Community Commentary -- Jim Gray

The first question I have for the Walkers is who attacked who

(Rebuttal, “Costa Mesa should follow Newport Beach’s leadership,” May

16)? The skaters responded to their attack (Readers Respond,

“Skateboarding discussion continues,” April 16), and people only saw some

of the response letters published. Many more were e-mailed to me about

their letter. I don’t think the Daily Pilot had room to run all the

letters in response to the Walkers’ attack.

If the Walkers are going to take a potshot at skaters, they’d better

expect to get some in return. The last letter from the Walkers seems to

be simply grasping at straws. The mere suggestion that Costa Mesa follow

Newport Beach’s leadership is pretty funny. I thought leadership was the

act of leading. The fact that there are now 93 skate parks in Southern

California alone, with many others under construction and in later stages

of planning, would suggest that the word “leadership” does not apply

here.

Thousands of local, high school-age and younger kids, primarily boys,

ride skateboards on a daily basis, and many for hours per day. Something

you cannot say about many other groups, if any, is that those other

groups all have somewhere legal and safe to go. Then there are

39-year-olds like me that do this many times per week, which adds another

whole group to that list.

Do the Walkers really wonder why there is damage? It is because the

kids have resorted to skating on what they could find, because there is

not anything legal to skate, and though that doesn’t make it right,

ignoring it will not solve the problem.

Most of these kids can’t drive for many more years. I can and do drive

to skate parks in truly leading cities and skate when I want, and I

personally don’t grind our city’s curbs, rails and benches, but what do

the Walkers expect thousands of underage kids to do? They are not going

to stop skating just because the Walkers and a few others want them to go

away. It is much too fun, and usually when kids find things that are

truly fun and continue to do them year after year, cities with true

leadership respond with a solution, not a crackdown.

I am open and honest about my agenda, and I wish the Walkers truly

would be about theirs as well. To go from “gang fights and skaters

killing each other” to suggest Costa Mesa follow the ignorance of another

city is definitely grasping.

It also appears to be intended to try to make people forget about how

ludicrous and off base the first attack was. As with most things in our

society, progression always wins over in the end, and those who lead

through denial end up dealing with reality in the end.

I personally think that skateboarding is 10 times more fun than

tennis, golf, soccer and many other sports, but would never be so

spiteful that I would try and stop people who do enjoy those things from

doing them, especially if there were thousands in my own city that did.

The Walkers have the right to their opinion, but our local governments

owe it to our youth to respond to this based on the overwhelmingly

obvious need, not on the desires of a few party poopers. This time the

NIMBYs (Narrow Ignorant Minded Backward Yahoos) will not win, sorry.

* JIM GRAY is a former professional skateboarder who lives Costa Mesa

and owns a skateboard supply factory in Costa Mesa.