I’m 31 years old. I have a Master’s degree in business and I’m the CEO and owner of a business that employs eight full-time employees. I own a house and three cars. I’m married. I volunteer at a youth detention facility. I skateboard. And I’m being punished for a crime I didn’t commit.
A month or so ago I drove a half hour from where I live to go skate at the South Jordan, Utah skatepark. I like skating there because it is relatively well-built, has two skateshops nearby, a gas station down the street where I can get a soda afterwards and maybe fill up, and because it is the only skatepark I know of in Utah that does not allow bikers. Having had a collision with a biker at the Draper skatepark, I am motivated to not repeat the experience, and that makes the South Jordan park especially attractive.
But on this day my hour round-trip drive was in vain because the skatepark was closed. Somebody had spray-painted various messages in several spots all around the park, and a sign on the gate said the park would be closed until the city was informed as to who the perpetrator was. Today, more than a month later, the park is still closed. I didn’t commit this crime, I don’t know who committed the crime, and it is not within my power to find out who committed the crime. Yet I am being punished.
Admittedly I do not know the motivation behind the city’s decision to close the park, and so at this point I can only make assumptions. I assume the park has been closed because either 1) the city believes the graffiti was done by someone who uses the skatepark, or 2) the city believes the graffiti was done by someone who is known to those who use the skatepark. If the person who did the graffiti is someone who does not use the skatepark nor is known to those who do, then it would not make sense to close the park, since those who would be motivated to do something as a result of the park being closed would have no power to affect the situation.
Perhaps the city possesses information I do not, but from what I can gather from the situation, it is more believable that those who committed the crime were not skateboarders nor anyone known to those who use the park. My reasoning is thus:
1. There does not appear to be a motive for skateboarders. Why would a skateboarder do this? It would be one thing if it were well-done, artistic graffiti. Then I could see it being the work of skateboarders who simply wanted to give some character to their skate spot. It also does not appear to be gang related tagging. It’s just mischief. It is simply immature scribbling, the kind you would expect from a white sixth-grader from a middle-class neighborhood, and I cannot begin to see what would motivate a skateboarder to do this in a skatepark.
I’m sure there is some city official who thinks graffiti is mixed up with skateboarding culture, but it’s not. There was once a subset of skateboarding that became mixed up with the tagging scene, but that was around 1992-1994, over ten years ago. Today it is simply not something that skateboarders are into. Grafitti is not promoted in skateboard magazines, videos, or any other media, and skateboarders tend to be pretty good at following what they see in the media presented to them.
2. There is an adequate motive for non-skateboarders. Whereas I can’t see any motive for skateboarders to graffiti their own skatepark, I can see plenty of motives for non-skateboarders. Perhaps it was a few sixth-grade kids, being mischievous as they are want to do, and they chose the skatepark because they knew it would get attention but might not be as serious as spray painting on city hall. Perhaps they were yelled at by some skateboarders and were getting revenge. Perhaps it was done by BMX bikers who are offended by not being allowed to use the park, or who got into an altercation with skateboarders at the local high school and figured this would be their means of revenge. Football players and other jocks typically don’t get along with skateboarders, nor do cowboys. It could have been anyone with a grudge against skateboarders or it could have simply been mischevious kids, and either of those scenarios is a far more plausible motive than that skateboarders would ruin their own spot.
3. They haven’t caught anyone. If it really were a skateboarder the word would probably get out to other skateboarders and eventually someone would be sick of the park being closed and they would inform the city as to who the culprit is. But that hasn’t happened after several weeks.
