January Meeting/Mission statement

Vision Statement:

To create a skatepark that educates, empowers, and inspires urban youth, while stimulating Northside's business and community growth.

To enrich our community with a skatepark that stimulates local business, enriches the diversity of Northside, and empowers urban youth with alternative sports and cultural opportunities.


Provide positive opportunities inherent in skateboarding through educational advocacy and fundraising.

Develop plans to revitalize and sustain unused/unuseable land to provide healthy lifestyle opportunities to urban
youth and the community at large.

-- Post From My iPhone

Northside Community Council: May Report

Tonight I shared with the council that we've made progress:
One grant-hunter
Two PR Gurus
two good leads on grants, with people ready to try writing them...

We already had:
a site
community council support in a written resolution

Our Goals:
this month
--to set up a financial "container" for fundraising through the Northside Community Council
--to get one or two more committed grant hunters
--to begin applying for grants in earnest.

Next Directions:
Corporate Sponsorships
Broaching the subject with the City Council for their support

I can't say enough about the pleasure it is to work with the Northside Community Council. I have the feeling that a movement to build neighborhood skateparks will develop out of this, affecting OTR and West End, Corryville, and Clifton, South Cumminsville and many other neighborhoods. Heck, Sedamsville has a proposed park!

We're looking at great possibilities for the youth and young adults and young-at-heart-adults of Cincinnati to have equal opportunity, without regard to economic status, to use skateboarding facilities! As it is now, you have to own a car or live in a nice neighborhood to use a park. Skateparks are for everyone!

until next post...

This is DELHI, people. DELHI!!! Please send me grant-hunters!!!

DELHI OH. Delhi has had a park for a YEAR now. 600 people at the opening. at least 20 per day during the WINTER!!! 100 per day easily.
Cincinnati governing people: listen up! Skateparks are GOOD FOR COMMUNITIES!!! Grumpy old Delhi has one and the stores around it can tell you about how many drinks they're selling, how much gas gets guzzled... the cops can tell you that skaters aren't half as rowdy as the basketball ganstas. Seriously, get me a team of grantsters and let's get funding that can get CRC adn the Gov't to HELP US share the wealth!!!!

Grant Hunters!

We got our first Grant Hunter this month! Melody Wolf! Nobody hunts as well as a wolf, you know...

maybe a lion. but i think wolves are really better. Keener sense of smell. it's a toss up, really.

Here's a community that's doing it, just like us...

Crossville, Tennessee (click it)

Why Concrete?

I won't belabor this issue. Concrete is the ONLY medium for the construction of a municpal skatepard. It retains a "due care" state, without the kind of maintenance that is necessary with other media. Your skatepark will WORK at acceptable safety levels for YEARS.

Look at Columbus' 20+ year-old concrete park. This is the ONLY way to create a park. Not to mention sculptability, durability, and the undeniable popularity of the medium. A quality, concrete skateboarding medium in our neighborhood will ensure a constant flow of people to our business and idea-pool.

A quality concrete skatepark in several neighborhoods on the bus routes will slingshot Cincinnati into a brighter future. There is no doubt that a city that creates media for this culture is going to be in the travel plans of people from many states and countries.

Research is solid: Skateboarding is Safe! (relatively)

I've been holding off on posting on the issue of the relative safety of skateboarding because I have no background in statistics or medicine. In my own 22 years of skateboarding I have seen several broken bones--wrists and ankles--and innumerable bruises and scrapes... I have never seen a head-injury happen, outside lacerating my own forehead in a backyard pool in the 22nd year of my own skateboarding carreer. what a dope.

anyway, I want to share with you this research. Just click the word "this" in the previous sentence. It is significant, reliable, and typical of all the other results I've viewed.

The bottom line is, skateboarding in concrete parks is not as dangerous as basketball.

Another consideration I'd like to share is the strong possibility that skateboarding youth are less prone to repetitive stress injuries, since there are usually no parents or coaches pressuring them.

