Guerilla SK8 Park in Jersey City, Part 2

Part 1 here

Where were we? Ah, the SK8park has been destroyed as preparation for construction that never happened, presumably because of the 2008 financial melt down that’s still just oozing along and seems like it’s going to raise the cost of crossing the Hudson, but . . . back to the story.

The park’s patrons were not happy:

“Someone shoot me,” it says, “used to be the fucking coolest place.” Then, a few days later, another sign appeared:

Could’a knocked me over with an aerosol blast. Who in City Hall, I asked myself, gives a crap about these kids and their illegal but hard-won park? I was curious, and went to the meeting. Four skaters, one councilman, Steve Fulop, and me, that was the meeting. Fulop asked the skaters if they could get more skaters to come to a rescheduled meeting. They said they could. Fulop scheduled another meeting for Monday 19 November. I told the councilman that I would donate photos of the site Jersey City’s library so that there would be a permanent record of the park, which I did a week or so later.

Monday 19 November rolled around and 30 or 40 skateboarders showed up along with a parent or two and the owner of a tea shop (now closed) who was sponsoring a skateboard team. Fulop said that we would be negotiating with the New Jersey Turnpike authority for park space under one of the Turnpike viaducts connecting downtown Jersey City to the turnpike. The school district had already made a deal for parking under one of the viaducts so there was precedent for such use. As far as Fulop was concerned, the park was a done deal. He asked the skate boarders for their input on the design and indicated that, once things got rolling, he would meet with them once a month until the park opened up.

Hooray! Score one for the people.

The kids – though not only kids, some were young men in their 20s – met on the City Hall steps after the meeting and organized an email list. I was having dreams of young folks getting a lesson in DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.

It was glorious to stand there high on the steps and see sk8boarders fan out heading home into the cool downtown night. Black, Latino, White, East Asian, South Asian, young and younger, male and female, on sk8boards heading home, perhaps to dream of a REAL skatepark.

Alas—you knew this was coming, didn’t you?—it was not to be. Fulop kept after the Turnpike Authority for a few months, and I kept after him. But the Turnpikers never came through with another meeting, much less an agreement on use of land under one of the viaducts. I doubt that anyone was surprised about this. Disappointed, sure, at least those of us who’d hoped. But surprised, no.

The sk8ers and BMXers constructed other obstacles at other places, including this spot under one of the Turnpike viaducts:

And they took over the ice-skating rink at one of the local parks, no doubt to the displeasure of the ice skaters and hockey player who thought, not without reason, that it was theirs.

Life goes on. Plants, not knowing and not caring about long-delayed construction plans, started filling in around the broken pieces of the old SK8 park, which is lookin’ kinda’ good, though not usable for skating or BMXing.

And who knows, maybe one day the City will wake up and do something for its children.

Maybe.