However, I could be wrong. Maybe it was a skateboarder. Maybe it was even a skateboarder who lives in the area and uses the park regularly and is therefore being directly affected by the park being closed. Maybe there are other skateboarders who are also being directly affected by the closure who know who did it. Even if that is the case, is closing the park the best way to handle the situation? What does having the park closed accomplish? If it was indeed a skateboarder who did this then it may help in catching the perpetrator(s), but even so, is it worth it? Consider these points:
1. Closing the park hurts the local economy. Based on my experience with the SJ park I would guess that around 500-600 unique individuals use the park each month. On any given Saturday you can see upwards of 100 skateboarders at the park at any given moment between noon and dusk. In just one day there might be 200 skateboarders who come to the park. Out of those skateboarders, many, perhaps even most, are not coming from South Jordan but from other cities. I drive a half hour and I have friends who come from farther away. I know of individuals who come from as far as Springville or Ogden on a regular basis. This means they are coming by way of automobile, which increases the likelihood of them spending money in the immediate area on gas, food, and drink.
It is not unrealistic that I might spend $40 in the immediate vicinity when I use the park. Therefore even with a conservative estimate it is not hard to imagine that perhaps as much as four or five thousand dollars is being spent at local businesses each month because of the skatepark. But with the park closed, that money is not being spent and while the amount is perhaps not large, it is still easily more than the cost of painting over the graffiti.
2. It’s bad politics. Politicians in SJ might think that skateboarders are just kids. That’s true, most of them are, but there are a fair number of us who are old enough to vote and who do. I don’t live in SJ, but if I did, this would matter to me and would affect my vote. And what of all the parents who plan on dropping their kids off at the park who have their plans interrupted because the park is closed? It puts a negative taste in their mouth with regards to the city, because after all, why would the city close the park rather than just fixing the graffiti with a layer of gray paint?
3. It teaches kids that adults don’t understand them and are therefore not to be respected. You remember being a kid, don’t you? Remember when you were blamed for doing something and punished, even though you hadn’t done it? Do you remember how it made you feel? Punishing those who did nothing wrong doesn’t fix any problems, because you’re punishing those who didn’t cause the problems in the first place. Punishing the culprit(s) at the expense of hundreds of others probably does more damage than letting the culprits go free.
4. It gives the criminals what they want. “Wow! Look at all this attention this issue is getting! Skaters are mad, the city is mad, the park’s closed…look what I was able to do!” Closing the park is like pointing a news camera at a protestor–it just encourages more of the same behavior. If you want this type of behavior to go away, simply paint over the graffiti or otherwise clean it up and then ignore it.
In closing, I believe the city has handled this situation in a manner that does not do much good and certainly does a measure of harm. I hope they will treat skateboarders the same way they would treat basketball or baseball players. After all, if someone spray painted a basketball court the city would not put up a fence around the court and declare that the court can’t be used until someone fesses up. They would not close a baseball field and prevent Saturday’s Little League game because someone painted graffiti in the dugout. And if someone spray painted on a wall by a sidewalk they would not close the sidewalk to pedestrian use. Why are skateboarders singled out and treated differently?
Okay, I’ll I heard was blah, blah, blah…I can’t skate at my favorite park.
Why not propose a skate park clean-up effot where the skaters, and maybe your business, can invite the media to help spread the word about the importance of properly caring for skate parks by cleaning up the grafitti, etc. After all it’s got to be better than whining about it on your blog, right.
Seriously, I grew up without a skate park because our HOA turned us down when we proposed to raise the money and build it ourselves. So we skated illegally at BYU and other various places throughout Utah County. But there are plenty of good things about a skate park and your whining about it isn’t helping any.
Does it make sense to close the skatepark for a month or more to find out who did do the tagging? no it doesnt, unfortunatly people in the positions to re-open it dont see it that way. The truth is 1 bad incident does shadow over many other pluses that the park does offer. It take so much effort on part of supporters to get a skatepark in the first place and many people dont want it there, so they wait for a something to mess up so they can take immediate and strict action. They wait for a drug deal to get caught near the park, graffiti, a “gang” fight or something similar so they can point the finger and all say “we told you that park was a bad idea, this would have never happend if that so called park wasnt there”. Most likely it was a younger person and they didn’t realize the reprocussion of their simple act. I personally cant say it wasnt a skater but i doubt that it was it just doesnt make sense. But in any way you put it the city shouldn’t see this any different from if it was on a backboard of a basketball hoop, a wall at the park or the bathroom bc they wouldn’t close down those areas to find out who did it. Are the city officals are singling this inncident and area out?….Yes, is it unfair….Yes, is it unpredictable…. No.
