To notice the skatepark building boom, you’d have to know what you were looking for. Driving Excelsior Boulevard through the 169 interchange in Hopkins, it’s eminently easy to miss the chain link enclosure of “The Overpass,” a newborn skatepark sponsored by the city of Hopkins. True to its moniker, the park is tucked into a concrete wedge beneath the freeway where it spans SuperValu’s headquarters and Excelsior Boulevard. Another city-sponsored skatepark in Minnetonka easily escapes notice folded into the Glen Lake shopping area. Others have sprouted in Burnsville, Oakdale, Mankato, Northfield, Duluth, and Moorhead. Edina and Richfield have a cooperative skatepark planned for the Southdale area. And for more than four years, Third Lair has operated in south Minneapolis as an indoor, commercial skatepark.
Curiously, this ascendence of the legit skateboarding scene corresponds to a proliferation of city ordinances that explicitly forbid skateboarding in almost every public place. Depending on who you talk to, the gradual crackdown on the streets and the opening of parks has ghettoized, mainstreamed, or liberated skating. Against this background, a group of geriatric (over 30) local skaters gathered the other day to have a few beers and unwind some yarns about then and now.
“Then” means the 80s to most skaters of the older vintage. Without exception, anyone who skated seriously then has a fistful of tales about the Twin Cities’s thumper cops, predatory jocks, and illegal spots. Brian Kevitt recalls assuming the position at least once for Bloomington police for the crime of skating in an empty parking lot. Steve Gareri and Mike Kleitz, both of Minneapolis, swap stories of beatings at the hands of the MPD. And while police were not a problem for Hopkins native and former pro skater Justin Lynch, he recalls how much fun Main Street rednecks had pummeling him with his own board.
Even the punks were hard on skaters, says Gareri. The “McPunks,” and “greenhairs” who populated the Hennepin/Lake intersection in Uptown Minneapolis circa 1984, were often seen with boards. They frequently used them as weapons and formed a defiant core of the early skateboard menace. But, says Gareri, “They would give you shit for skating, and they were sitting there with their boards. You had to be a tough ass to skate in the ’80s because you were challenged every day–jocks, punks, skinheads.”
To escape such unwanted attention, says Gareri, skaters built their own ramps in out-of-the-way spots. (These early plywood ramps were a persistent splinter risk, says Mike Kleitz, who claims to have witnessed a complete gluteus impalement on one.) But these were usually discovered and destroyed by police.
And so, in a crucible formed by the torment of peers and cops and the fight for habitat, a subculture was forged. Skating’s anti-authority bent was cemented with Black Flag anthems, MDC emblems, and Agent Orange rantings. And the 7th Street Entry added skateboard check-in to its door service. Leather jackets were decorated with hand-painted messages designed to give suburban housewives nightmares, and the slogan “SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME” found its way onto a bumpersticker.
Now, in the 21st century, skateboarding is, in fact, a crime. And some suburbs have skateboard-specific enforcement plans that include warnings, tickets, and board confiscations. And to this day, skaters still find inventive new ways to chafe the law. “Grinding” on rails and benches has taken its toll in property damage near 50th and France, according to Edina police Lt. Ken Kane. Skating the irresistible downward spiral of parking ramps has also generated complaints in Edina and St. Louis Park. Main Street Hopkins, where Justin Lynch remembers being treated like a freak on a board has become a magnet for any kid with wheels underfoot. “Wherever the space is, the kids help themselves to it,” says Hopkins police spokesperson Connie Kurtz, adding that “Razor”-type scooters have now made the list of prohibited conveyances.
Petty skate-crime notwithstanding, the skateparks sprouting in almost every ‘burb and city (with helmets required under age 18), have yielded a low-risk threat assessment of the sport from cops and parents alike. While nearly 100% of skaters over 30 report at least one hassle with cops in their history, only one in four teens questioned at Third Lair have ever encountered law enforcement when skating.
A canvass of parents at Third Lair revealed no greater concern than whether they should stay and watch their kids shred. For suburban cops, the skateparks are a great place to check in on kids and see what’s going on, says Minnetonka officer Jerry Cziok. Skate activism has gone mainstream, too. Hopkins spokesperson Kurtz notes that teens promoting the skatepark agenda in Hopkins attended city council meetings and participated with the forestry department in getting the Overpass built. “The kids were very organized,” she says.
Despite the hell-bent rebellion and the hard dues paid in the early days of skating, the mellowing of the culture and the actual criminalization of skating seem to sit well with the old crowd.
“No one ever got into skating to be persecuted,” says Ole Gilbertson, who cut his teeth at underground Minneapolis ramps in the ’80s. Indeed, most skaters would rather show off a kickflip injury than get cuffed and hauled downtown.
To Gareri, who now manages Third Lair, a legal location where skating can be done the way it should be–without hassle or fear–is the prize for all the sound and fury of the ’80s. “I run a business, too. I respect the work that cops do. I respect that other business owners don’t want kids grinding their rails or getting hurt on their property with liability being a problem. A lot of the media stories are about showing what a bunch of maniacs skaters are. But the kids at Third Lair, when they’re skating, look at all the things they’re not doing. They’re not smoking dope, they’re not stealing, you know.”
A true shock, perhaps, to their boomer parents, many of whom probably did a great deal of both.
Leave a Reply