I worked with high school youth for years and it was sickening to watch adults pressure them into horriffic injuries. I saw a sixteen year old with his knee unzipped twice to repair destroyed ligaments--all for touchdowns. This kind of injury is quite rare in skateboarding; especially at that age.

Some thoughts.

A taste of possibility: some very rudimentary drawings of Northside's site plan...

Northside Community Council Meeting January 2008

We did a quick presentation this month. We'll be presenting a drawing and kicking off our major political push this next meeting, Feb. 25.

Thanks to Tim Jeckering at Jeckering Architecture for the site plan drawings. We've already formed up a few initial drawings.

Thanks to the World Famous Matt Dyck, of Byrneside Skatepark fame, who has graciously offered to give us design advice and drawings for presentations. Matt is, as I said, world famous for his skateboarding and concrete park design. Any park he does is a work of art.

Our park is forming up around an artistic aesthetic. There will be trees and lighting that create a "Park-like" feel. No Post-soviet era monolithic skateparks for Northside. This'll be a park for everyone and their kids and dogs and probably even their bikes on the periphery.

Looking forward.

Sign the Petition

Click Here to sign a petition, eh?

Northside Community Council: December Meeting

Lew attended and presented for a minute, fielding questions from the floor. Northside remains the most supportive and energized neighborhood in all of Cincinnati. We are now working to form a base of local skaters to design and push for the park, while scanning for local businesspeople and neighbors who can vocally/politically push for the park.

Thanks for the overwhelming support. We look forward to presenting our design in either the February or March meetings. Hopefully we'll be deep in fundraising and final tweaks on design, with full support of the CRC, by April.

Overarching Goal

development of quality skateboarding parks that lie within easy access of Metro routes.

Last Northside Council Meeting

Well, Ali had to cover the meeting without me. I missed it for the coming of this little dude. Some of you know I'm a pastor, right? So that's what's getting in the way sometimes with making the meetings: people before stuff...

At the meeting, Ali presented a cad drawing and fielded questions, the best of which was, "Where are all the skateboarders?"

Odds are, there will not be a serious presence of skateboarders at the meeting. This initiative on behalf of the Northside Community Council needs to be founded, not on demands made by the skateboarders (although design should be managed by competent skateboarders), but on the desire of the Council to incorporate the energy that skateboarding has consistently brought to everything it touches into the fabric of that needy area of the community.

Skateboarders will get involved, as they always do, as the process gains momentum. Looking at the skateparks around us in communities like Delhi, Florence, St. Bernard, Wyoming, Lawrenceburg, Fairfield, Middletown, Kettering, Georgetown, Lexington, Dry Ridge...
Looking at these other skateparks (...Anderson...) we'll see that the benefits of a skatepark are worth the work that go into them...

Looking forward to the next meeting...

Northside Community Council considers drawing

This coming monday there'll be a sketch of the proposed skatepark. Come see Ali Calis present it.

Picking up again...

Well, it's been months since my last posts...

I'm still in the game, with a more finely honed vision for what I want to see happening with skateboard facilities in the city I live in.

In short, to be elaborated later on, I'd like to see skateboarding facilities embedded in "at risk" neighborhood as a positive alternative to the "Big Three Options" that face most kids I know here in Northside:

1. Pro Basketball Player
2. Rap Star on BET
3. Dealing Drugs on the corner with my cousins

Let's face it. There are parks available in the Cinci Area, but how many of them are even on the bus lines? Those that are are not within an hour of these kids. Skateparks are going up like wildfire in the midwest, but they are a SUBURBAN, AFFLUENT, PHENOMENON.
Adding insult to injury, most of these fine skateboard companies and people who push for parks are drawn in by some amalgam of "hardcore", "outlaw", "urban rough" cultural trappings. Dressed as something revolutionary, yet truly available to only the richest americans.