If that’s all you heard I guess you didn’t read it too well. I can propose a clean-up program I’d be happy to participate in–give me a bucket of gray paint and a roller and I’ll have the place cleaned up in a half-hour.
And the sentence ” But there are plenty of good things about a skate park and your whining about it isn’t helping any.” doesn’t make any sense. But what I assume you meant was that “whining” about the situation doesn’t help anything. However, that’s not a very accurate claim. Potentially it could help quite a bit if the arguments make sense and somehow this gets in the hands of the right people.
I can read just fine, and if you organize a clean up I’ll show up. I can’t skate right now because of a back injury, but I’ll help where I can. I’ve never used this park, but I hope to in the future.
As for my comment about “whining” about this issue, I don’t believe that organizing a protest or blogging about it will do anything but stir up some comments from park supporters. They already feel the same way you do — they’re skaters and their park is closed so obviously they feel screwed over by the city and non-supporters.
To get city officials to take action will take more than blogging — they’re not reading your blog! I’ll be happy to go to the city with you and propose the clean up. I’ll be happy to help in any way that might help resolve the issue, but blogging about it is irrelevant IMHO.
A similar thing happend at Riverton Skatepark. Some one taged a bunch of gibberish and the park was closed for 2 weeks, during which i was constantly harrased for skating at the high school or pavilion.Then when the city finaly opened the skatepark they convinently “forgot” to sweep up all the sand they used to clean up the park. it took me an hour and a half just to make the penut bowl skateable. All of that on top of the moronic park layout will garantee that my vote will be cast against all people currently in office when i can vote .
Interesting comments, but most miss the point. I am really surprised by those comments as posted by the adult CEO. In addition to the graffiti, we have problems with liter, language, beer cans and cigerette butts, all with garbage recepticals near by. (Beer and smoking is no allowed) Few of the skaters obey the posted rules and the skate community does little to police themselves and demonstrate care for a facility claimed to be one of the best. Because it is one of the best, skaters from far beyond South Jordan use the facility, yet they contributed nothing towards its construction or maintenance. The skate community, in order to be recognized as a group of citizens that care for the facility, should have come forward in a clean up effort.Instead the expectation was for the tax payer to fix the problem while the skate community complains. Why did it take so long? Because we could not just sand blast off the graffiti for doing so would have pitted the skate surface. If such inappropriate activity as the graffiti and/or liter, language, etc…happens again, you might find the facility closed for an even greater period of time.
There’s no doubt some skaters are idiots (i.e. the ones leaving trash around). But simply threatening to close a park doesn’t always provide the desired results. I would be interested to know how the above comments miss the point and why the city manager is surprised. The above comments by the manager do nothing to address the points made with regards to the specific problem at hand.
However, here are some points that it would be valuable for all city officials responsible for public skateparks to understand interspersed with some suggestions.
1. People don’t read large signs with lots of text. Not just skateboarders, but people in general. The percentage of people who actually read the posted rules at a skatepark is probably less than 0.01%. Most skaters just walk in and start skating. If you want to communicate rules effectively to skateboarders then post signs that have one sentence in larger print, like the ones that say there is no biking allowed at the park. Everyone notices those. Put up some signs that say “If we catch people drinking beer here we’ll close the park.” or “If you leave litter in the park we’ll close it.” or something of that nature. It’s hard for people to follow rules they don’t know exist, and people don’t waste time reading fine print on signs any more than they do on their credit card application forms.
