin who along with her husband Kevin recently opened up this ultra cool hip-hop store just down the street from Sun Studios on Marshall. The name of their store is Sneak Peak The store features urban clothing apparel, which includes stuff on consignment as well as ultra hard-to-find sneakers.

Last Friday I met Shalisha and Kevin at their store where they were hosting a skate deck art contest. Wow! The artists did some amazing work on those decks. Some decks were airbrushed and looked like pictures you would see off a pink floyd album ( showing my age) and others were beyond description. Many hip hop themes as well. The message I gleaned the from the artwork on these decks is that skateboarding has firmly established itself as integral part of the urban scene. Check out some the decks on the Sneak Peek site

Since the Friday Sneak Peek event fell right on the heels of the FedEx Skatejam demo, Shalisha was kind enough to lend here artistic skills and made the informational flyer (see below) that I handed out for the next Mud Island public meeting coming up in May. We can all thank Carly Knight of the Memphis Grizzlies staff for putting the Fedex SkateJam together. There are pictures of the event online in the skatelife gallery.

We had a lot of skaters ,between 100-120, show up for the event with only a brief stint of myspace bulletin time to get the word out. The skaters are hungry for skate space! Shalisha said she had a large number of skaters come to the Sneak Peek event afterwards. I was happy to hear that her event was a success.

Look for more about Sneak Peek on Memphis Connect. They may post an interview with the them. For those of you that have not heard of Memphis Connect, their mission is to provide an online presence where "diverse city-shaping Memphians discuss the opportunities, organizations and activities that inspire them to make Memphis home." It's a site well worth book-marking and if you have something to share they would welcome your thoughts. They have allowed us to write a number of posts on our Mud Island skate park efforts.

See you all at the next Mud Island meeting! See below for details.

Feel free to download the poster and give it to friends.

A "snake run" on Mud Island...what?

2009-04-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Snake run came up as a suggested feature at the last Phase I Mud Island River park public meeting hosted by the Consiliency group on April 2nd. To get a full break down on what goes on at these meetings please see this post.

The meeting was at the Botanical gardens and about 120 people attended the event. My conservative estimate is that around 80% of the participants were supporters of the skate park.

Not surprisingly the skate park feature was voted as the overwhelming favorite receiving about 180 votes.

The second closest was the "Snake run" feature. It recieved about 100 votes and all other features did not even come close to these top two.

If you love surfing, skiiing, snowboarding, roller blading or roller skating than you are going to love a Snake run!

What is a snake run?

A snake run is a serpentine curvy-linear pattern that looks like the tracks you would see being made by a snake. It's basically a continous trail of "figure-eights.'
A snake run is a windy river-like concrete trail of interconnected curvy- linear shapes that are typically 3-6 feet in height. It can be above or below the ground. Here is a link to the oldest existing snake run built in the 1970's in Kona Florida:

What makes the snake run different then skate ramps?

The serpentine motion generated in the snake run provides the addictive or hypnotic thrilling motion that people experience and crave while skiing, surfing, skating or snowboarding. It's hard to explain unless you have experienced it but it keeps people coming back again and again.

The snake run is a unique design that allows a person to generate and maintain their own momentum without ever having to take their feet off the board. The design provides the energy when the rider's motion becomes in sync with the frequency of the turns.

This run could be used by roller bladers, bikers and skateboarders while perhaps having a normal walking path with trees and benches adjacent to it so that people could enjoy watching participants whiz by. I was envisioning this being called the Mississippi snake run and having it patterned after the river.

A transport path to the skate park!

It was suggested that a "snake run" would be a visually creative and dynamic path for propelling skate park visitors from the River park parking lot to the skate park area on the South tip of the Island.

We'll see how all this works out!

Come to the Phase II meetings if you can. The success of these projects depends on public support so come and join us!

Update on Public Skate Park

2009-04-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got the green light from our Parks director to give an update on the Skate park project. Here is where we stand:

1. The CIP money approved for the skate park in 2008 will be available for this year.
2. One of our key project managers, Mel Scheuerman, in the Department of Engineering who was working on the project was seriously injured in an auto accident. He is slowly recovering. His injury delayed the project by about 6 months. We are grateful he is ok and understand the delay.
3. Due to his injury, he will have to "catch-up" with his projects so any new contracts that need to be signed will have to wait until July 09.
4. We don't have a location for the skate park as of yet.
5. We don't know when ground breaking will be but hope that it will be sometime this fall.

I strongly urge you to contact Mel and let him know how much this project means to you. You see, city engineers are in charge of many projects so it's easy for projects to get "lost in the shuffle." Send him a polite note telling him how much you appreciate his efforts to move this project forward.
You can contact him at : Mel.Scheuerman@memphistn.gov

Practicing Thankfulness: Recognizing the grassroots of Skatelife Memphis

2009-03-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

The past decade of my life has largely centered on training and research in the biological sciences. That training in combination with my personality, results in a single-minded approach to tackling projects. Usually, this is a good thing especially when a project may take 5 or 10 years to reach fruition.

However, as my wife can tell you, it can be annoying too. She tells me “Aaron, relax and think about something else or at least try and remember you are not the only one working on this!” So I am going to take a moment to pause and share with you all the people that have helped the project come this far.

Jim Boyd- BridgesUSA
Jim was one of the first people I met when we moved from the San Francisco area to Memphis back in 2006. He was kind enough to listen to my ideas and suggested Greenlaw community center as an ideal place for a skate park.

Golden's kids at the April 2008 Memphis Parks and Rec skate park demo

Detric Golden: Golden Child Ministries
I met Golden while measuring out square footage of a space in front of Greenlaw Community center. Detric has become a good friend and a big proponent of introducing skateboarding to the youth living in North Memphis. He is a former Memphis Tiger that gave up his pro-basketball career overseas to work full time with inner city kids living in the area around the community center. He grew up around the area so the kids living around Greenlaw are near and dear to him. He started an afterschool program at the center fittingly called GoldenChildMinistries. Through his program, his participating youth have a safe place to play, be tutored and exposed to a lot of activities they would not normally encounter- such as skateboarding. He has been a tireless mentor and father-figure for about 35 kids. His efforts show. For example,: some of his teenage youth are already working on “plan B” for their life just in case plan A doesn’t pan out. Wow! He has graciously let me take his youth skateboarding for the past two and a half years and we continue to skate about once a month together. His kids are getting good! I hope someday we get a mini-half pipe for his program.

Josh and Becky Lowry: Skate park of Memphis
Josh, the former owner of SPOM (R.I.P), graciously opened up his indoor skate park for Golden’s kids on numerous occasions -all for no charge. He let them borrow skateboards and pads and was an enthusiastic supporter of the skate community at large.

Gib Vestal- Memphis Athletic Ministries
I met Gib through a meeting at Second Presbyterian focused on healing our city. Gib is one of the most generous people around. He is a real professional in every sense of the word.After our first meeting he was willing to pay for an entire half-pipe and was highly supportive of starting a skateboarding activity for his MAM youth. Gib continues to be a key player in helping our Memphis youth.

Greg Simmons; witnessbmx
I met Greg through an email via the Skatelife website. Greg is a tireless advocate for our youth and uses extreme sports as a ministry tool for reaching kids. He is also one of the early skaters who helped build the skate scene here in Memphis. Greg is one of those people that you can count on at a moments notice to be there to support the cause. I have his wife, Mary Simmons, to partially thank for giving him a long leash.

Bryan Cage: Suite 10 skate boards
Early on, I needed to buy a large number of boards and pads to have available for Golden’s kids. Bryan generously sold us the equipment at cost. He continues to be a big advocate for skate parks and is involved in raising funds for the Batesville skate park.

Joe Mulherin: Multi-media specialist
Joe was the mastermind behind our name. We were formerly known as skateparkformemphis-functionally boring. He suggested a name that expressed just how much skating means to its community so Skatelife Memphis was born from that discussion.

Berkeley Burbank:
Berkeley put me in contact with Cindy Buchanan-our current director of Parks and Recreation.

Cindy Buchanan: Director of Park Services
Cindy and her staff were the first people to hear the skate park presentation. They were enthusiastic about the idea and have been solid supporters ever since. Cindy has shown her support by requesting and receiving $440,000 from the City Council for a public skate park. The money was approved in July 2008. We currently are waiting to here back the City Department of Engineering for a progress report. We’ll keep you updated.

Rita Dorsey:
I met Rita at our first Parks and Recreation Meeting back in the fall of 2006. Rita grew up in North Memphis and although she does not skate, she fully understands the tremendous need for more positive physical outlets available to kids in the area. She was a big supporter of getting a skate park built near Caldwell Elementary near Bickford Community Center. I still have hopes that some day we’ll get something built near there- the half-pipe at Greenlaw would be a great start. Rita is wonderful lady and is passionate about improving the well being of our youth. It’s encouraging to know we have public servants like Rita working in our city government. We need to clone her!

Tom Jones: SmartCity Memphis
I met Tom Jones when he and Carol Colletta came to St. Jude in the fall of 2007 to interview scientists. They were searching for ideas on how to keep scientists from
continuing to move away once they had finished their research internships at the hospital. I had just presented the skate park proposal to the Memphis Parks staff so I conveniently passed it on to Tom and Carol. Tom took the proposal seriously and has been one of the key proponents for the skate park. Like Rita, he didn’t skate in his youth, but he has seen first hand skate parks in all their animated glory. He’s traveled outside of Memphis and seen how skate parks have become integrally woven into the vibrant urban fabric of downtowns such as the one located in Louisville’s riverfront area. Tom serves as a supercharged-liaison between the established leadership and leaders emerging from the grass-roots. He is lighting fast in responding and promoting new and proven projects. Most importantly, his level of engagement is not tainted by what players are backing the project; rather he is engaged by individuals passionate about improving Memphis. Memphis is fortunate to have such a person- especially grassroots organizations who’s projects would perhaps otherwise collect digital dust in the inbox of a less enthusiastic official. Thanks Tom. You are another inspiring example of a public servant-a VOLUNTEER public servant.

Riverfront Development Corporation Staff:
Tom Jones, I and two other scientist colleagues of mine (Dr.’s Steve Zatechka and Zach Baquet) met with the John Conroy and Dorchelle Spence back in the winter of 2007 to discuss the idea of a skate park on Mud Island. I am grateful to them for their willingness to allow me to plant the skate park seed in their minds.

The Memphis skate community:
The skaters made a huge statement last year for the April 2008 Memphis Parks and Recreation skate park demo. With nothing more then a Myspace bulletin to get the word out, you showed up- all 300-400 of you! In particular, thanks to the skate shop owners, Ron Hale of Cheapskates, Josh Lowry of Cordova Board shop and Brad of Desoto Skate shop. I will be citing this day as a landmark event for along time as will our Parks director. Anytime Cindy needs to justify spending city money on skate parks she has the numbers to back her up. Whether it’s science or proposed budgets, you simply can’t argue with solid unbiased data.

Skate park task force:
Mark Nagle, Matt,Brad,Terry,Greg, Binger, Shannon, Erich, Tim, Jim &Spencer, Mike, Jeff, Josh, Lance, BrianAKASneed and the rest of you. I know this project is starting to wear on all of you but you guys stepped up and did all that you could. If I failed to mention one of you email me. Keep up the fight for the next generation of skaters and for the health of our city.

Mike Lasiter: Midsouth Homebuyers association
I met Mike while skating at the Skate Park of Memphis in Cordova. Mike is the master carpenter who over the years has designed and built most of the ramps that skaters have skated in the past 20 years. He has literally built the skate scene by hand. Mike is one of my main sources of inspiration to keep advocating for public skate parks in Memphis. He has seen numerous skate park projects come and go and he still shows up at every meeting that we have had! You deserve a lifetime skateboarding achievement award Mike.

Terry Kerr: Midsouth Homebuyers association
You all can thank Terry for the bumper stickers that you see around town that say ‘“Cracks Kill: Memphis needs a skate park.” Terry Kerr without hesitation generously donated the funds for those stickers. He also has refurbished the old SPOM bowl which now resides in his backyard. While most of you may not ever skate it again, he has opened it up to some of the key skaters that have been so integral in keeping the Memphis skate scene from completely dying. Terry is another one of those incredibly generous types that keeps giving and giving.

Lauren Taylor: Hyde Family Foundations
Lauren is an enthusiastic supporter for the skate community. She walks the talk: She and husband and their 8 month baby showed up, on their own time, to support the Memphis Parks and Recreation skate park demo at the Fairgrounds. I have enjoyed sharing the ups and downs of the skate park projects with her.

Jim Bailey: Healthy Memphis Common Table (HMCT)
Jim is a professor and medical doctor for the UT medical center. We met through the Skatelife website. He and his son would regularly come over and skate on the backyard half pipe at our house. It was there that he had a chance to meet some of the youth from the Greenlaw community center. From our casual backyard gatherings and conversations we started to work together to see how Healthy Memphis could incorporate skateboarding into their mission of tackling some of the obesity problems that our youth in Memphis are suffering from. One of Jim’s Healthy Memphis colleagues, Denise Bollheimer has also been an outspoken advocate for promoting skateboarding as a healthy relevant activity. HMCT works closely with MCS so hopefully someday in the future we’ll have skateboarding classes for the youth on Mud Island. How cool would that be? Does this sound far fetched? Consider this: cities in California and Colorado have incorporated skateboarding into their P.E. curriculum.

Ossie Lewis: Director of the Frayser Community Center
Ossie and I met the Fairground Skate park demo. He has been the most outspoken advocate for bringing skateboarding to our Memphis youth-period! You mention skating and his eyes light up and he will tell you that he has never seen any other activity bring such a diverse group of people together. He saw the future of Memphis on the day of the demo! His son is addicted to skateboarding so he knows what he is talking about. Thanks Ossie for sharing your enthusiasm with me and for being a co-bearer of a vision of what Memphis could look like a few years down the road.