You have to have access to a CAR to use the Skateboarding Facilities around Cincinnati.

So let's do something really cool. Let's get grants and scrape together philanthropic donations to get high-quality, durable, low-maintenance, concrete skateboarding facilities incorporated into the city-scape of Cincinnati. We can do this in neighborhoods and properties that would otherwise breed crime.

Frankly, skateboarding will provide "Option 4", plus exposure to people from all walks of life. Skateboarding will become a vehicle of exposure for people from all over to meet and interact with kids and people in the inner city.

Racial Barriers
Social problems
will be exposed and eroded...

Potential Help
will be discovered
as people come to enjoy the park and meet children there who exist on social programs...

advocacy can be generated by such exposure...
crime can be reduced in neighborhoods as higher human traffic "hardens the target". And Skateboarding is a perfect vehicle for it, as skateboarders tend to be willing to take small risks lightly... a park in a difficult neighborhood will be heavily trafficked, provided that it is high-quality.

Some thoughts with more to come.

Anyone want to coalesce? drop me a comment.

Philosophical Question:

In this month's (May) issue of SLAP Magazine, a skateboarding publication, there is an article on p.12 that is worth considering. It is a short piece that simply asks:

Why is it acceptable, even commendable, to receive injuries in school sports? Why is it Okay for my young friend Cliff to blow out his Knee in football? Nobody minded.

And in juxtaposition:

Why is it so unacceptable, almost universally condemned, to receive injuries while skateboarding?

Please comment.

Skateboarding Injuries

Does anyone know what perspective a comparison of injury rates between skateboarding and school sports?
You will be surprised!

I will give you some anecdotal material right now, and will supply more stats, as time allows:

On Saturday, I enjoyed the Grand Opening of the brand new Delhi Skatepark. a Great park, well-designed, and worth the gas money for Cincy residents...

600 people showed up! Packed in, skating together, there were somewhere between 2-400 people participating at once! It was incredible.

There were two injuries!
one-a head injury--a little boy, about 8 years old riding a bike. Looked like a bruised orbital.
the other--a typical ankle twist--probably a break. More time for homework...

There was a twisted shoulder and a bruised palm as well.

600 people.
NO FIGHTS

600 people.
2 injuries worth mentioning...

All while SKATEBOARDING!!!!

2 visits from the paramedics!

Meanwhile, the Women's softball league had 3 visits from the paramedics! That day! yet one person had the perspective, "This skatepark was a big mistake. A big mistake." Upon the second call to paramedics...

Pish Posh. That's what I say.
I confidently assert that, after seeing the stats, you'll agree that Skateboarding is healthier and safer than School sports!
Prepare to be surprised.

500+ skateboarders packed in like sardines, taking turns, sharing, helping each other out... and we're surprised at a couple of injuries!
Why is it that wen a kid gets injured in a football game he's a hero?
...and when he (or she--girls are allowed on the skateboarding team) gets hurt skating, he or she is an IDIOT?

This mentality will be destroyed by simple facts.

Skateboarding Saved My Life

Skateboarding, and the diversity of its practicioners, has expansive potential to affect inner city youth. Please enjoy this little clip that shows how Skateboarding positively affected one young man.

Positive Aspect:

The McKee Center's dude, Don, called me the other day, asking if I was interested in helping with the youth leadership programs. (I have a ton of experience and background in that stuff)

Yes.

I'll start an initiative that will get at least one great skatepark built in Northside. Then, I'll be available to work with tons of youth in that skatepark. There, they will discover alternatives in life that they would never have, outside the power of skateboarding to bring together people from all walks of life.

Artists
Accountants
Lawyers
...not too many doctors...

There are skaters who will be there whose lives are easily shared over the waits between runs. The kids of our neighborhood will be exposed to PEOPLE. Good people. there are so many.

Besides that, the facility will be a wide open opportunity for camps and classes!

Think about that and leave comments.