GameStory 3- The Debate: Philadelphia vs. Extreme Sports

By Emily Molnar
You would never know but within Philadelphia and its subculture there is a huge debate, although, it is not your typical city vs. city kids debate. The debate is about freedom of space, and it is between the extreme sports participants, (skateboarders, BMXers), and the Philadelphia legislature. Throughout Philadelphia there are many buildings, and other forms of architecture, (ledges, embankments, hand
rails), that are great for BMX and skateboarding. This is one of the neat things about Philadelphia that draws these athletes here. Philadelphia accommodates so many great extreme sports. People come from far and wide, even other countries hearing about the greatness of Love Park and other places in Philadelphia. Yet, if you come to ride one of these many great spots, you will probably not ride it for very long. Soon after getting there security or the police would show up and you would be kicked off the property. At other spots such as City Hall or Love Park you can have your bike or board confiscated and up to three hundred dollars in fines.

To ban skateboarding the city and Mayor John Street put several plans into effect to stop the sport from occurring on city property. In 2000, Philadelphia introduced the official ordinance of the skateboarding ban. It states where you can and cannot skateboard, and a large list of penalties you can receive if you choose to skateboard in one of the many spots where skating is not allowed. The official ban was put into place right after the city spent a lot of money to renovate Love Park. Other plans have been implemented to keep extreme sports away. There are metal skate blocks on most of center city’s ledges to stop skateboards and bikes from riding them, along with a heavily increased police presence at Love Park to make sure that nothing at all went on. Now, while there is no specific ban against BMX (bicycle moto-cross), it is still not allowed in all of the spots where skateboarding is banned. Anywhere where there is a posted sign against skateboarding, bikes are usually right underneath. They cannot make a ban against bikes, because bikes are allowed to be ridden down the sidewalk and down public path ways. “They banned it because of the destruction of property and so you don’t get hurt because there is stuff everywhere to ride,” says Steve Scheifer, a local Philadelphia skateboarder.

Are all of these preventive measures necessary? Again, no: Love Park is one of many public spaces where skateboarding and BMX have been banned for no reason. The city is keeping children away from a positive activity. AAcross the nation there is a major trend in architecture and urban design called Amixed use. This means that spaces are utilized for multiple functions to create a lively and diverse urban setting. Urban experts and city officials across the country have identified Love Park as one of the nation’s most successful mixed-use spaces. It combines people from many walks of life in a world-famous icon that other cities have spent millions trying to duplicate (ushistory.org p2). Also, by banning skateboarding at LOVE, the city has taken away the freedoms of a public space. AAccess for all individuals is the minimum condition of a truly public space (Nemeth p19). While banning extreme sports from center city is because the city wants to project a clean image, Philadelphia has taken away a Mecca for these extreme sports. The X-Games, which is one of extreme sport’s biggest competitions of talent, were held in Philly for two years because of Love Park and its skateability

However, skateboarders did not want to put up with the ban. As a result of all this the skaters in particular, fought back, at least to the best of their ability. In 1995, when the city first started to fight against skateboarding, it was much easier to get away with skating and biking. There was no officer sitting at Love Park, and skaters knew when the cops came to check if people were skating and left before they could put a stop to it. Therefore, skaters could avoid the cops. Since the ordinance has been passed a police officer now continuously sits at Love Park, so it is near impossible to ride. If you look on the web you will find hundreds of petitions with thousands of signatures voting to have they city be skateable again without getting in trouble for doing so. Along with these petitions there are also several organizations trying to legalize skateboarding in and around Philly, especially Love Park. These organizations are: Free Love Park, Emerica’s AWild in the Streets, and Franklin Paine skate park fund. The latest is a group that will be helping to get the funding of the four million more needed to build to the skate park promised over near the Art Museum. This project is one of the other few things the city is trying to do for the benefit of extreme sports. The Schuylkill River Skate Park Fund, is its exact name. John Street gave permission for a skate park to be built down by the art museum. Today, that riverside site south of the Art Museum is as grassy as it ever was. But buoyed by the mayor’s promise - and a $100,000 city grant – Philadelphia’s skateboard community has managed to complete two designs for Love Park''s long awaited replacement, both by the non-skateboarding Philadelphia architect Anthony Bracali. The skateboarders, under the mantle of Franklin’s Paine Skate Park Fund, intend to present a final version to the Fairmount Park Commission in June. After that all they have to do is raise the $4 million necessary to build it, twice Street’s original estimate (Saffron p1). Street’s promise was made during his reelection campaign hoping to win back votes that he had lost in the process of banning skateboarding and BMX in Philadelphia.

Mayor John Street has the final say on the matter, although it does not look like he will be changing his mind any time soon. He feels letting kids come back to skating and riding at Love Park would undo the $800,000 dollars worth or work the city put into renovating the park. “Personally I think it sucks and I hate how you have to bail on the skate spot every three minutes,” said Scheifer, “Who wants to pay anyways [to go to the skatepark] when you can just skate the street.” So while both sides have valid points, they have come to a stand still. The spot laid out for the new park contains a few piles of dirt and has been this way for over a year. Skateblocks are continuously being put on a new architecture as well as on some of the older ledges and rails. FDR has some new sections just recently built, and police presence had been decreased at Love Park and recently increased again. There has been no further development in the debate.