Stacey Greenberg
Stacey is everywhere. She is one of the most prolific writers in Memphis. Her thoughts, ideas and conversations can be found multiple blogs (like here or here), magazines and most of the major news publications in town. She must have 8 hands or something. Stacey also has been one of the promoters of the Roller Derby; she helped re-energize CPOP and hosts the Rock-N-Romp all while working as a full time Mom. Is there an award category for this?? Stacey was kind enough to send out a skate-park survey for us to her Rock-n-Romp group. Stacey’s Rock-n-Romp represented the perfect group to survey. Rock-n-Romp is a backyard rock concert that was started for parents with young kids. Surveying this group gave me a lot of data about the current usage of Mud Island River Park. It also pointed to where most families wanted to see the small public skate park built. The favorite location turned out not surprisingly to be Overton park. It should be noted the skate park will not be built in Overton.

Park Friends:
Bill Rehberg and Glenn Cox were kind to allow me to present the case for a skate park in Overton at one of their board meetings. The presentation went well and both of them appreciated the merits having this recreational venue available to the youth living around Overton Park. In the end, the skate park was voted down due to some older board members who failed to comprehend what was being offered to them. Life goes on and I am still grateful for the chance for representing the younger families who would have enjoyed the skate park in Overton.

Eric Mathews; Director of Launch Memphis
Eric is the twitter-master of Memphis. He lit up the twitter network with the message to take the Mud Island Land Use survey that will be used in the master planning of the Mud Island River Park. Eric got the word out that a skate park would rock Mud Island River Park. He also convinced me to start twittering. He has some great ideas for how we could do some cool online fundraising for small skate spots. We just need to find a non-profit that would be interested in partnering.

Elizabeth and Ian Lemmonds: Memphis Connect
Elizabeth was kind to let me post a few articles on Connect that discussed the merits of a Skate Park on Mud Island. Ian has been a big supporter by challenging me to do a downtown event for skateboarding. Hopefully we’ll get something put together.

Memphis Bogging Community:
AtHomeSheFeelsLikeATourist, CoalitionforLivable communities, Fertilegroundzine, GatesofMemphis, MyMidtownMemphis, FieldguidetoMemphis, IntheBluff, SmartCity Memphis and Memphis Connect. There is nothing more satisfying that moving in solidarity towards accomplishing a common goal. You all have been a integral part of getting the word out about these projects. The best part about the blogging community has been the friendships established through these efforts. I hope we can all continue to work together on many other projects, other then skating, that will improve our lovely city. There will be many more, I am certain.....the groundswell of change has started…..

Michelle Shafer: Co-founder of Skatelife Memphis
Without the support and encouragement of my wife perhaps I would have quit working on these projects a long time ago. She constantly reminds me to think of the next generation of skaters that will grow up enjoying the same activities I did. She reminds me that my true passion is sharing what I love to do with others. The long process is part of that sharing. She has helped me maintain a healthier long term perspective to help avoid project burn-out.

Matt Wright and Brad Woods: They started Faithskate.org last year at their church. Their outreach to the youth has grown exponentially from a few skaters to over 40. They have been an encouraging reminder of how skateboarding can be used as a effective relational tool for reaching into the lives of our youth. They made some key points during our focus group meeting with the RDC consulting firm.

Kris Gurley: Kris is an old school skater who as of late has become an outspoken adovocate for skate parks. You can find his eloquently written notes on his Facebook page. His notes have made a strong and polite case for the public to take a closer look into what a large regional skate park would bring to the Downtown and greater Memphis area.

Looking ahead

The journey is still far from over. We are in the beginning phases for advocating for the Mud Island skate park but still it’s heartening and encouraging to look back and recognize the vast number of people that have helped move us to the place we are today. Let’s keep moving on together into a future where Memphis is a healthier more vibrant place to work, grow-up and play(skate) together.

Next stop: Mud Island River Park Public meeting phase
Where: Memphis Botanical Gardens- 750 Cherry Road
When; 5:45- 7pm, Thursday April 2nd.

Summary of the first Mud Island River Park public meeting

2009-03-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Location: Mud Island River Park
Date and Time: March 23, 2009 5:45
Host: Consilience group on behalf of the Riverfront Development Corporation

Skateboarder turnout

The number of skateboarders numbered around 15 which considering the turn-out for the fairgrounds demos last spring, was a bit disappointing. If skaters really want one of the premier skate parks in the country built on Mud Island, they will need to show up to the next meeting and let their voices be heard! Also missing were folks from the rollerblading/roller-skating community. These numbers are somewhat expected since we didn’t make a huge effort to get the word out. Basically, this was a good meeting to test the waters and report back in this post.

Bikers are hungry for space

I was particularly impressed by the number of BMX riders that showed up at this meeting; they outnumbered the skaters which to me means they are working hard to earn their right to bike in the park. Kudos to you guys!

Event schedule:

Presentation and discussion of waterfronts from around the world

Various water fronts were shown including water fronts from Italy and Louisville as well as Baltimore. None really made much of an impression on me since they were so vastly different from the Mud Island geography. The Mississippi is simply breathtaking due to its raw beauty and power and much of these waterfronts were structural facades built within a much more sophisticated context. Harbor town, just north of the River Park, offers the best template to draw from when considering any future modifications of the River Park’s water front- it’s simple, green and showcases the natural beauty of the Mississippi.

Public participation

There were around 100 attendees seated around tables that held between 5-7 people. The moderator gave the public about 15-20 minutes to write down and discuss their favorite things that they would like to see introduced or kept at the River Park. Our table had one fellow mention that he would appreciate public boat-ramp access re-opened on the east side/city side across from the Island near the Pyramid. I am not sure how this related to the River Park but clearly he felt strongly about it since he made the effort to show up at the meeting. John Kirksey who has started the Memphis Art Park project suggested we have a beach volley ball area-great idea. An elderly lady was a big advocate for a children’s play ground being made available. IMO a children’s playground is essential. The extension of the Harbor town green belt into the River Park was also a favorite topic among our group for cyclists and runners. Of course I brought up the skate park and our table was sympathetic to the idea.

Voting

The moderator then asked each table to vocalize their top item of interest. Another staff member would then write each item down on a separate large white sheet of paper.
Each attendee was given five blue dot stickers which would be used for voting on the different items. I personally was quite impressed with how they carried out this process. It was simple and democratic: if you wanted to use all five stickers on one item that was fine as well, which I thought was fair if only one item appealed to you. Having a playground and year round access was surprisingly a favorite among the skaters: I thought maybe they would spend all their dots on the skate park. What a thoughtful bunch. Ok, I admit it, I spent three dots on the skate park and the other two on a youth hostel and the playground.

Results

Rather then share the results, come and experience the results first hand from your own participation in the next meeting that will be held on Thursday April 2nd at the Memphis Botanical Gardens (750 Cherry Road) from 5:45-7pm.

If you took the time to read this post please take the time to go to the next meeting-I need you all to be there to make this a community effort. I can say this, the skate park held its own in the voting thanks to the non-skating community stepping up supporting it as well. Thank you.

Recreational Analysis of Mud Island by Skatelife Memphis- please read and share

2009-03-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks we have been working on putting together an analysis report that thoroughly makes the case for a skate park on Mud Island:

Here is the main goal of the report:

The goal of this analysis is to show that a competition-sized skate park on the South end of Mud Island will effectively draw a large number of visitors to the Island. In this report we will demonstrate how a skate park is a low-cost option that will revitalize the existing River Park infrastructure8 and also serve as major magnet for the greater Downtown area.

Below is the link to the PDF. Please download, read and distribute to your friends and colleagues that want to make Memphis a better place to live and recreate.

http://www.skateparkformemphis.org/SkatelifeReport09.pdf

Summary of focus group meeting with RDC consultants

2009-03-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last Monday we had our first meeting with the Consilience group, a local consulting firm that is carrying out the public master planning study/process for Mud Island River park.

The meeting was held at the Pearl Oyster House last Monday evening. Part of our small group was made up of individuals who have been involved in the Memphis skate community efforts including Ron Hale,Mike Lasiter and Shannon. Also attending was the Summers Family who recently relocated from Louisville to Memphis. This included Janet Summers and her husband, Jon and their three boys , Jared,Wesley and Branson (who all skateboard). They brought with them a wealth of experience regarding the success and the issues associated with a large skate park- the Louisville extreme park. Enid Bedford from the Healthy Memphis Common table attended the meeting. One of Healthy Memphis's main goals is to help encourage more healthy lifestyle's among the Memphis youth. This is a critical effort since 1/3 of our youth are considered physically obese. Enid didn't skateboard but by the end of the meeting she really appreciated what a skate park could do to help move their own efforts forward. Also, attending was Ossie Lewis who is the director of the Ed Rice Community Center in Frayser. I met Ossie last year at the Parks and Recreation Skate park demo at the Fairgrounds. He has been a huge advocate for bringing skateboarding into the Memphis African American community. His son is a skate boarder and Ossie truly understands the potential that skate boarding holds for our Memphis youth. Matt Wright and Brad Wood also attended. They recently started a skate outreach ministry for their church. They started with two rickety old ramps and a few skateboarders: 6 months later, by word of mouth, they have 40 skateboarders coming to their events. Kris Gurley also attended, he is a outspoken articulate advocate for skateboarding and one of his letters made it into skateboarding magazine a few months ago . We missed not having Terry Kerr, Josh Lowry, Brad Sizemore, Erich Bambei, Binger, Abe, Shannon and many others.

Discussion

Ossie Lewis Ossie spoke with authority about how a skate park on Mud Island could put us in the national spot light as a major destination for recreational enthusiasts. He also mentioned how overwhelmed he still was from the skate demo we had last April at the Fairgrounds. He said in all his 30 years working for Parks and Recreation, he had never seen a single activity bring so many youth from different cultures together under a single roof. Personally just for Ossie's enthusiasm alone, I think his community center warrants its own little skate park.

Matt,Brad and Kris emphatically made the point that the RDC would have no problem attracting visitors to the park.

Matt shared a story of discovering a well-contructed concrete park in the middle of a tiny IOWA farm town. Matt wondered why Memphis was struggling to grasp how mainstream skateboarding has become. His point was that if a bunch of farmers and country folk are aware of what their youth are doing than why has this been lost on Memphis?

One of my points raised was how successful does the RDC want to be ? If they are looking to attract Memphians, visitors from the Tri-state area and participants from around the globe, then they need not look any further then building a world-class skate park. My apologies for using the term "world-class" but in this case it actually applies.

Security and safety
The Summers family spoke quite frankly about the security and safety issues associated with the Louisville Extreme park. It was their discussion that truly brought out Mud Island River park's major asset- it's limited and restricted access. The family said that Louisville is well lit and safe from crime but that fights occasionally break out among vagrants and skateboarders. They also said collisions between bikers and skateboarders were the major cause of injury. What impressed the Summers about Mud Island was that these issues could be directly addressed by having a skate pass system. If the skate park rules are not followed by participants, they simply lose their skate pass. This can be enforced since visitors must go through existing check points to access the River park. Shannon Dixon, the Consilience moderator, was visibly surprised and impressed by how we saw the lack of access to the park as a major and critical asset to the skate park's success. She mentioned that we were the only group that saw this as an asset. Bam!

Other ideas

Enid from HMCT mentioned the idea of having work-out facilities for parents. Great idea! Better yet have skateboarding and rollerblading classes where both parents and the kids are enrolled. Kris Gurley mentioned this is already a family activity and P.E class in some Colorado and California communities. Water playgrounds with fountains for the smaller kids to run through were mentioned to keep everyone cooled off in the summer. Kris mentioned that some water playgrounds double in the winter as regular rubberized playgrounds.

Conclusion- KISS- keep it simple S.

The general consensus was that the Skate Park would totally complement and revitalize existing River park facilities. That's a huge bonus because the city spent, in today's dollars, $213 million to build the current Riverpark facilities. The last point I made was that the new baseball league in town are the skateboarders. We outnumber the total number of Memphis baseball players and yet we have zero facilities compared to their 48 fields. The point was not made to elicit sympathy or the presence of a violinist but to open their eyes to a huge opportunity awaiting RDC.

Be there

Please support us and help make this effort become a reality by attending one of the public meetings coming up very soon. Go to the RDC website for dates and times for the meetings.

Skate deck art contest

2009-03-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email from Shalishah Franklin of Strange Fruit productions.

They are hosting the first Memphis skate deck art competition. Way to go Fruit & Sneeks!

Here are the details:

Strange Fruit Productions has partnered with an urban lifestyle boutique on Madison, Sneak Peek - Memphis to develop a deck design competition. This competition, Spring Board 2009, began accepting applications this week from any visual artists throughout our community. See the picture above.

From that pool of applicants we will be selecting 25 finalists to design original artwork on decks that we will be supplying. The final products will be showcased on April 10th in the boutique and attendees will have the opportunity to vote and select the "People's Choice."

The winner will get a bevy of goods including a $250 gift card to Sneak Peek, being featured in a photo shoot for the boutique and have their board reproduced in limited edition quantities with a portion of proceeds benefiting the winning artist.

Give it a try if you like to doodle dudes....
Print the flyer below and pass it on!

Come to the Mud Island meeting-it's time

2009-02-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

Coming up in March and early April is your opportunity to make Memphis a great place to skate and recreate outdoors.

The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), which manages Mud Island River Park, sent SkateLife the dates for the master planning meetings.

These meetings are being held so that the public can help the RDC decide how to master plan Mud Island.

Here is what the consulting group says who will be doing the planning for the RDC. "Public input is the foundation of this study," said Traci Sampson, principal of The Consilience Group. "We want to be sure whatever happens at the park is meeting the needs of the community."

It's time to show Memphis that we are desperate for more parks and recreational outlets - especially for wheeled enthusiasts!

