Dear Bruce Ramsey,

I have some comments and questions about SkateBlock. After several people today have given me information/ copies of your article I decided to give you a skaters perspective and maybe use your article as a vehicle to help a lot of people out.

First of all I laugh at the attempts to preserve the great ledges on the fancy buildings. Mainly because skaters & Bladers will still find a way to use these ledges and benches. Secondly I hate to think of what happens when these skateblocks get removed by force. And thirdly what happens when some skater comes along at night, the usual time the grinding occurs and one of these skateblocks knocks a skater abruptly off the ledge to his /her head. It would then be apparent that 3 new parties may be liable for damages. #1 Skateblock #2 Property owners for going out of their way to disable skaters. #3 The city of Seattle for allowing these dangerous obstacles to be placed adjacent to their sidewalk property where injuries will likely result.

I think the best way to prevent this type of damage for companies would be to kick down the money they spend on maintaining and creating these obstacles to ride towards a safe and legal place for skateboarding and rollerblading to occur. Duh?! Right now is the perfect time for any and all of these companies who spend tons of money on "protection" to make donations towards the Seattle Skatepark (the "prevention") which the last few years has been atrocious. The park is so bad it leads skaters out into the streets to find good terrain to ride.

The current status of the park is as follows. A large concrete design has been made by skaters and proposed to the Seattle Center who runs the current park. A donation was made by Pearl Jam the Rock Band in the amount of $50,000. A really good park, even better than the current design, would probably need an additional $100,000 to $150,000 dollars. The park needs to be good enough and entertaining enough to keep the kids at it instead of prowling the streets for new ledges and benches. You'd think that amount would be pretty easy to round up from property managers with the amount of money being spent on maintaining these buildings. It's definitely not going to stop the damage 100% but it could curb an enormous chunk of it.

It would be nicer for everybody if there was a decent place for skaters to call home. It would be a nicer place if someone had never gone to the trouble of making a "anti skater" company to cash in from this small angle of the whole anti-skater world. I'd hope someone who has access to these wealthy property managers could put a whipser in their ears about this situation. I know a lot of skaters who'd much rather skate somewhere free, safe, fun, and where they weren't an outlaw to persue their sport. It would save everyone ill feelings and money in the long run.

-Jeff Greenwood

editor

Skateboard Northwest Online

Concrete Disciples Magazine