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This Issue 04/23/2009

• Tokyo Drift
• Earth to Disney
• I Want To Ride My Bicycle
• Speak of the Devil
• Lords of Love Park

Rob stomps on his skateboard to flip it up to his hands. He pulls a black skullcap over his bangs and carries the board under one arm, dropping it in the trash can to keep it out of sight of police. He leans against the granite planter, on guard, arms crossed, eyes nervously scanning, ready to retrieve his most valued possession then bolt. Rob has been running from Love Park since he was 13.
The plaza is a relief in Philadelphia’s financial district, where skyscrapers shield from the sun until noon. Right by City Hall, it is an oasis from the concrete and glass, with a single-spout fountain shooting water from the middle. By day, executives lunch under the birch trees. At night, drug dealers make drops in the shrubs while vagrants blanket themselves in newspaper. And for a generation of young adults, the park cracks with boards hitting the stone every night and all hours of the weekend. But skateboarding has been illegal here since 2001.
It is too cold to stand still tonight. The fountain mists freezing droplets and Rob’s lips shrivel and darken to a sickly purple. Each shiver rattles his 24-year-old frame and his shoulders can’t support the black sweater that hangs over his olive corduroys. Every word is an effort to speak lower than his natural pitch and nasal tone. He’s short with a weak handshake, but he’s three inches taller atop his board, and he speaks about skateboarding with confidence.
“This is the most famous street spot in the entire world,” Rob says. “We were here before the city gentrified it, and it took skateboarding for people to realize they want to be here.” Love Park was the epicenter of American boarding throughout the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, rivaled only by the Embarcadero in San Francisco and Pulaski Park in Washington, D.C.. Skaters from all over America and Europe came to Love, attracted by its smooth stretches of granite. They made an obstacle course of the fountain ledge, the cascading steps, the wooden benches and the flower beds — now worn to the under-layers from years of friction. This is transitional skating, the kind done on flat surfaces utilizing natural obstacles. Rob is here four days a week or whenever there’s a window of opportunity, a phone-call from a friend saying “no cops around.”
The park was born as JFK Plaza in 1967, receiving its nickname from Robert Indiana’s LOVE statue, which was added in 1976 for the country’s bicentennial celebration. Sister statues sit in the most visible cities in the world — New York, Taipei, Tokyo and Jerusalem. “Skaters made this sign famous. Then the city put out postcards with LOVE on [them],” Rob says. “Philadelphia exploits the image at our expense. It’s a scam; it’s total bullshit. They market it as legal, then bust you for it.”