It is critical that we show up at these meetings - ALL of us. You all showed up in mass for the Memphis Parks and Recreation demo last spring and that was for a 12,000 sqft park. Well now we/you are asking for 80,000 sqft park. That's the size of two Louisville skate parks! What we need to do is show up. The RDC staff was not at the last demo so they need to see how many of us there really are.

This is your time to tell the RDC how a major competition skate park could make downtown a rocking place - a place not only to find great food and music but to recreate and be entertained by skating. A place for the Xgames or the Mountain Dew Tour or just for hanging out.

We represent a huge national demographic and we need to let RDC know we are here. This park would cost around 3 million dollars. That may seem like a lot but the RDC is already building a 30 million dollar park (Beale Street Landing) directly across from Mud Island. We are asking for a park that will be packed day and day out and in my opinion will entertain the people hanging out at the Beale Street Landing Park. I believe that the Landing park's success will depend on the presence of highly entertaining recreational venue such as a skate park on Mud Island.

What you can do

* Come and bring ALL your friends AND family
* Get the word out (blogs,email lists, media, myspace)
* Read and be familiar with the statistics below
* Pass this email on

There will be two meetings

1.Downtown Meeting
Monday March 23rd from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location:MIRP Harbor Landing, 101 Island Drive (gate security will give
directions) Basically drive to Mud Island and go through the security gates. It's
on Mud Island.

2.Meeting at Memphis Botanical Gardens meeting
Thursday April 2nd from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location: Memphis Botanic Gardens, 750 Cherry Road (near Audobon Park)

Be there and let's make Memphis the recreational epicenter for the Midsouth!

Filling the recreational void: A case for a skate park on Mud Island

2009-02-28T04:42:00.000-08:00

This past week the Smart City Memphis blog celebrated the best of Memphis by asking Memphians to list their ten favorite things about Memphis. This post was received with a flood of enthusiasm with many citizens posting their favorites haunts, restaurants or activities. Take the time to read this post and celebrate our great Memphis!

As important as it is to celebrate, it’s easy in the midst of celebrating to gloss over some quality of life issues that Memphis needs to address. Extreme positives or high impact efforts and negatives ( a.k.a media magnets) such as crime eat up most of the media band-width. The more subtle factors that effect our day-to-day living can be lost in the shuffle.

As a recruit to St. Jude, I can say without a doubt that there are few institutions that provide the wealth of scientific support that exists at the St. Jude campus. I have been at St. Jude three years now and St. Jude rivals the best companies and universities when it comes to career advancement opportunities and top level scientific research. After having done research for three years at Stanford University, I can confidently tell you that St. Jude is on par and even exceeds Stanford in some categories.

Yet, for all the recruiting efforts of our top Memphis companies such as St. Jude or Fedex, there exists an Achilles heel that antagonizes these efforts. It’s a quality of life issue. Where a recruit moving from another city would expect to find a diverse range of fun outdoor activities for families, singles and youth, he/she instead discovers a recreational void. Memphis needs these positive physical outlets to help people achieve a better work/life balance. We need fun places to go outside and blow off some steam. More importantly our teenage youth, and eventually my two young boys, need more outlets to help them cope with all the pressures and temptations that come with growing up. In their words -they get bored and do stupid stuff.

I believe some of our dubious ranking may be directly linked or attributed to this recreational void:
• Number one Obese city (34% of Memphians are obese, 65% overweight and obese)-2007 Forbes
• Number one sedentary/least fit city – Forbes 2007
• 2nd most miserable city -2009 ( admittedly a bit unfair due to overlooked Memphis gems)

We need to foster a new culture of exercise- Memphians know how to have fun with food and music, now we need to learn how to do the same by promoting, supporting and building fun outdoor recreational venues. In top U.S cities, interconnected walking or cycling paths as well as skateboarding /roller blading parks have become integrally woven into the urban fabric of the area. While Memphis has ample recreational space for traditional team-based sports it has no safe space available for activities that have in some cases surpassed in popularity some of the traditional sports. For example, in 2004 the number of skateboarding youth eclipsed the number of youth participating in baseball.
The bottom line: Recreation is a core attribute and priority among top U.S. cities. Consider these statistics: The cities that ranked number one as the fittest and safest cities also have the largest and most number of skate parks in the U.S. Colorado Springs is the current fittest city and has the most number of skate parks. It also just opened up the 4rth largest skate park in the U.S. San Jose has held top honors as the safest city from 2002-2007 and has the largest skate park in the U.S. Denver, America’s favorite city this year, built the 3rd largest skate park in 2003. Louisville, KY was host to the largest skate park in the U.S until San Jose surpassed it last year. More importantly, it’s the top city for recruiting families. Louisville also invested hundreds of millions into revitalizing its parks.
While skate parks are not solely responsible for these rankings, their presence reflects the leadership’s understanding that recreation is strongly linked to the quality life of its citizens.
We now have an opportunity to leap-frog Memphis to a level shared by some of the most recreationally rich cities. This opportunity comes to us this March and is being made available by the Memphis Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC). RDC will be partnering with the public to form a master plan for Mud Island. This master plan could be a game-changer for Memphis. I am asking Memphians to join me in advocating for a competition sized skateboard and rollerblade park.
This facility would be large enough to host the X-games or the Mountain dew tour-both of which are hugely popular events. What many are unaware of is that skateboarding and other “actions sports” such as rollerblading are now mainstream activities in cities across the U.S. In 2004, Sports illustrated called skateboarding the “greatest influence on the American youth culture of the late 20th century.” Skateboarding also transcends different cultures- the movie “Sour” documents friendships formed between Israeli and Palestinian skaters. Case in point, Memphis has a large diverse skating population that you will see first hand if you come to one of these meetings. Please join me in making Memphis as rich in it’s recreational outlets as it already is with its food and music culture.
The RDC will soon announce the meeting dates available so please go to their home page or sign up on our SkateLife Memphis email list and we will send you the information for the meeting.

Long live the SPOM bowl!

2009-02-16T18:46:00.001-08:00

As many of you know the the SPOM bowl was thought to have died an untimely death when the Skate park of Memphis shut its doors forever back in May 2008. Well, it managed to survive in a dismantled state for several months in an outside south Memphis location.

About a month ago, to my surprise, a friend informed me that he was going to rebuild the bowl with his crew ( Mike, Aaron (not me), Jeff and others). Thanks guys for working so hard.

Yesterday I went over with my son to my friend's place to skate the newly refurbished SPOM bowl.

The bowl ride is insanely fast and still very slick since the surface is so new. A big thanks to my friend's wife for putting up with people being in her back yard for three days straight. Wow! My own wife can handle about one other skater a week coming over to skate our backyard pipe so my friend's spouse is one incredibly tolerant generous lady.

Mud Island meeting in March

In the meantime, stay tuned for the Mud Island public planning meeting. We'll announce the meeting date when it's made known to the public.

Fight misery : build a skate park

2009-02-09T14:36:00.000-08:00

Most of you probably have read about the latest honor bestowed upon us. Yes that's right we are miserable.... so let's get that park built and put this latest accolade out of its misery.

On a more positive note the article does point out that the ranking did not " include the success of the University of Memphis basketball team, great barbecue, a top-notch park system, Elvis and a relatively low cost of living standard."

Nor did it point out our wonderful Zoo, the new concert series at the Levitt Shell, our Farmer's markets and such.

As for the reference to our "top-notch park system?" Hmmmm......maybe a miss-print.

The cold wave of skaters

2009-02-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

Here is the latest scoop on the Colorado Springs skate park which opened in January 09. It's a 40,000 sqft park built by Team Payne.

My mother-inlaw lives near the skate park and observes the day to day ongoings at the park.

She is amazed at the sheer number of skaters that are occupying the skate park in fact she wonders how anyone is able to skate at all. Colorado Springs is in the top 5 cities for the most number of skate parks ( they now have 5) with a population less then half of Memphis City. In fact this new park puts them in a tie with Albuquerque for the most number of skate parks.

This is a city that is already recreationally rich with mountain bike trails weaving in and out of the front range and multiple athletic fields as well as the Olympic training facility. So, you would think you would have less people skating since more activities would spread thin the number of participants. On the contrary, more activities just increase the number of people involved in phsyical activities.

Here's proof:

According to this year Men's Fitness "Fittest and Fattest cities" survey, Colorado Springs leadfrogged the previous years fittest city ( Albuquerque).
Go figure they get the award the same year they tie with this city for the most number of skate parks. We're improving we're only the 18th fattest city, a couple years back we hit #1.

Having personally lived through some cold Colorado Springs winters in the early 90's, I can say I am truly amazed at the dedication of the skaters. They are skating in daytime temperatures ranging from the 20-40's and maybe if they are lucky they get a 50 degree day thrown in there.

And so....

We have the demographic, we have the data streaming in from other cities that points to a large regional skate park being a low risk, low cost (relative to some current projects), high impact effort. A skate park on Mud Island will give folks in the new Beale Street Landing park something to look at from the other side and hey they may even want to have a ferry service available from the new landing.

In the meantime, we need our officials to get on some planes and take a look around and see what the rest of the country is doing. Or better yet perhaps the consultants carrying out the master-planning of Mud Island could join them for trip or two. They will see that a large competition skate park is a serious asset for a city rather than a hair brained 'pyramid scheme" with "empty" promises (please excuse the puns). Getting out of the Memphis bubble did wonders for Councilwoman Ware's realization that recycling is important.

For now we are grateful that we are getting a smaller skate park built by Memphis Parks. That's a strong start!

Meet Zach Wormhoudt : our skate park designer

2009-02-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

Zach is not only a skate park designer but a big wave surfer-one of the best. He's one of the handful of surfers invited to compete in the annual Mavericks surf contest held in Half Moon bay , CA.

Zach also designed and built Louisvile's and San Jose's skate parks.

Good luck Zach on winning the contest this year!!

Mud Island meeting in March 09

2009-01-30T13:41:00.000-08:00

The Mud Island meeting has been moved to March so we'll keep you posted with an actual date when it's announced.

Memphis Parks Master plan-

2009-01-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

I just read this on MaryCash's In the Bluff blog

"The City Council heard from Parks Services Director Cindy Buchanan today about an upcoming city parks master plan.

"The purpose for this project is to provide recreational activities in the best fiscal manner," she said. "We will not bring any major construction projects to the council for various facilities until the master plan is complete."

Buchanan said they would be looking at all facets of the city's parks, including whether there was property the city could "divest ourselves of."

A group of citizens will be helping the city with the master plan.

"They are members of the public, and we expect them to bring with them their desires, passions, and concerns," Buchanan said. "They will discuss things and hopefully come to a consensus for park services. Once that happens, we'll create a document and bring it to the City Council."

The master plan is expected to be complete within 6 months"

Let's hope that more skate parks are in the works! Guess we'll see in 6 months or so.

Eat and skate local

2009-01-25T18:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I started a website for buying local foods and products in Memphis.

So what's the connection with skating?

Well with the site we could eventually hold fundraisers based on proceeds from sales.
For now I see it as a great place to sell stuff, skate and hang out.

Here is the basic idea:

For all those interested we are starting a "Locally Grown Market" to promote and provide a place for selling stuff that you have made or grown. Click here to check it out.

This could be bread you've baked, produce you have grown, a hand made skate board, jewelry, soap or whatever has been carefully crafted or grown by your own hands. Here is an example of a market that's currently up and running.

How does it work?

1.You sign up and become a member which allows you to buy or sell stuff on our website. There is no cost for becoming a member or seller. The market get's 10% of sales. A third of that 10% goes to the hosting service for the online site, while the other 2/3 goes to running the physical market. This is a not-for-profit effort.

2. After products are pre-ordered online, each week we will meet at a host location which will likely be a backyard. Money will be collected on that day by the sellers. Hopefully we'll get some backyards with halfpipes to skate too! And maybe some music!

3. When we get enough people signed up and the location determined, we'll make the official announcement for when people can start buying products online.

Please take some time to check it out and pass it onto friends who support keeping dollars in the local economy.

How is this really different then the Memphis Farmer's Market?

Free

The market is free and therefore gives sellers with very small amounts of products an immediate presence in the "market."

We are like an EBAY online and more of a "garage sale" offline.

Everything is already sold!

Buyers know exactly what they want and sellers only need to show up if they have pre-ordered products to sell.

Will it succeed ?

We'll see.

Expect an email soon regarding the Mud Island meeting. Very important meeting will need to be well attended.

Germantown skate park project update

2009-01-21T07:02:00.000-08:00

We have had a number of inquires regarding the status of the Germantown skate park project. Here is the latest.

I spoke with the Germantown Parks Staff yesterday. They had plans for completing a 100K expansion of the their existing skatepark around the later part of June.

The staff person indicated that the project is still expected to go through but that there may be a delay in it's design and construction.

So the good news is that the money has not been moved into funding another city project. The bad news is that the project may be delayed

Study underway for Mud Island

2008-12-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

Here is the latest scoop on the Mud Island project. This came from the RDC newsletter:

"The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), in conjunction with the City of Memphis, is preparing to embark on a public process to create a comprehensive land use study for Mud Island. The ultimate goal is to allow the land on Mud Island to flow more seamlessly into the surrounding area and provide the types of amenities that help Mud Island to reach its full potential.

The RDC board of directors has selected Looney Ricks Kiss Architects (LRK) to lead the planning effort. LRK is known throughout the region and across the nation as a world-class planning firm with nearly two decades of experience in this type of work. They also have extensive knowledge of Mud Island based on their work on HarborTown. LRK will work in conjunction with The Consilience Group, which will facilitate the public input process.

“Public input is the foundation of this study,” said Traci Sampson, principal of The Consilience Group. “We want to be sure whatever happens at the park is meeting the needs of the community.”

Input for the land use study will be gathered through a series of public meetings in different sites around the city and from web surveys online, Sampson added.

