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This Issue 04/23/2009

• Earth to Disney
• Summer Syllabus
• Ego of the Week: Kerry Golds
• From Cyprus, With Love
• A Taste of the Weird and Wacky

Rob, who did not give his last name because skateboarding is illegal, has been arrested many times, a fact he’ll quickly admit. The fine for boarding at Love is $300, which must be paid to have a confiscated board returned, though sometimes the cops throw them in the fountain. Fifth-district Philadelphia police detain, fingerprint and process each skater they catch. “I’ve been screamed at, treated like shit. I’ve been cuffed, thrown against the back of a cop car,” he says. A “six-foot-six, 300-pound” cop once tackled him at nearby City Hall.
Rob was 17 when skating was banned at Love. The law gave police the right of skateboard seizure with probable cause and stipulated that parents of skateboarders were offenders as well. “I have to believe it was about more than black lines on the granite,” he says. “They think we’re not contributing to society, when really, they’re not educated on the situation.” Renovation money poured in after the ban in preparation for the Phoenix condominiums bordering the park to the west. The city redid the landscaping and added benches with bisecting armrests to keep the homeless from sleeping in the park.
But skaters say the most disingenuous treatment came from Mayor John Street, a Democrat elected in 2000. Although his opponent, Sam Katz, made legalizing skating part of his platform, most skaters didn’t vote for him because he was a Republican. Under Street, Philadelphia hosted the X-Games twice, in 2001 and 2002. These games, the World Series of skateboarding, had 150 million international viewers and reminded a young generation of a forgotten tourist destination. Thousands of fans visited, which was an economic boom for the city. But the mayor’s office spent each tournament’s $40 million profit elsewhere, angering the park commissioner and local skaters.
In promoting the Games, Street made Love his chief marketing tool, even posing for a picture in the empty fountain with a skateboarder jumping over his head. For one week during the X-Games, skating became legal at Love, but the mayor put the park on permanent police watch immediately following the Games instead of inviting youth to come back and spend their money. “If they opened the park up to an international audience again, they’d make that amount of money every fucking day — not just two hits,” Rob says.
In 2004 DC Shoes offered $1 million for the upkeep and renovation of the park, pledging $100,000 a year for 10 years. Thousands of skaters rallied at Love for the announcement, but hours before the company spokesman took the podium, the city turned him down. He gave his speech already knowing the answer, but the company’s offer still stands, if the city changes its mind. The following year, Love’s architect, Edmund Bacon, attended a formal protest and rode a skateboard with skaters holding him upright. He autographed boards in the park on the first day of summer 2005, the same year he died.