The Village Skatepark.

My village made a halfhearted attempt to have a skatepark in 1997 and 1998. They used the parking lot at one of the parks to host a collection of ramps for the kids to skateboard and rollerblade on for two summers. The ramps were six wooden wedge ramps that were all about four feet wide, two feet tall, and six feet in length. I want to say there was a square stage as well. It was a dull collection of obstacles, but at least you could move them around for the sake of variety. You could also turn the ramps up on the two foot side to do wallrides on. They didn't make you wear pads so that helped. There weren't any lights so the fun was over once it got dark.

The skatepark was launched in either late August or early September of 1997. I had skipped town for graduate school so I missed out on the inaugural season. I'm not exactly sure where the ramps came from. It seemed like it might have been a shop project from a local trade school, but that's a guess on my part.

For 1998, I was back home for summer after my first year of grad school. The skatepark was run through the village's youth recreation program. They always hire college and high school students to staff the program and I sent in a letter to see if they needed a person to be the skatepark monitor for the summer. I got the job. It was the only time I worked during my three summers off from grad school. I highly recommend taking the warm months off if you can get away with it.

I worked from June until mid August. I'd go in the morning for a couple hours, take a lunch break, work two hours in afternoon, and then come back after dinner for a little bit. This was a Monday through Friday gig. I'd have to get the kids to write their name down on a sign up sheet so they could keep track of how much use the place got. I suppose I also gave advice on how to skateboard to any kids that asked. I don't recall that happening very often.

In addition to the wedge ramps, a couple of ledges and manual pads of varying degrees of durability showed up in the parking lot. Some of those didn't go over too well with the program supervisor. I think the village even confiscated a slider bar or two. As with any spot you spend too much time at, the doldrums started to set in as the summer went on. I think I was hoping it would rain often by August. I know I skipped out one day to go see the Warped Tour, which was the last time I bothered with that traveling circus. I ditched a shift to see the X-Files movie, too.

A few notable moments:

1. The park itself has a baseball diamond, two pavilions for picnics, a basketball court, and a tennis court. It's a good size plot of land. Although there are a fair amount of trees around the park, it's also surrounded by houses. There are houses to the left and behind the vantage point of the photo. One of those houses hosted a daycare. Every so often demonic children from the daycare would wander over and climb on the ramps. The operators showed little concern where their clients had ventured off to and the children never wanted to leave. It sucked.

2. Since this was the late 90s, rollerblading was a thing that people did. There was one blader who was kind of annoying and he got into a fight with a skateboarder. They basically wrestled for a bit on the grass. No big deal, no punches thrown. I let 'em go at it for a minute or two and the fight, such as it was, was over. More than a few years later I was out at BJ's, the local dive bar, and this kid who is now all grown up and has tattoos comes up to me to ask if I was the skatepark monitor. I told him I was and he said he remembered how I let him beat up the rollerblader. I suppose this makes me either the worst or the best skatepark monitor ever.

3. I'd occasionally have to kick BMXers off the ramps. I cannot imagine the setup was much fun for them, but they would still show up. Most of them were nice enough and just looking for a place to ride. A BMX posse showed up the last night I worked there as I was leaving. I told them I don't work here any more and they could ride away.

The village hasn't made an attempt at a skatepark since. I sort of figured they would at some point since the rival burg has nice park. These days our water system needs a massive upgrade and a bunch of our roads aren't looking so hot, which means any investment in recreational facilities is not going to happen. At any rate, it was a decent summer where I got paid to hang out in a parking lot and skateboard. There are far worse ways to spend your time.

Vert Is Dead is taking a week off before spring starts and will be back on Monday, March 19th. I've got a couple of ideas so that's a good thing.