Primary funding for this project is provided through a federal Planning Assistance to the States Grant through the US Army Corps of Engineers with matching funds from the City of Memphis, Hyde Family Foundations, and Memphis Tomorrow. The project is slated to kick-off in February 2008 and is expected to take six to eight months to complete."

Let's make sure the skate community is well represented at these meetings. Join our emailing list for updates so that you will know when these public meetings will be held. We need the skate community to show up to these public meeings in mass like the Fairgrounds demo. Let's show Memphis that A LOT of us want a world class skate park on Mud Island!!

Disclaimer: Tobey is not a shoe-in

2008-10-31T13:13:00.001-07:00

Although Tobey is the candidate spot for the skate park, the location is not a shoe-in until city council approves the location. So let's hope for the best.
In the meantime keep working on doodling your fantasy skate parks!

Thanks for you patience.

Parks and Rec will build the first public concrete skate park at Tobey Park!

2008-10-28T13:32:00.001-07:00

My apologies for not keeping the blog up to date. Here is the latest news:

Well, we finally have a location for our first Memphis Public skate park!!

The Memphis Parks and Recreation Skate Park will be built at Tobey Park.

If you would like to see the detailed report that discusses the survey results for determining the best location then click here. Overton was the recommended favorite site but in the end it would have not provided enough skate space and night skating would not be an option.

However Tobey provided these two attributes : as skaters we all want more skate space AND to be able to skate at night when we get off from school or work. In the winter, night skating becomes the only option with the lack of daylight and in the summer it 's the only time that's cool enough to skate without getting heat stroke.

Below the exact location is shown as a green box. To find this location on a google map just google
"2599 Avery Avenue, Memphis." The Memphis Parks Commission is the building just west of the box and there is a very large parking lot next to the site so there will be plenty of parking for skaters.

What's next?

This winter Memphis Parks and Rec will host the first public skate design forum where you will have a chance to give the skate park designer/builder your input for how you would like to see the skate park designed.

Other facts about the future Tobey skate park:

1.Memphis Parks and Recreation is spending $440,000 on the skate park

2.Zach Wormhoudt (skateparks.com) is designing and building the CONCRETE skate park. He built Louisville's skate park.
3.Night skating is likely but not guaranteed at this point.
4.The park will be finished sometime in 2010.

Thank you Germantown Parks staff

2008-08-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

About three weeks ago we along with over a dozen skaters met with the Germantown Parks and Recreation Staff to discuss the expansion of their skate park. We met with parks staff members Pam Beasely, David Halpern and Natalie Ruffin. They met with us at 8 pm on their own personal time which says ALOT about how professional these people were and committed to doing this next phase right.

Germantown opened up their skate park , aka Houston skate park, in the late 90's. In fact, Germantown built the FIRST skate park in Tennessee so at the time it was a pretty big deal. However the park has seen a lot of use and is starting to look tired and dated.

To address the over use of the park the Recreation department was awarded 100K to expand and repair existing cracks in the concrete. After sending out a survey to the skaters to try and figure out what they would like to see built, it was almost unanimous that a concrete bowl or series of connecting bowls were the favored skating motifs. Pam received the same overwhelming response when she asked the same question at the meeting.

So we just wanted to thank them for their willingness to work directly with skaters. Expect some great new stuff to skate within the next 12 months!

Let's not exaggerate the liability issue

2008-07-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been over a month since a new blog entry has been entered.
Here's a little blurb that we sent to the Commercial Appeal. There are two versions of the letter. Our version and the one that was edited by the Appeals'.

Here is ours. Our statistics come complements of TOSA skateboarders united (Here is their site)

As a researcher in the biological sciences I was trained to provide rigorous data and references that support our discoveries or hypothesis. Consequently when I read articles that claim they have made a significant scientific finding, I expect to see a lot of data and precedence established by other researchs groups. This is how it works if researchers plan on publishing in a peer reviewed scientific journal.

Now we shouldn't expect to see the same type of stringency applied to the letters sent to the editor, but when a letter is published that makes some very strong assertions, then it better be well supported. Sadly, this was not the case with a letter that was recently published in the CA. The letter "Expect Lawsuits when skate park opens" does a fantastically gross injustice to the skate community and their efforts to establish a permanent and safe place to enjoy their activity.

Facts please
The letter is written with an air that one would expect from a seasoned insurance claims professional that has first hand experience with liability. He basis his assumptions on "ghost statistics." His assumptions are flat out WRONG. Let's set the record straight and let's do so with facts that come from real studies. Skating boarding has an injury rate of 0.59% compared to baseball (1.26%), soccer ( 1.42%) ,basketball (2.57%) or football (2.78%). Half of the skateboarding injuries occur from poor riding surfaces and most of the serious injuries that occur are due to collisions with automobiles. The injury rate in skate parks drops dramatically to 0.03 %. How can you claim a ten-fold decrease in an injury rate is bad?
Lawsuits?
And where is precedence for massive lawsuits filed by skaters ? There is none. A study of 48 California skate parks showed that only two claims have ever been filed and no claims have ever been won. In a study of 12 Washington State parks no claims have been filed. The president of a Bay Area company that insures over 30 municipalities for liability says, "Our office does not view skateboard parks as a high risk for cities."
People don't' think twice about putting in a dog park even though there are 800,000 annual visits to the E.R. from dog attacks and $350 million in lawsuit settlements associated with these attacks. I love dogs and I am not advocating shutting down or preventing future dog parks but let's be fair and not severely distort the truth about skate park liability. Our youth of today deeply cherish a skate park and when it's your child that's in the E.R. because they got hit by a car or sustained a head injury from hitting a crack then maybe you too will become an advocate for a safe place for our kids to skate! If Memphians have questions or concerns or you want references for these statistics mentioned, please contact me through our website at skatelifememphis.org. Congratulations to Memphis Parks and Recreation for connecting with our youth! Thanks giving a very ignored demographic some long needed affirmation and recognition for what they value and love doing.

Here is the CA's version from today
Skate park dangers are exaggerated

The July 1 letter to the editor "Expect Lawsuits when skate park opens" was written with an air that one would expect from a seasoned insurance claims professional who has firsthand experience with liability. He bases his assumptions on "ghost statistics," and his assumptions are flat-out wrong. Let's set the record straight, with facts from real studies.

Skateboarding has an injury rate of 0.59 percent compared to baseball (1.26 percent), soccer ( 1.42 percent), basketball (2.57 percent) or football (2.78 percent). Half of the skateboarding injuries occur from poor riding surfaces, and most of the serious injuries that occur are due to collisions with automobiles. The injury rate in skate parks drops dramatically to 0.03 percent. How can you claim a tenfold decrease in an injury rate is bad?

Where is precedence for massive lawsuits filed by skaters? There is none. A study of 48 California skate parks showed that only two claims have ever been filed, and no claims have ever been won. In a study of 12 parks in Washington state, no claims have been filed.

People don't think twice about putting in a dog park even though there are 800,000 annual visits to emergency rooms from dog attacks and $350 million in lawsuit settlements associated with these attacks.

Let's be fair and not distort the truth about a skate park liability. Our youth of today deeply cherish a skate park, and when it's your child who's in the ER because he got hit by a car or suffered a head injury from hitting cracked pavement, then maybe you too will become an advocate for a safe place for our kids to skate.

Aaron Shafer

Memphis

Hopefully we'll have some news soon about the Parks and Recreation skate park location.

Finding the right location for a skate park

2008-05-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

Where should the skatepark be built?

Finding the right spot for the new skatepark is often a complicated and troublesome exercise. The community's priorities often clash in passionate opposition. Communities all over the nation are starting to see that the healthiest skateparks all have four simple things in common.

Skateparks often bear the brunt of vocal community resistance when it comes to finding the best site. Neighbors fear that the facility will become a haven for foul-mouthed teenagers, graffiti, and a general unease or tension between the skaters and the "quieter" park users. In some cases this might actually be true; when the skatepark is placed so far away from other healthy activities it becomes the perfect incubator for these undesirable activities.

The most engaging, socially sustainable skateparks reside where the whole community can enjoy them. Like any public gathering space, skatepark users have the same kinds of needs that other "ordinary" park users might.

Access

Skateparks should be accessible to the broader community. A remote skatepark will only attract those people who have the means to reach it. The skatepark should be placed in an area that is easy to find and get to.

Sociability

Skateboarders are generally passionate and committed individuals. Like most people, skaters would rather recreate with others than alone. Non-skaters who happen to be nearby can add to the overall sense of community inclusion at the skatepark; the facility should be designed for lots of community mixing.

Activity

The surrounding skatepark area should be active with other users. This diversity keeps the environment interesting and vibrant; without it, the space will feel "overrun" and homogenous...a place for "skaters only."

Comfort

Often overlooked, comfort is a way of expressing that the users are an important and valued part of the community. A comfortable environment allows people to set proper expectations about the area, use the area in a way that is natural and intended, and ultimately take pride in this "third place." For many skaters, the skatepark will become the central gathering point for years. An uncomfortable space will feel unsafe and attract the wrong element.

posted on skatepark.org
Wednesday, 12 May 2004

Progress for Memphis Parks and Recreation Skate park project

2008-05-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Memphis Parks allocated $440K for a skate park for their budget this year. Well, the budget City Council committee gave them the green light for this request.

Th general City Council that meets in early June has to officially pass the budget so there is still this hurdle to jump over.

After that we have to hope that the skate park budgeted money does not get shifted to another Parks project that has a higher or more urgent priority. This can and does happen. For example if a critical road repair must be done and was not expected, then the money can be used for that since it's more essential to the community.

Location Location Location!!
We are pretty certain that the skate park will be in the Midtown area but Parks has not chosen a site. Midtown became the area of choice since our survey showed that 65% of our skaters (out of 99 surveyed) wanted the skate park in the downtown or Midtown area.

From previous blogs we had individuals write in and suggest:
Binghampton Park
Tobey Park
Overton Park
Rozelle Park
Williamsen Park

Did we miss any??

We won't reveal our top pick because we don't want to bias a survey that we will be sending for establishing the best location.

Needless to say the best park should have these attributes:
1. Centrally located
2. Diverse number of uses - this promotes having more people around which means a park is safer and more fun to be around. Safety in numbers. It also guarantees that the skate park will be available for entertaining non-skaters.
3. Accessible to a diverse population.
4. Open space: The park should be highly visible to again promote safety and for allow others to watch the skaters perform.
5. Bathrooms.
6. Near a playground: This is good so that families of all ages can use the same space together.

If we have missed a park that you frequent please let us know.
If you want to take the survey that we will send out in the next few days please sign up for our newsletter.

With a very large population of skaters in Memphis, as we saw materialize at the Parks Skate park demo on April 24th, this Midtown skate park is just one of many projects that we are working on. Please be sure to check the other projects that we are working on because we will need your support to make any of these projects happen.

Cheers!!

Fairgrounds April 24rth Skate Demo- the dawn of a new era for the Memphis Skate Community

2008-04-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the skaters came together to show our Memphis Parks and Rec staff just what skating meant to them. It was a day where the tight knit nature of this community, it’s passion and diversity where on full display for those who attended.

Seemingly this event was doomed for failure. If there ever was an event with every factor working against it, this was that event.

The American Ramp Company, one of the more notable metal skate ramp manufacturing companies, was on the road for a mid-south skate demo tour. They had contacted the Memphis Parks and Rec department the week before and made themselves available for a Memphis stop. Our Parks staff agreed, and on April 16, I received an email from Memphis Parks staff, Mike Flowers, requesting that I get the word out to the skate community that they will be hosting the demo.

I said yes and then looked at the date and time for the event. It was in the middle of the week and the school-aged skaters would be just getting out of school. We had 8 days to get the word out. Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity that they were offering the skaters.

Enter Myspace

Our organization, Skatelife Memphis, has a companion Myspace website so I posted the event on our Myspace bulletin board. For those of you not versed in the Myspace phenomena, a bulletin board is a virtual announcement area that all your Myspace “friends” can see. Your “friend” can then post your announcement for their “friends” and pretty soon you have the Revlon commercial. In short, it works like an exponentially replicating virus. The Myspace skaters posted the demo announcement nonstop up until the hour before the demo. The big mystery was did these virtual skaters really exist?

April when?

Parks had placed an announcement in the Commercial Appeal but the demo was advertised for the 23rd not the 24th! The Flyer published the correct date but only one day before the event was to be held. Skatelife Memphis sent demo details the day Paul contacted me via email. 60 skaters responded to the email - a disappointing response despite sending out 220 emails.

Three days before the event, Parks and Recreation was having difficulty with ARCs liability policy and with two days left the paperwork was finally sorted out.

If that was not enough, the weather forecast predicted a healthy all day rain that would last through the scheduled demo time. Not the greatest forecast considering we were planning to hold the event outside. The day before the event I took my family over to the Fairgrounds to familiarize ourselves with the demo area. We ran into Mike Flowers and we discussed back-up options in case of rain. The Youth building seemed to be the logical indoor option. He concurred. He would make the official call on the location the next day-weather pending.

I took a chance and sent out a last minute email and another Myspace bulletin. My day job was very busy the day of the demo and I received a morning email from Paul that the demo would not be in the Youth center but inside the arena which was next to original outside location. Back to Myspace to update again! Ahhh! We were doomed!

Enter the local and national skate scene

In all my various meetings with the government and private sector I have been tirelessly touting national statistics to convince them that we desperately need skate facilities for Memphis skaters. Nationally 5% of our population skates and close to 20% of our youth skate1. Skateboarding has surpassed the number of little league baseball youth in that same age group so clearly there must be a lot of skaters in Memphis- right1? We have 175,000 youth so even if we were well below the average, suppose 5% of our youth skate, then we would have around 8,000 skating youth. But the event was during a time that would be hard for youth to get there and did we really have that many skaters here? Did they get the last minute Myspace bulletin?