2. It’s not realistic for skaters to police each other effectively. Sure, if a kid spills a soda another kid might give him a dirty look or an older kid might tell him to pick it up, but if someone leaves litter in the park nobody else is going to notice because they don’t know it’s being left. Maybe the guy is just riding to another spot of the park and he’ll come back later to get his trash. But is a skater going to wait there for 20 minutes to make sure another guy comes back to get his trash? And you can’t always tell what is litter and what is still being used. Only at the end of the day when the park is being locked up can you truly tell what is litter, and then it’s too late for anyone to police anyone else. Yes, skaters can police themselves as individuals, but not effectively as a community.
3. Many skaters would be willing to participate in helping to clean the park, but most people don’t know what to do. All we’ve got is a sign saying “Hand over the culprits or the park will remain closed.” How about a sign saying “We will be having a clean-up day on such and such a date. You don’t need to bring anything, just come and we’ll have tools for you. If no one shows up the park will remain closed.” By putting up a sign that says that the park will remain closed until the culprit is caught you create the assumption in the minds of everyone that the only way to get the park opened is to turn in the culprit. But I don’t know who the culprit is so I’m helpless to do anything. That’s the mental train of thought that occurred when I saw the sign. If I had known there was a way for me to help clean the park and get it open I would have been glad to participate.
4. Just as an FYI to non-skaters, there is no skate community, per se. Skateboarders generally skate in small groups of 3-4 friends. Therefore, any message put out to “the skate community” has little chance of reaching more than a small fraction of the total number of skateboarders within a certain geographic area. I think sometimes outsiders assume that once one skater knows something they all will, but such is not the case. However, if you want to reach the largest number of skateboarders possible, deliver messages to the local skateshops. Milo is right up the street, and Technique is a little bit farther up Redwood. Skateshop owners are generally more community-minded than the average 14-year old skater and are able and willing to spread the word about caring for a park because it impacts them financially if the park is closed.
5. Some cities might want to consider whether graffiti in a skatepark is a problem worth worrying about. What is the purpose of the skatepark, after all? If it is to keep skaters off of public and private property where they are doing damage, then graffiti in a skatepark is irrelevant. If the purpose of the skatepark is to have a nice place where middle class parents can take their 8-year old who is into skateboarding, then graffiti is indeed a problem and I can see that this might be the case at the SJ skatepark. But for other cities building a skatepark might have everything to do with providing a place to put the skaters to get them off the streets and nothing to do with parents and their children.
6. Good grammar, spelling, and proper construction of sentences is always a plus for public officials.
First off, i have never been to SJ skatepark so i dont know what kind of people that skate there, i live in southern california. I do know at my skatepark people do smoke, some drink on friday nights and lost of kids drop their trash. Most people that use skate parks are kids and as people with kids know, getting them to clean up after them selves in a challenge in its own right, so would you expect any more out of them at a skatepark. As Joshua stated above having a clean up day is a great idea, tell the skateshops, make a few flyers and get the word out, people show up everyone is happy.
Also as stated above there is no skate community, i skate with a few friends but mainly by my self and i dont talk with many people at skateparks due to my skating, so please City Leaders dont assume things.
Also here is a chance for a city job to arise, to stop by the park, pick up trash, take care of any plant life around the place, etc.
The goal of a skate park is to stop people from skating public places and “ruining” the look of the area, so why would you expect anything less from a skatepark. Its going to get its curbs waxed, people are going to drop trash (this happens every where) and people are going to smoke and drop the butts. By the way is there an ash tray trash can near by?
To the City Manager,
You are supposed to be a leader in helping the city, you are not supposed to be just shutting things down. Its your responsibility to get things started and keep them rolling, stop putting the blame on other people. You dont see a 4 year old kid cleaning the sand box or a 12 year old kid cleaning the park, there are designated people to do so, so why cant there be a designated person to clean up the skate park?