Desperate times…the local skate scene

The local skate community is indeed in a desperate situation. Josh Lowry, after operating the private fee-based Skatepark Of Memphis (SPOM) for the past 5 years was shutting its doors in May. Josh and his staff poured their hearts into that park and provided a safe and positive place for youth to hang out. The skate community and the parents of skaters will dearly miss SPOM. Private, fee-based parks historically are not money-making operations and so when the land lords decided to double SPOM’s rent, Josh had little choice but to cease operations. We are really sad to see SPOM close its doors and hope he is able recoup some of his costs. His efforts and devotion to the Memphis skaters has set the stage for the next step – a permanent, concrete, public skate park.

I believe that Josh’s predicament gave our plea a heavy sense of urgency. The skate shop owners were the first to sense the magnitude and importance of this event in light of Memphis losing it’s only skate park. In response, all the local skate shops in the area closed their doors for the event. This included Josh’s Cordova board shop, Cheapskates, Desoto Skate shop and Oxford’s Suite 10 skate shop.

Can you imagine a city losing it’s only baseball field with a baseball little league that had over 5000 kids enrolled? Folks, that’s the situation that our skating youth find themselves in right now! If you’re old enough, you get to drive 20-30 miles to a skate park in Marion, Southhaven or Hornlake. If you are real “lucky” you may live next to the Germantown Houston Levee high school skate park and get to share a tiny 8,000 square foot space with 30+ skaters. The place is dangerously overcrowded. Housing 8,000 skaters in a 8,000 square foot location - that’s a sardine can, not a skate park! If you are under 16 and don’t have a ride then you share your board with cracked side walks, cars and your favorite spot ends with someone chasing you off.

Crazy circumstances (no press, bad time, no time, weather) vs. Desperate skaters (closing skatepark, HUGE pent-up demand) WHO WINS???

I’ll give you a hint. If you attended the Greening Memphis rally at the Botanical gardens in February 2007, you know the answer. The “only” difference was that the Greening event was promoted for months!

The miracle

I got off work around 3:20 and made it to the demo not knowing what to expect but deep down hoping that my own desperation might be a shared feeling among my skating peers. The rain had ceased only around 3pm so maybe skaters had not had enough time to see the change in plans. I entered the Fairground complex and before my eyes was a completely packed parking lot. Was some other event going on? Who else was hosting an event? Constant second-guessing banged around in my cranial cavity. No ! These were skates popping out of cars. Wow! This was our event.

Detric Golden, from Golden Child Ministries, brought his 15+ youth that live in North Memphis in a bus. I have been teaching these inner city youth to skate for the past year. Their expressions mirrored my own disbelief and excitement.

We entered the arena together. The arena is a huge indoor shell around 100,000 square feet in size. The scene was unreal. The place was packed with skaters. The ARC ramps were bursting with skaters - it looked like a scene from the sinking titanic. The place was buzzing (or rolling) with energy and was semi-chaotic due to the sheer number of skaters. A skater by the name of Tyler built some homemade launch ramps just for the event. Parks and Rec had not cleared this but with so many skaters and so much to manage this issue seemed to get lost in the roar of wheels.

Cindy Buchanan and Mike Flowers as well as the rest of the Parks staff were there to witness just what skating has evolved into. This event stamped the validity of those skating statistics with an exclamation mark. Over 400+ skaters showed up for the event with close to 500 people there in total.

Stereotype shattered!!

The stereotypical skater is a white teenage male. John Branston made reference to this when listing off “redneck” facilities that he would like to see in Shelby Farms. Maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years ago this was true. Not now! Our Memphis skate community is bound by its passion to express itself through skating. Our culture transcends racial barriers and brings different communities together. This was on full display for our Parks officials to see. Witnessing this diversity had a powerful impact on Osie Lewis from the Ed Rice Community Center in Frayser. He remarked to me “this is what it’s all about, about kids getting together to have fun!” Skating will be an activity that will continue to bring people to together from all different socio-economic backgrounds. This has been the primary mission of why I promote skating. To see this mission being fulfilled in real time was like living for one day in paradise.

At one point the skaters started to rally by skating in circles-roller rink style. They were coming to grips with what the power of community means. They were finding their brotherhood and the rally was the beginning of this discovery. Finally, someone was beginning to understand them and the rally reflected this. Gregg Simmons, from Witness BMX remarked” I have never seen skaters do something like that.” Maybe skaters are not as anti-social as they are stereotyped to be. A little appreciation and respect goes along way. Even for skaters!

The rally was misunderstood and I think a bit frightening especially if you are a staff member not wanting to see anyone get hurt. We were able settle everyone down. But let’s get it out now, the skaters were saying “thank you” in their own “extreme” fashion. Thanks Parks and Rec - this day will not to be forgotten for a long while. Thanks for understanding and seeing what the skate scene is all about. This is just the beginning, a new dawn in the era of the Memphis skate scene is upon us. Memphis is now waking up to what has been building for three generations. Skating is here big time and skaters are out there. May our fourth generation of Memphis skaters grow up hearing those “old” stories of what skating in Memphis was like without a skate park. Perish the thought!! Go grab a skate board and join us!

1. Public Skatepark Development Guide Handbook For Skatepark Advancement. Peter Whitley. Copyright 2007. http:www.skatersforpublicskateparks.org

Skate park demo hosted by Memphis Parks and Rec

2008-04-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

On April 24th. The Memphis Parks and Recreation Department will be hosting a skate park demo.

Everyone please attend and show your community support. Watch the skaters, rollers skaters come out of the woodwork to show their stuff.

It's progress, so let's celebrate!

Location: Fairgrounds

This says it all

2008-03-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

We're Number 1!!!! Memphis Named "America's Most Sedentary City"
OCTOBER 29, 2007 - 07:55 AM
Memphis Flyer

Memphis is America's Fattest City!
12/ 3/2007 | Issue 979 - Staff
Forbes Magazine set out to find America's Most Sedentary City, and guess what? It's US! Good ol' Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis' perfect combination of high obesity, high television-watching rate, urban sprawl, poverty, and relative lack of parkland, landed us the top spot.

It sounds sort of silly, but the article is quite serious, well-researched, and well worth a read.

Do we need more a physical activities? I am not sure, let me hire a consultant (perhaps the one our Mayor used ?) and we'll get back with you with the findings.

The basketball court approach to skate parks

2008-03-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

Up until very recently our focus has been mainly on getting a small to midsized(10,000-20,000 sqft) park somewhere in Midtown or Downtown. The survey that the skaters took strongly points to these being the preferred locations.

Having one location is NOT enough
Having one park for Memphis is not a problem for current skaters because, according to the survey, almost 90% drive to go skating.

But what if you are a low income kid who never has skated. You are out of luck and so skating remains an activity for those who can drive.

Solution?

Build a lot of parks! Simple but a small to midsized park costs anywhere from $300-700k! So if we build 5-10 of these we are looking at atleast $1 million. Our city budget is strapped.

So let's build very small parks around 1000-2000 sqft. Check the picture below

Midtown and downtown are the favored locations

These are also known as skate features. They typically have one street element and a bowl. They cost between $50-100k. At this price we can build 5 or 10 of these park for the price of one small to midsized park. So what are the advantages to this approach?

1. We can raise these funds in case Memphis parks and recreations skate park budget is not approved

2. These parks can be completed faster since they are smaller.
3. Having many locations will prevent overcrowding.
4. A lot of youth who can't find a ride will finally have chance to learn how to skate. This fulfills one of our core missions!
so..... there is a much better chance you will have skate park that you can skate to!

First location?
This is a big question right now. We are thinking that Greenlaw community center park would be a location that Parks and Rec might let us have.

Why Greenlaw?

1. As GatesofMemphis mentioned it very near the MATA hub.
2. Its could be used by siblings of St. Jude patients
3. BridgesUSA could use it for their programs

4.And most importantly Detric Golden's youth, that hang at the center and have recently learned to skate, would finally have a skate park in their immediate neighborhood. Goldens skaters have been skating on my half-pipe for the past year and we go on regular skate trips to surrounding skate parks.

We'll keep you posted. We are also in the process of getting positioned to soon start taking donations. More to come in a few weeks.

A skate park for all

2008-03-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Smart City and they eloquently described what we flushed out in our "facing the brutal facts" post.

I did want to clarify a post that was made regarding the intended use of the proposed Mud Island Skate park. We would want to see users from all types of wheeled-persuasions using this park. That includes roller-bladers, roller-skaters, skate boarders and bicycles. We are pushing for the full South end to be used so that there is enough room to design elements that would be used best by specific activities. For example a concrete launch ramp would be favored by bikers. A snake run or concrete wave would be well used not by just skaters but by roller-skaters and blader. Louisville was designed like this and the new San Jose skate park embraces this approach even more. See below...

Memphis Skaters rock!

2008-02-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

The survey results are starting to trickle through and by all indications you guys rock! I'll explain later so as not to bias the results....

Binghamton and Tobey Park visit

2008-02-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we (family et al) took a tour of these two parks. Both parks are excellent locations for a skate park

Tobey Park
Tobey park is big and looks like it's well used during baseball or softball season. I am not sure where the skate park would be located since a lot of the space is dedicated to baseball fields. There looked like some space was available nearest the Avery side of the park ( north side). The park is very open and accessible. I think a larger sized regional park that has lighting would work well here since the park is not too close to neighborhoods that would be affected by the strong lighting. I think the baseball fields have night lighting. It also seems like a great place for having a derby rink next to it.

Binghamton park
This has been my favorite neighborhood park so far. It's well situated near the new school ( by Sam Cooper) so I am thinking it would be well used. With the houses surrounding the park it felt like the park was a miniature town square. Also, the Binghampton development corporation (BDC) has put a lot of effort into this area and a collaborative effort with them would be a build on their work. Binghamton is what Rozelle Park could be like if there was a major push by a community Development corporation backing its revitalization. Binghamton is definitely a neighborhood with a lot of charm. A skate park could be an exclamation point for the efforts that have already been poured into the area.

One concern
The soccer field at Binghamton looks like it's a cherished part of the community. The major issue that must be addressed is how well
utilized is the baseball field? I don't want to mess with the soccer field. It seems like a lot of baseball fields are poorly used these days what about this one? The skate park would replace the baseball field. Does anyone have some insight into this?

Survey of Public parks around Cooper Young

2008-02-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

Thank you Memphis Bloggers!
Gates, Stacey, MRC-t, JCCVI : Appreciated your suggestions and this is what the scoop is on the the parks you suggested.

Criteria

I am looking for three types of settings when considering a potential location for a small skatepark. Atleast one of the three should exist.

1. Quiet and safe neighborhood park: This type of park will be well used by the smaller kids and families. Williamson park in Evergreen fits this description

2. Urban park: This park complements a small business district like CY and provides entertainment for pedestrians and cars passing by. The Peabody park in Idlewild provides this type of setting.

3. Community center park: Glenview park would fit this description. Community centers in lower income neighborhoods provide a safe place for kids of all ages. A skate park enriches existing community center activities such as afterschool programs, mentoring activities and offered classes. The community center assures that the skate park becomes a vital asset of the community. Putting a skate park in a low-income park without a community center is not a great idea. Only the hard-core older skaters will use the park and low income skaters would not have access to a community center where they could check-out boards.

The Spanish-war memorial park would not be negotiable with the Parks and Rec. It is a very visible park but it's barely big enough for the memorial. It's more like a big patch of grass. I had a hard time finding parking. Nice spot, just not big enough for a small park.

Rozelle park is quaint and small and may be a few years back ( maybe more?) this was a thriving neighborhood. The place had an abandoned feeling to it with many boarded-up neglected brick bungalows. Perhaps the neighborhood is on the upswing but I would need to visit a few more times to notice any potential turnaround that I missed with the first pass.

Peabody park
Peabody is a very cute park but it's tiny. A small skate park would fit nicely on the patch of grass nearest the Handicap school. I am guessing that the school would not be happy about losing one of their few patches of grass.

So right now I would probably favor these parks in the following order..
1. Glenview park (Orange Mound...great community outreach !)
2. Williamson park ( quaint and safe)
3. Peabody (Idlewild) ( cute and vibrant place)

Overton park next to the Zoo would be my top pick if it was available but currently this is non-negotiable with the city. What a great combo. Go to the Zoo, picnic, skate and repeat the cycle but with dinner!

T

Marion skate incident

2008-02-04T06:35:00.001-08:00

Yesterday a friend of mine and my six year old son went to Marion, Arkansas to skate their skatepark. It's a modular, pre-fab skatepark around maybe 7000sqft. A four year old boy was skating there and a teenage skater told him to get the f#@k
out of his way. Not a pretty site and you really feel for the little boy. Your first thought is that skater was a jerk! Then the little boy's dad gets in the skaters face and is about ready to kick the you know what out of him. At this point I intevene and try to solicit an apology from the skater to the dad, the dad turns on me, like and angry bear, and my friend is prepared to crack the father over the head with his skateboard. All this is happening around an audience of almost 30 skaters. What's wrong with this picture? A 40+ dad is about to get a felony if he touches this skater and another 37 year old Dad (me) is about to get punched. It was shameful to see a grown man act like that and it's was equally shameful to see a 4 year old get cussed out!

Here is the problem:

The Dad
1. The Dad was not even in the skate park. He was 50 yards away in the parking lot inside his car. He should have been in the park next to his son. He should have had his son in area away from the main action- where my six year old was skating. If there were a couple of skaters perhaps that would have been ok but the place was packed.

The City of Marion
2. Posted signs are critical for ensuring safety at a skate park: A sign should have read " Children under the age of 10 must be accompanied by a guardian or parent"

The skater
3. I understand the skaters frustration of going for a trick and having a 4 year old directly in your landing spot. Not a pretty picture for both parties. Still he had no business yelling at the kid. He should have asked the father to keep his boy in a safer area. But then that's asking a teenager to behave like an parent and when you have a parent that is acting like a idiot , I am not sure if that would have helped.

The greater area of Memphis-not enough skate parks
4. Communities, including Memphis need to recognize just how popular skating has become. Every small skatepark around Memphis ( Hornlake, Southhaven, Houston Levee, Marion) is packed these days with far too many skaters. Our existing skateparks are overcrowded and thus not very safe for the beginners.

We need neighborhood parks to accomodate a swelling population of skaters. Imagine getting rid of 3/4 of our baseball or footbal fields-that's the current scenario if you are a skater- you drive 10-20 miles to go do your sport. Thankfully Memphis City Parks and Rec is on the ball and is helping to resolve this situation.

Grass roots effort needed- help us

2008-01-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

Alright, you read the previous post, it was ugly but sometimes the truth can be.

Start small
We are going to think small enough so that we can get a skate park in Memphis before the next group of skaters are onto college or moved away. Cindy Buchanan at Parks and Recreation suggested we start with something small but at the time we were determined to go big- which we still are but we want to engage the local community and demonstrate to the City that there is pent up demand for a skatepark.

Here is the plan:
Item 1. Solicit the support of our local neighborhood associations. This includes Vollintine
Evergreen Association, The Evergreen Historical Association and the Cooper Young Association. These organizations could help facilitate the fund raising since they have nonprofit status and the most vested interest. Hopefully one of these organizations will adopt our cause and be enthusiastic about partnering with us. This will determine our park location.

Item 2.Park location: This depends on item 1 above as well as the location being managed by City Parks and Recreation. This is critical for having a location that is insurable.

Item 3 Suggestions? You tell us where you want the park!

My suggestions
1. Evergreen- Williamson park behind Fresh Slices
2. Cooper Young- Peabody Park
3. Vollintine Evergreen- not sure- is there public parks space in the area?
4. Other areas??.....I want these parks to be accessible to inner city kids but ultimately it will be the skaters, who raise the funds, that will determine where the park will go.(excluding outlying areas)

Item 4: Size. This will be a small park anywhere from 5000-15000 sqft. These smaller parks cost around $50/sqft so we would be looking at raising $250K-500K. We can dramatically reduce price/sqft if we have a someone willing to donate supplies or reduce material prices. Zach the skate park designer has seen 40% reduction in the price in many case where local suppliers have donated materials.

Item 4: Neighborhood representative(s): At this point I am willing to make presentations to Associations but I would greatly appreciate your help in arranging a presentation with an association. We need complete buy-in from the community for this to be a success.

Item 5: Fundraising approach: We would like to get a interactive image map of a skatepark on the website where online donations will "virtually" build an image of the skatepark. If you like fooling around with webpages and have a better design for the website we are open to suggestions and help!

Thank you! It will take the entire community this fly! Please contact me and we can build this park together.

Facing the brutal facts

2008-01-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

I just finished a book about how companies make the transition from being Good to Great companies. One of the defining qualities of great companies is their to ability to face the brutal facts AND make the necessary adjustments while remaining true to their core mission.

It' time for us to do this for the skate park project.Why? Most skaters who know of this project continue to ask when the park is going to be done. But let's face the reality as it stands. It's going to be awhile.

Reality 1: We need a major government advocate that truly gets what a skate park does for the youth and the city
1. Louisville : It had it's Mayor as the major advocate: The idea was conceived in 1999 and the park was completed in 2002. The Mayor had access to deep pockets and completely understood the reality that a skate park was a low-cost/high impact facility for a city. 3 years is fast! We are approaching year 2 in August 2008.
2. Denver: A city council member was moved by the skater's committment and passion. It took 6 years from inception to completion. This project was still mired in controversy and disputes and the council member made certain this project did not die. These are the two largest skateparks in the U.S.
3. Memphis: We have some government and private leaders who are truly excited about the idea but are not completely certain if this is the best facility to put on Mud Island. For those who have not seen the passion, committment of skaters and are not truly in touch with just how big skating has become with the 15-40 year old age group, these are justifiable reservations for the amount of money this project costs.
$3 million is a "drop" in the bucket for government projects but that's a large barrier for us since we don't have it. If we had one individual that skated or had a son or daughter who skated (the Mayor of Louisville's son skated) then perhaps the funds would be released much quicker or meetings and reports would have a reason to move along faster. But we don't and so our project will continue to move at the same pace as most projects where the certainty of a successful outcome must be demonstrated by the "experts." The frustration? We already know we don't need an expert because we know the outcome. We're are not blazing a new high risk trail here like Louisville did at the time. They and are reaping the rewards with bringing families back to the city. After all they are ranked #1 for relocating families. We know the outcome and so do 800 other town/cities who are building their own skate parks just this year.

Reality #2 : A large skate park might be done by 2012 I don't see the project being done any sooner then this unless a major private donor plunks down a donation and says get this done in the next two years.
This is not going to happen.

Reality # 3 :Memphis is very behind in national health trends Let me first say that Memphis is wonderfully creative and vibrant place but when it comes to being in touch with larger scale trends it's painfully slow. The case in point is it's plans to finally get a large scale bike path and running trail in place.This was cutting edge in the 1980s. This has been in the works for two decades and we finally received a small city grant to get this done-why? There is little incentive for developers to do this as there is no incentive to put skate parks in new neighborhoods. That's why we have layers and layers of the same design motif built decade after decade. Build it, increase tax base, move east and repeat the process. If you don't have the cash or a strong leadership in touch with what's going on then good luck changing anything. It's a fact of life and that's the way it works.
So, after almost every other city has a green space plan, Memphis leaders are forced to evaluate and implement their own version here to save face and avoid complete embarrassment. That's the sad part, skate parks are still cutting edge (especially big ones) which means it could be two more decades if we were to allow our government leaders to "discover" the blaring economic impact of a skatepark. By then every city would already have one and the economic impact would be marginalized so at that point then it would make sense to have one here since that seems to be logic these days. To be fair this phenomena is not uncommon which makes you appreciate the type of pull and vision that the Mayor of Louisville must have had to get the largest park built in his city. In two more decades skateparks will be commonplace when the skaters will eventually occupy higher level positions in government- this reality already exists in California where almost every town has at least one skatepark. You don't need crystal ball just look west and observe as the frequency of skateparks proportionally increases the further West you go.

These are some of the brutal facts that we must acknowledge but we (I) must not forget that some great things have happened.

1. City parks is still receptive and wanting to work with us.
2. The Hyde foundation granted RDC the funds for a feasibility study. They are excited about the project.
3. The RDC is still interested and pursuing the Mud Island park but the projects must
be seen as the "best land use" for the south end. This will take a year to determine by an "expert".

What are we to do?
1. Wait for the big skate park to unfold
2. Build a smaller park and raise these funds entirely through a grass roots effort and maybe getting some midsize donations. My next blog will discuss these plans and I will need your input. If all goes well this park would be done in 1-2 years. We'll see. Stay tuned!

Desoto County 2 skate parks: Memphis 0

2008-01-19T17:40:00.000-08:00

Today the Commercial reported on the growing skater population in Desoto County.
Why? It's simple they have two skate parks within 5 miles of each other. One in Hornlake and the other in Southhaven. Yes Cordova and Germantown skate parks are in Shelby County but they are far from any Memphian living in the City. In reality they are about the same distance as going from Memphis to the Desoto County Skateparks.

The article focuses on the economic impact of these small parks. We've been preaching this message for awhile. Imagine what a very large regional park could do for Memphis?

We're not surprised with what skating has done for this Desoto business. With 800 parks being built nationwide this year skating shows no signs of slowing down.

If you are interested in the article check it out here

We are about to embark on a shorter term strategy that will require everyone's participation. Stay tuned!

Balkin in Memphis

2008-01-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

A recent article which was published and discussed on the 55-40 blog
does a wonderful job on informing us about the ongoing controversy surrounding the nature of the type of development that should occur for our Memphis Riverfront.

What was missing from this exposition was any mention of the skatepark as being part of the solution. Not that I am expecting any mention of the project at this point since we are still in the beginning phases of the project. Translation: until we get funding this is still a pipe dream. So hopefully the next time the author (KATHARINE WROTH) visits our city she will see a vibrant and thriving Riverfront partly due to the presence of skate-park that gives Memphians a good reason to come down and hang out.

Happy New Years!!!

New York Times article on skateboarding: Skating is moving out of the burbs....

2007-12-11T20:09:00.000-08:00

Recently the New York Times published an article
about something that most skaters are already aware of these days and most of you are aware of since I am beyond redundant in making the same point. The authors point is that skating is getting very popular among minorities. Still it's encouraging to see the Times recognize an "emerging" trend and give it some exposure.

article

Remote control surfing

2007-12-08T19:14:00.000-08:00

I couldn't help but put this video in here for you all to see. Here is an example of some dudes with a bit too much time on their hands. Still, this video is worth a good laugh. They edited just like you would see a normal surf film. The slow motion touches are priceless!!

plans and operations

2007-12-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

When we first met with the Hyde foundation back in March, we submitted this overview for plans and operations for the skate park.

If you would like to read it, you can download it now. If after reading it you would like to make some additional suggestions please leave a comment and we'll work it into the master plan. We want this to be as democratic as possible and we know that we have likely failed to think of some other considerations or ideas.

Visit to North Little Rock's Riverview Skate Park

2007-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, Michelle the two boys and myself made the journey over to North Little Rock to check out the skate park that they have recently constructed over the past year.

We were inspired to check out the area since Stacey ( FertileGround blog) went with her husband and two boys. Unfortunately we didn't make it over to do the Pinnacle Mountain hike.

The skate park is situated along the river and is actually pretty far removed from the rest of the downtown. It's located in a unique urban-wilderness area. Your driving along this small two lane road , which is mostly being used by cyclists ( what a surprise in itself) and then suddenly here is this skate park and small playground for the tots.

I think that the two lane road is a temporary bike trail and perhaps they will build the real "river" trail more along the river. My wife found it kind of stressful to have our 6 year old on his bike along with the jogger while looking out for the occasional car. As you get closer to town an actual bike trail along the river appears so clearly a work in progress.

In terms of the Riverview skate park layout(see picture above), at least for a smaller park, this is one of the best designs that I have seen. This park is now the 30th skate park that I have been to so that says a lot for the design. Dreamland designed this park and they really did it right. How? If you look at the picture above you have a snake run that essentially is a series of connected bowls. Starting on the right hand side there is a three foot bowl that goes down and winds to the left side and dumps you into a 10 foot bowl on the left side. Almost every face in the snake run has some type of hip or corner that you can do a trick on or launch into the air and there are roll-ins ( areas without the metal coping) that allow access into the bowl for beginners or for those who want to roll into the bowls with a lot more speed without
having to worry about going over the metal coping and getting stuck (this follows with a face-plant). A roll-in is an especially nice feature if you are a roller-blader or roller-skater. Most importantly you will never take your foot off your board because the layout allows you to pump from one face to the next without losing momentum--we call this "flow". It's the same as being on a ski-mountain and never having to use your ski poles or unstrapping your snowboard to get past the flat spots. No flat spots in this place! It's the "flow" element that is the most addictive component of skating, surfing or snowboarding or skiing.

The street course is a fusion between street and old school where there are some small curve-linear hips that fuse into linear ramps. Street skaters like this since landing on a linear ramp causes much less whip lash then landing on the curvy-type ramp. Most of the street skaters were launching over the hip and a make shift trash can that was placed on the other face of the hip. A hip is where two adjacent faces meet in the middle. You launch off one face and land on the other.

The demographics were interesting and very integrated. There were about 12 Caucasians and 6-7 African American skaters. Skating is a great people mixer! Ages varied from 10- myself (the oldest ok?). The interesting part was that the African American skaters strongly gravitated to the curvy old-school bowls where as the other skaters were mostly doing the street part. This of course could have been an anomaly and I would need to go there about 10-15 more times to see if there was any sort of validity to this observation. Who knows?

My boys loved the little playground next to the skate park and Michelle had a great walk but again could have done without sharing part of the bike/hiking trail with the cars.

Essentially, the skate park is quite remote so the fact that it was packed gives testimony to not only the demand for such a park but also the demand for a well-designed park. Nice job North little Rock! You're going to need another park soon though! We'll be back......

Franklin Tennessee visit

2007-10-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

Yesterday our family, the two boys,my wife and Mother ( visiting from Northern California) took our first adventure to another part of the state.

Franklin TN, which is just south of Nashville, was having it's annual Pumpkin festival. The day before they had their annual wine festival and Saturday was their Chili cook-off. The festival is tailored for kid's activities and has many other booths, live-dancing and anything else that comes with the charm of having a small town festival. I highly recommend going to this town for a visit. There is a exquisite European bakery there called Merridee's Breadbasket . Just finding that bakery made it worth the trip to the town. Their
scones and cinnamon rolls are to die for.

If you wonder what Memphis might have looked like at the peak of it's own charm and cleanliness, then you should go to Franklin. They have completely revitalized the historic downtown square and the parks and recreation system is clearly a major priority.
Click here to check out there parks system.

Franklin Skatepark

Which brings us to the skatepark officially known as the Jim Warren skate plaza. Here is a video of the giant bowl that they have there.

The bowl is a peanut shape with an 11 foot bowl and a 7 foot smaller bowl that feeds into the larger one. The rest of the park is in what is known as a skate plaza format which caters to street skating. It's a nice park but the park suffers from what most skate parks do. There are too many advanced elements that most skaters think are cool to put in their parks but in reality are too hard and rarely get used. There were many rails in the park, but they were dangerous for most skaters and were not being attempted. The main issue is the rails were a foot too high to ollie onto.

The large bowl is most likely a big hit with the older 30-40ish skaters but none of the 20+ younger skaters at the park were using it. Why didn't they put in a smaller beginner bowl that the kids could learn on?