believe it or not the city does have information you don’t. first of all, it doesn’t matter if it was a skateboarder or not. the fact is someone during open hours of the park vadalized it. they closed it because they wanted to find out who did it, and gave people an opportunity to come forward, or give information. the police dept did get some information and leads from users of the park. the park is reopened now because during the time it was closed the city ordered security cameras. now they will be able to see who it was if it happens again. secondly, you mention closing the park as bad politics. some of the city officials that were in favor of the park in the first place had to go through a lot to get it there. there’s a lot of skaters, and it’s great for them to have a place to skate. but when someone vadalizes it, whether that person be a skater or not, everyone in the city that was against it says there you go, we knew those kids would tear up the place. so if they hadn’t vandalized in the first place, you wouldn’t have been put out. you should not be blaming the city for this. it’s within their right to close the park while they investigate since they spent so much money on the park and they want to protect their investment from graffitti. and since you don’t even live here and had to make such a huge trip, maybe you should call ahead next time. this is not a skateboarders vs. the establishment issue as you seem to think it is. it’s about respecting property, it really doesn’t matter if you are a skater or not. blame those people who can’t handle not spraypainting everything for that.
Joshua, I must apologize for one of my previous comments. I guess a city official found your blog after all — it was probably a skater that pointed it out.
However, the city manager makes a point that needs to be addressed here. Regular city parks contain liter, language, beer cans, cigarette butts, in addition to bums, graffiti, and so on but they’re not closed for it. In fact, if language is a problem, we better shut down the schools — I know I learned more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’m also aware that the City of Sandy licenses bars, strip clubs, and other seedy businesses within its city limits. If this is such a problem, why does Sandy allow this influence? Furthermore, outsiders do not contribute to the city parks either but you don’t police your parks and kick people out because they don’t pay city taxes.
Rebecca,
So what i got out of your post is that someone came in during park hours, people watch this person spraypaint the park and didnt do anything. If all that is true, i blame who ever watched them do it then and also the people who spraypainted. I dont think it a skateboard vs the establishment argument its just that closing the park for the time frame was blown out of proportion, just as i said before, if that would have happend at a regular park on a slide, would the park have been closed?
In response to Rebecca:
1. Why does it not matter if it was a skateboarder who did the graffiti or not? Since closing the park down only provides motivation to people who use the park to provide information, and since chances are that if someone who doesn’t use the park did the graffiti they wouldn’t be known to those who do, then closing the park seems to imply that the city officials believe it was a user of the park who did it. If they city officials believed it was not a use of the park then why would they have closed the park? I’m not being confrontational, I really want to know. If they only opened it because they got cameras, then ok, I can understand that even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.
2. Wow, I’m surprised the city paid for cameras. I mean, more power to them but is it worth it? I don’t know what they cost but I’m guessing they’re not cheap. But then again what does the government ever do that is inexpensive?
3. I agree it’s the city’s right to close the park whenever they feel like it, for whatever reason. It’s their park, it doesn’t belong to skaters (unless those skaters are paying taxes to that city). My point is that the city’s actions in this case don’t seem to have met the city’s needs, or perhaps there are better ways to handle this type of situation that would meet the city’s needs without the park being closed.
4. Call ahead? What number do I call? I looked all over the South Jordan city website and couldn’t find any information about the skate park. I’d love to be able to tell if a skatepark was open or closed before going there. If there is somewhere I can call can I also get information on the weekends?
5. If this isn’t a case of the establishment vs. skateboarders then why has the establishment been punishing skateboarders? When a city closes a public skatepark they make it a case of skateboarders vs. the city. Sometimes that may be reasonable because it may be completely the fault of skateboarders, but if it is “those people who can’t handle not spraypainting everything” then why should skateboarders be the ones who are punished rather than the people who actually committed the crime?
Now in response to a few other comments, although skateboarders may come from outside the city that doesn’t mean they don’t contribute anything to the skatepark. Every time a skateboarder comes to the park and then spends some money nearby on gas, food, or anything else they are contributing indirectly to the city’s coffers. It might be minimal, but it is something.
Oh, and with those cameras I think that would be great if they hooked those into a website so you could view the feeds in real time, then I could check whether the park is too crowded before I go. That’s the type of high-tech thinking that would look good on a public official’s resume.
This is exactly why it is so much easier to quit skating and sit around the and gain wait, like me.