It's critical when designing our park that what we think sounds cool often is far more difficult in practice. Nevertheless, the park was completely packed and the skaters were elated to have place to skate. Way to go Franklin! The park opened last year in 2006.

Feasibility study next week

2007-10-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

Zach our skatepark designer from skateparks.com will be flying in from Norcal next week to survey Mud Island and some other locations for smaller parks. We'll be meeting and touring the locations together. I'll post after our meeting. Should be fun.

Feasibility Study is ON!

2007-09-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

We'll it's official now. We have funding for the feasibility study thanks to the Hyde Family Foundation. The study should be undertaken in the next few weeks so we'll see how that goes.

But for now- go celebrate!!!

This is a HUGE step towards the skate park becoming a reality. It doesn't guarantee that the park will be funded but Foundations don't typically sign onto loser projects. The Hydes are quite particular about funding projects that have a long term positive impact on the city. That's the mission of our project so it's a good fit.

The next phase to start thinking about is the design of the park. But we'll save that for another day....

News!!

2007-09-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since we've had any significant developments to talk about but that changed Tuesday. We had a meeting at the Hyde foundation and the outcome of that meeting was that there was a strong consensus that Mud Island would be the best place to have the skatepark. The next step will be to have a study of that location done and then we'll see what happens from there. It's a slow but atleast a steady process. When the funding is released for the study I'll be sure to post the news. Hang in there everyone (whoever wherever you are) and hopefully the ball will start rolling again!

Skate park tour continued-

2007-07-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Nice Logo!

On Saturday I checked the Dublin skatepark. The park was well used and had atleast 20 skaters using the park. The park terrain was aimed at beginning and intermediate skaters. A fair number of skaters were probably 10 years or younger and their parents were there watching them. The park was placed within a larger public park and was directly across the street from housing.

One observation that stuck with me was the number of kids who were riding razor scooters. This seemed to be a big hit with the
6-10 year old group.

Sunday was a day of surfing. It had been year since the last surf session. Our family went to a little beach cove within the Ano Nuevo Elephant seal reserve. That state beach is one of my favorites since it's one of the few places that is completely protected from the prevailing chilly northwesterly summer winds.

On Monday, my oldest son and older brother checked out the the Walnut Creek skatepark. It's located within the Heather Farm City park. The entire park is one of the best layed out parks I have seen. It has a lake, 4 tennis courts, an olympic sized swimming pool and a huge play ground. There were atleast a few hundred people using the park and the skate park was packed with skaters of all ages. There were a few girl skaters but most were teenage males with a great ethnic mix.

On Tuesday (yesterday) my wife and I had a day without our two boys and set off to Santa Cruz to enjoy some time without the kids. We also stopped by the new Santa Cruz Skate park. I'll get some pictures up soon. The skate park was once again packed and the street section was probably the most used part of the park.

Here a shot of the Street section

Considering how big the bowls were this made sense. The bowls were HUGE and there was a full pipe as well.

Here's a shot of the full pipe in Santa Cruz. The picture does not do it justice.

The bowls must have been atleast 10-12 feet with gigantic hips. The bowls were lined with pool coping so there was not much room for error without some serious consequences. Needless to say, these bowls were probably a bit beyond a lot of the skaters who had grown up skating on the street and were more natural to those of us who were used to dropping in on large waves. The was one small 3 foot bowl and this was being well used. It just goes to show that if you are going to have some extreme elements in the park you need to have some intermediate parts so that the new skaters are not so intimidated by the bigger stuff.

We also visited the Pacifica skate park. It too was packed with skaters and the easier sections were the most used while the 12 foot bowls were virtually empty. I suppose it's just like the ski hill- the double black diamonds are never as crowded as the green and blue runs. I had collision with another skater, that was a bit painful as his board nailed my ankle.

We also visited the Halfmoon bay skate park- it's falling apart which is not surprising since it's just a few old wooden quarter pipes and an old six foot halfpipe.

The sign is better then the park

Skated the Piedmont skate park again tonight and will visit the Fremont skate park tomorrow. Below is a picture of me in the Piedmont bowl. It had perfect transition eventhough it was only a 5 foot bowl. It had just enough vert to launch you straight up!

BS air (work in progress) in the Piedmont bowl.

Construction of San Jose's skate park

2007-07-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

Skate park workers blow concrete into the mold that will become a launch ramp

Yesterday I met Zach Wormhoudt at the future site of the 40,000 square foot San Jose skate park. He gave me a guided tour of what all they are working on. They are about 70 percent done blowing in the concrete. That was fun to watch the workers do. That concrete comes out with such force that it could blow a hole in you. I took a few pictures and I'll put them up once I get back to Memphis- I forgot my USB adaptor.

Lasting impressions:

Location

The site where the park is very much like Mud island in terms of being somewhat removed from everything else. In order to get to the park you will have to pay $6.00 for parking at an admission/security gate and then drive in and either go to Raging waters water park or go to the skate park. The two facilities are about 1/2 a mile away from each other with a lake separating the two locations. I asked Zach what he thoought about the location being somewhat remote and he thought that this was something that was somewhat critical to the success of the park. Why? The main reason is safety. The bowls and other terrain that I saw are pretty extreme. His point was you don't want a people "high" on whatever coming in and fooling around in the skatepark- someone could die in some areas of the park. He recommended that the city have it supervised.

Quality

Watching the construction was like seeing art being made from concrete. They just started making the full pipe which consisted of these giant support steel arches that would be used for pouring concrete into. The San Jose City inspector is out there everyday to make sure all construction is done exactly as specified by buidling code and the blue print. Zach is very involved in the entire process.

Design

Zach put a lot of thought into this design as he has for other parks. The skate lines in the park are very fluid and minimize the chance of collision between skaters.

The Mud island Skate park

I still think that the Mud island park could be a great park to serve as training grounds for skaters. We could really make our park stand out by having terrain that gradually increases in difficulty. This concept will come out when we present some preliminary designs for the skatepark. So many parks have cool extreme terrain but most of this is used by a small number of skaters. Zach informed me that a lot of skaters want this in their parks and then stuff just sits there unused because it's too extreme. Extreme terrain should definitely be in a park but we need more terrain that allows skaters to systematically work their abilities towards "safetly" tackling the harder parts of the park. It's just like the balance beam in gymnastics, the beam starts on the floor and stays there for a long time until the gymnast is so confident that raising it 4 feet makes no difference. This approach could help to minimize injury.

Well that's enough day dreaming- we have to get the funding for the feasability study first...

Skateboarding in the Olympics - What do you think?

2007-07-25T11:31:00.001-07:00

There is a good chance that we will see skateboarding coming to the Olympics in 2012.

We are curious to know what some of you think about this push to put skating in the Olympics.

Here are some of the current opinions floating around:

Cons:

1. The Olympics is just another way for corporations to capititalize on skating.
2. It's a sell-out to mainstream
3. Skating is form of self-expression not a way to make a living
4. The Olympics mentality flies in the face of why we skate

Pros:

More skateparks !!!

1. The more mainstream an activity becomes the more facilities- if skating becomes as mainstream as baseball or basketball then expect to see a skatepark in every district of a city. The OIympics will have cities clamoring to lay claim that they are the official place for training skaters.

Proof?

Every district of San Jose, CA is slated to have it's own skate park. Why? It's the "me too" mentality. Every council member of San Jose wanted their district to be as competitive and relavant as the other districts in the city. That's ten skate parks ! With one giant regional park.

Argument against: Skating is much more then just going to a skatepark.

2. Empowerment of youth: Skating is an activity that is rather popular among the "harder element" of society largely because those who don't skate consider skating a criminal like acitivity. So what happens? We get like criminal like behavior associated with skating. As skating becomes mainstream we see families get involved (because there are skate parks for them to go to) with the sport as well and skaters get respect.

Proof?

Yesterdays session at Menlo Park, CA. There were a lot of small kids with their families out skating not just the usual crowd of "hard-core" skaters. Skating should not be exclusive to just the "hard-core" element. I am all for skating being a great way of getting out ones aggressions and youthful anger. We've all been there growing up but at some point we need to put a little more family into the skating scene rather then it being an activity that is reserved for youth trying to escape their parents or whatever.

3. Long overdue respect: There are a lot of skaters that would say that they could give a rip about what people think of their activity. That's the beauty of skating or any individual-based activity. It's more about what that activity means to you then what you think others think of what you do. However, EVERYONE at some point has a need for affirmation especially when your growing up. As much as we try to hide this need, it's there. It's time that skaters get the respect that has been given to other athletes- excessively. Skating will always remain true to its roots because it's a passionate form of self-expression rather then a way to make millions of dollars. It's time to show case the talents of our youth rather then continue to reinforce and continue to propagate the existing stereotype.

Proof?

Tony Hawk: Tony Hawk grew up competing and was raised and promoted by the tireless support of his father. His father understood what skating meant to Tony and as result he took Tony all over the place to skate and compete. Imagine how many other Tony Hawks there would be if there were parents and a culture that gave them the respect and opportunity to completely develope their talents rather then tell them to stick there boards in their childhood closet of memories and grow up. I am sure there are plenty of skaters that think Tony is a big sell out. Well if that's true they should make sure that they don't skate any of the hundreds of skateparks that Tony has given money to help build. Especially the parks in lower-income communities.

4. Making the Olympics relavant and accessible to most youth: Skateboarding is now the 3rd most popular sport. Enough said.

Accessible: If you go to the Olympics chances are you are there because you are talented and benefited from some very specialized training and guidance- you were very previledged. Skating would give youth with less priviledged backgrounds the opportunity to go the Olympics. You really don't need a trainer and your own specialized facility. Just a skate park, talent and a lot of persistence.

What do you think????????????

Menlo Park Skate park

2007-07-24T21:40:00.001-07:00

Skated my former "home" skate park. It's been almost a year since I skated there and I was impressed by how many young skaters were at the park. There must of been around 20 skaters today and most of them were probably in their low teens and younger. There were quite a few Moms with their little skater dudes. Pretty neat.

It was quite a contrast from the Berkeley skate park crowd. The Menlo Park skate park is part of a multimillion dollar renovation of a City park where as the Berkeley skate park is nearer a run-down industrial district of Berkeley. It's quite interesting on where a skate park is built will often dramatically influence the skate culture. Ideally you get a mix of all types.

Berkeley Park

2007-07-23T17:49:00.001-07:00

We got off the plane on Saturday and it was off to the Berkeley Skatepark. There were about 8-10 skaters. I was pretty tired from the plane ride so the skating was sub-par. If you look at the link from the previous post you can see there is a large gap between stuff so it's hard to get a good flow going. Sunday and Monday where spent skating Piedmont skatepark. I'll try to get some pictures of that park. There is a great clover-bowl there. Perfect bowl for backside airs.

skate park tour in the Bay Area

2007-07-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

I'll be checking out various skate parks in the Bay area in the next two weeks. If anyone has a skate park that you want me to visit and it's within reasonable driving distance than let me know and I'll check it out for you and post some pictures.

The first stop for the tour will be the Berkeley Skate park

Numbers that make you cry

2007-07-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

Comparing San Jose to Memphis

San Jose is a city that in 2002 was named the safest big city in the U.S. and has a comparable population and size to Memphis.
San Jose and Memphis both have populations around 1 million and their square mileage is close.

I checked the San Jose homepage and they have in their plans to build 10 skate parks within the next few years. They are currently building California's largest concrete skate park. Their vision is that every community or neighborhood should have it's own skate park just like a baseball field or basketball court.

Thats what I'd like to see in Memphis but honestly it may have to wait another decade or so until all the younger skaters grow
up and demand the likes. You see there are not too many old dudes like myself that skate around here, whereas there is a HUGE population of "older" skaters in California that are now in the position to be major advocates not only for their sport but for their kids that are now skating. You want the perfect example of this happening? The former Mayor's (of Louisville) son skateboards- next thing you know Louisville has the biggest park in the U.S.

I don't see in the very near future the average Memphian trading in their golf clubs, grill or hunting gear to go skate so maybe we'll just have to keep waiting. Perhaps we'll get a Mayor who's kids skate, that could help. In the meantime, it' off to California for two weeks with the family. I'll try and get some pictures posted on the construction of the San Jose Skate park. Zach Wormhoudt ( the designer for Louisville) said he might give us a short tour of the progress they are making.....for us it's but a dream back here.

Our global skate community: Complements of Google!

2007-07-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

Google has made it a easy to track who all visits your site. So, for fun I took the visits from May until now and had Google show the locations for each visitor.

In the past two months we've had visitors from 56 different cities as well as nine different countries check out what we're trying to do. So if you have anyone ask you if there is an interest, just send them this picture.

Thanks Google!

I'll be posting a blog soon about skateboarding in the Olympics.

We need fun exercise

2007-07-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

CNN report on Obesity

I grabbed this map from CNN which is doing a report on the obesity epedemic in the U.S. They have a nice flash animation that transitions through each year to show you the shift in waistlines over the past 20 years. The most dramatic is the shift from 2001 to 2004.

What stands out here?

The least overweight states UT, CO,
MT and VT are states that provide some of the finest skiiing in the U.S.
Skiing like many sports is pretty exclusive to individuals that are in decent shape. You don't see many large folks plowing down the mountain. Does this mean that skiing alone has
trimmed the waistlines? Probably not at all, it's served to pull in a demographic of people ( or select for) that enjoy skiing and are fit.

Why skiiing?

Skiing is an adrenaline based/highly addictive type of sport and so the amount of effort needed to stay in shape is rewarded with the thrill. We humans crave thrills. Basically, given a big enough incentive, people can become motivated to do a lot of crazy or ambitious endeavors. That's my theory of what is going on in the obesity map. If bigger thrills demands being in better shape then the incentive is there to endure the pain of cross training or even the exhaustion near the end of the ski-day.

What about skating?

The same goes for skating. Except the cross-training and thrill are all wrapped into one activity-that's even better and it's available year round. Plus it's great cross-training for winter sports.

So one would presume that Kentucky which has the largest skatepark (Louisville) in the U.S. would also be one of the fittest states. But Kentucky is just as overweight as Tennessee right?

It appears that way but.....CNN also listed the top 10 fittest and fattest cities. Louisville as you can see from the picture below is the # 9 fittest city while Memphis is the 6th fattest city.

Eventhough Louisville is located in an obese state it is one of the fittest cities.

Why?

I think the presence of a major skatepark and one of the best parks and recreation systems in the country has a serioius impact on the health and fitness of their city.

Going for a healthy addiction

Let's face it. Eating is fun especially when you're bored, stressed or need
a quick escape from whatever ails you.
It's also entertaining and accessible.
This is all good until that's your main
way of recreating.

So let's get this skatepark done so Memphians have a way to burn off all that great food that we have around here!

Clearly no current exercise or activitiy is doing a very good job here but we have Louisville as a prime example of what can happen if people are given the access to some world-class park facilities. Nothing makes food taste better then a healthy dose of exercise- expecially the non-torturing kind. It's a no brainer!

liability for park facilities

2007-06-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is more of a reference then a blog.

For those wondering what sort of law exists in Tennessee for protecting both public and private landowners that have made their land available for recreational use, here it is: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/resources/repository/Tennessee_Recreational_Use_Statute.htm

This law was passed in 1988, probably in response to the peak of lawsuits that were particularly in vogue during the 80s- of course at the cost of shutting a lot of cool skateparks down as well tearing out a lot of "old-school" playground equipment .

We'll let's hope the liability climate has changed a bit.

Here's a summary of all the states recreational use statutes: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/archive/article/123/

The Kroc Community Center at the Fairgrounds

2007-06-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

I recently met the director of the Kroc center that is run by the Salvation Army. The Kroc center was started by a grant awarded by the Kroc Foundation. The Kroc foundation was founded by Joan Kroc, the widow of the deceased Ray Kroc. Mr. Kroc stared McDonalds. Anyhow, the Kroc foundation has awarded a $25 million dollar challenge grant to the Salvation Army. This means the Salvation army has to come up with the another $25 million before the Kroc foundation releases their $25 million to the Memphs Kroc Center. They are getting pretty close to raising it.

They are planning on building a huge youth community center/sports complex so one would naturally assume that the plans would include a skatepark considering these impressive statistics regarding skating:

• 100 = number of skateparks within a 70 mile radius of San Francisco, considering the bay population that means your likely to find a skatepark every 73000 people. For Shelby coutny you'll find a skatepark every 450,000 people and for the city of Memphis you'll 1 skatepark for every 900,000 people

• 20%= the percentage of youth that currently skate.

• 170,000 = number of youth in the City Memphis so.....let's say in Memphis the percentage of youth that skate is much lower , like 5%. That's still 8500 skaters for one skatepark and it's in Collierville. The demand is there. And the % of skaters would dramatically increase as the number of skateparks became available.

• 3 out of the top 5 best cities for relocating families host the 3 largest skateparks in the U.S. (Louisville #1, San Jose #3 , Denver # 5, Lo Primacy research 2006)

• 2 out of the top 25 fittest cities also have the largest skate parks in the U.S.A ( ( # 6 Denver and #18 Louisville, Mens Fitness survey (2007)

• 2 out of the top 10 safest cities also host the largest skateparks ( San Jose #1, Denver # 8, 2007 Morgan Quitno survey) Memphis is 3rd most dangerous.

• The #1 fittest city , Albuquerque, boasts 4 skateparks with a $7.5 million proposed extreme park- being promoted by the cities Mayor.

However, if your staff and your advisory board and your colleagues don't skate or their kids don't skate then it will seem that skating is not very relavant or necessary to build at a youth center. I don't blame them for not including it, in fact as most skaters know there are a lot of negative perception associated with skating and the skatepark. We know it doesn't have to be that way.

Our part....

It's up to us to let them know that as the statistics above suggest that skating and having a skatepark is a very desirable activity and facility among our culture and it's an activity that natually promotes cross-cultural friendships and communities. The director, Rev. Stephen Carpenter, seemed very open to suggestions. This is a great opportunity to be a voice that can make a difference in what gets included in their plans. If they don't hear your voice then the center will be catering to the squeakiest wheel which is likely the parents of the kids involved in the more traditional sports. We know skateparks are the most used facilities but do they?

Write a letter:

I suggest write a personal letter to the director and help educate them as to all the benefits and needs of having a skatepark;

Send the letter to :

The Salvation Army
Attn: Rev. Stephen Carpenter
696 Jackson Avenue
Memphis, TN 38105

Beale Street Landing Urban Park: A case for building the demographic

2007-05-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

The Beale Street Landing Urban park that has been proposed by the Riverfront Development corporation- one of our partners for the skatepark- was turned down by City Council yesterday as reported in the Commercial appeal today I've seen the plans for their proposed park and the it's impressive. I hope at somepoint in the future this park will get supported by the council. What the Landing first needs is the demographic to justify building it. The point of one of the council ladies is that the Landing could be a repeat of what has happened at the River Park on Mudd island. Essentially, the Riverpark is a place where out of towners go and visit and is very under-used by local Memphians. The good news is I am certain that the Skatepark that the RDC has adopted will start to bring in the type of demographic that would also appreciate and use the Beale Street Landing park. I think that once the RDC demonstrates that it has successfully repopulated the RiverPark with local Memphians and is also bringing in even more out of towners that their case for the Landing will be strengthened. When the skate park is built we will have a big draw for the downtown and people will start hanging out more at the Landing as they can watch skaters skating just across the river at the River park. Even more ideally, a bridge going from the Landing to the Skatepark would make a great combination and synergy between the two locales. Personally, I would like to see continued efforts to get the greenline off the ground so that people could end their bicycle ride or jog either at the skatepark or at the Landing. Right now, the bikepath along the river is too short and dangerous for kids as bikers go streaking by. If you are wondering exactly what type of Greenline is being proposed check out the Wolf River conservacy page

Meeting with Smart Cities consulting: A major step forward for the park

2007-05-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

If the parks and recreation meeting wasn't exciting enough. The next series of events that unfolded were even more mind-blowing. As many Memphians may already know, the Hyde family has had a long tradition of being major philanthropic contributors to many wonderful attractions that we take for granted here in the city. They contributed to the Zoo, to the fine arts and are largely responsible for creating one of the finest baseball stadiums in the country. In short, their efforts to make Memphis a great place to live are legendary. Ok, back to the story. The Hydes have had a keen interest in trying to figure out how to keep working professionals, such as scientists like myself, from leaving Memphis once we are done with our work at St. Jude. This has been a major problem and Tom Jones recently wrote an article in the April issue of Memphis Magazine addressing this issue. He has posted it online on the Smart City blog if you want to check it out . I digress, the Hyde Foundation had Smart City Consulting lead a round-table discussion with about 25 St. Jude research scientists. Carol Colletta from Smart City lead the discussion while her business partner Tom Jones documented the interview. They wanted to know what Memphis was doing right for attracting new workers as well what sort of ammenities were missing. Bike trails and green space were high on the list of missing ammenities and this is where I had a chance to let Carol and Tom know that I was trying to establish a world-class skatepark.

Meeting with the RDC: A skatepark at Mud Island

I sent Carol and Tom a copy of the proposal and Tom and one of my colleagues met with him to unfold the vision behind the skatepark. I told him about the Parks and Recreation collaboration and he asked me where in my wildest dreams would I put the park if there were no political complications associated with choosing the spot. I told him on the Riverfront where we could show tourists that Memphis was proud of it's skaters and it's downtown!
So, he arranged a meeting with the Riverfront Developement corporation which operates and manages Tom Lee park. In that meeting we proposed the park and suggested Tom Lee as the park location. They were concerned about losing space for the Memphis in May festival- a valid concern but hey it was worth a shot but instead of Tom Lee, they suggested Mud Island Riverpark!
What? That's like the crown-jewel location of the city! I couldn't believe that they were open to that.
As it turns out, much to my suprise, the Riverpark has been suffering from neglect inspite of being meticulously taken care of- it's beautiful over there and my two boys could play in the minature Mississippi all day long. The problem with the Riverpark is that it's a one shot deal- you've seen it once and most likely you won't come back. So...having a highly healty addictive activity such as skateboarding would build a large base of people/skaters that would come on average as high as 100 times per year. Ski resorts base their existence on this similar phenomena. It makes sense, have hundreds of skaters come down, bring their friends. While young families with parents that skate would also come. And best of all, Mud island is a highly controlled environment that would ensure parents felt safe with their kids there. Let's just say that between the possibility of having concerts AND being able to skate , the situation just doesn't get much better. At this point it's still a dream until the bulldozer takes the first dig at making a bowl.

Meeting at the Hyde Foundation

The next meeting that Tom arranged for three of us scientists (Zach Baquet , Steve Zatechka and myself) was with the Hyde foundation. We proposed the park and all the potential impact it could have on the city. I think they really appreciated our enthusiasm and well thought out plan. From that meeting, the Foundation offered a grant for a feasibility study to be done by the RDC to assess the cost and all the other paper work that is involved in such a big project.

Present:
As of now (5-7-07) the RDC is putting together a study to present to the Hyde Foundation. Hopefully it will be completed by the end of this year. If we are fortunate they will have it done in the next few months. Keep hoping for the most expedient outcome! Parks and Recreation has been included on the study as additional sites for two smaller skateparks. That news came last week. That's it for now.

History of the SkateParkforMemphis : Part 1

2007-05-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

The launch of the website

SkateLife : Memphis started out when our family- my wife and two boys moved here in August from the Bay area in California to work at St. Jude. When we arrived here, we expected to find a major skatepark in Memphis and perhaps some nice neighborhood skateparks in other nearby towns. Thankfully we managed to discover Oxford, South Haven, Houston, Hornlake and the SPOM skateparks- however none of these parks are really that accessible for any skater living in the heart of Memphis- especially for all the youth that don't have access to transportation. Skateparks in California are now as common as having a baseball or soccer field. Almost every small town or city has one so needless to say it was a major surprise not to find one here. I was so bummed I spent my vacation time before starting work at the Hospital working on getting the Skate Life website together. We managed to launch it at the beginning of September.

Meeting Detric Golden:

One of the first persons I met was Detric Golden who runs an after school program called Golden Child Ministries out of the Greenlaw community center- the center is located just North of St. Jude by Bridges USA. Golden's story of how he became involved with working with inner city youth is incredible. His effectivness is evident in the behavior of his kids in his program. Hopefully he will continue to become more recognized and his program will grow like Streets Ministries without losing his one-on-one relationships with the kids. The story behind our meeting was noteworthy. In September I happened to meet Jim Boyd at BridgesUSA. I proposed the skatepark idea to him and he suggested having it built at Greenlaw. I checked out Greenlaw and started to pace out the squarefootage of the area surrounding the community center and Golden (who I didn't know ) came up looking at me suspciously wondering what in the world I was doing pacing off steps at his center. We had breakfast the following week and started to brainstorm how we could get a skatepark going and decided the best place to start was to introduce skateboarding to the kids in his program. His kids are stoked on skateboarding and the rest is history. Two of his kids come over to my house once a week and we skate on the backyard ramp as well as practice back-flips on the trampoline. We take trips to the Skate Park of Memphis once every couple of months complements of Josh, Becky, Lance and Shannon at the park. Josh and company are stoked at getting some more skate space and have been big supporters of this project. They helped us raise money to purchase skate equipment for Goldens youth. Another major player has been Brian Cage down in Oxford. He's provided us boards at wholesale. He currently owns and runs Suite 10 skate boards down in Oxford.

Meeting Greg Simmons:

A guy named Greg Simmons emailed from the website. He's been a huge support for getting the skatepark movement off the ground and runs a great organization called witnessbmx.com. Check out his site when you get a chance. He's a real inspiration for young BMX riders. They do skate and bike demos so drop them a line if you want to set something up. He's been in the Memphis Skate scene since the 1970's so it's like having a walking history lesson if you ever want to know just how skating used to be in Memphis before liability issues forced the closure of some major skateparks here.

Parks and Recreation meeting:

We met with Cindy Buchanan and her colleagues about the getting a skatepark. From that meeting I have had the honor of befriending Rita Dorsey who works with Cindy. Rita's an amazing lady and is committed to getting some skateparks built for Memphis. The week after we met, she showed us around at some potential sites in North Memphis. The consensus was that we would like to have the park at Bickford, a City managed park across the street from Caudell Elementary in an area just North of Downtown. I really liked the spot because it would be accessible to inner-city kids and it could used as an afterschool program that could be run by the Bickford Community center. What a great gift to a community that has been suffering from economic decline and neglect for decades ! Thankfully there is an organization called Oasis of Hope that runs afterschool programs for Caudwell elementary students. Oasis of Hope is an affiliate of Hope Presbysterian. Cindy has been equally enthusiastic about the prospects.
The only real issue is that the Parks and Recreation department has become marginalized when it come to funding projects.
It will be a beautiful day when we wake up and find a local government that promotes and truly values their parks and recreation department. For now that's not the case so we may need to raise funds. However, the good news is that our parks and rec department has the vision and enthusiasm and is willing to work with us by providing land for the skateparks.
This is an unfinished chapter and we will continue to revisit it as things unfold.

A new blog site to for Skate Life....

2007-05-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

It's been eight months since we launched the skateparkformemphis.org website. Progress has been pretty good all things considered. It was high time to get a blog site up and running since we are considering to start raising funds for building skateparks in Memphis. In the next few weeks I'll be trying to get everyone up to speed as to what has happened. We also need to start brainstorming for ways to raise funds. The ultimate goal in my mind is to get as many neighborhood skateparks ( skateparks that are 10000 squarefeet or less) as well as one world class skatepark downtown. Let's see how we can do this.