COMMUNITY COMMENTARY

At first glance, I might seem like someone you’d want in you

neighborhood: Thirty-eight years old, with a beautiful wife, two adorable

kids, nice house with a white picket fence and a new Suburban out front.

Started a business, built it up and sold it to a NYSE corporation. One

of the Daily Pilot’s 103 Most Influential People. Lifelong Newport

resident. Proud member of the Balboa Bay Club. Staunch Republican.

But I have a dirty, shameful secret.

I am a skateboarder.

And in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, my sort is not welcome. I am

banned by law from all steep streets. I am forbidden from gliding slowly

along my beloved oceanfront boardwalk (where in-line skaters zig legally

and gaily past).

Sure, there are some places I could move where my kind is actually

embraced; Huntington Beach and Mission Viejo have built successful

community parks for their skateboarding citizens. San Diego and San

Francisco even bid huge sums for the rights to bring the skate-heavy

Xtreme Games to their towns.

But not here.

And it’s the worst sort of deceitful, spineless discrimination as

practiced in the Newport-Mesa area. On the surface -- within the media

spotlight -- everyone says we need to support today’s youth, we need to

adapt to changes in recreational usage, we need to build a skateboard

park. From recreation officials to neighborhood groups, it’s all the same

politically correct nonsense: “We need a place for today’s kids to

practice their favorite sport,” they say.

But the moment a specific place is suggested as a location for a skate

park, the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins like clockwork. “It can’t

be HERE. It will attract the WRONG ELEMENT. Someone will get hurt and

we’ll get SUED. Skateboarders are TROUBLE.”

It doesn’t matter that all the facts go the other way. But this bias

is not about rational thought, it’s about false notions and ancient

mind-sets.

Stop it. It’s time for this old fogyism to end.

Today the Newport-Mesa area is filled with recreation facilities that

are a legacy of the “in” sports during development here in the 1950s and

‘60s.

Lots of room for football. Plenty of baseball diamonds. More tennis

courts than you could ever use. But if you’re one of the many members of

Generation X or Y who are not attracted to the jockstrap sports, you’re

on the street, dodging cops and false stereotypes.

And for this to continue to be the case here -- in Newport Beach and

Costa Mesa, the very heart of the surf and skate industry, the place Time

magazine called the Velcro Valley -- is pathetic.

We all love Lindsay Davenport, but face the facts -- there are many

times more people in our area who make a living in the surf and skate

industry than work in the tennis industry.

Four years ago Newport Beach finally lifted a 30-year-old law forcing

surfers to stay out of the ocean during every summer afternoon. The old

fogies were certain that swimmers would be killed, street crime would go

up and property values would go down faster than you could say “blackball

flag.”

Incredibly, nothing happened after the law changed other than a lot of

young people getting to spend a few extra hours a day having fun, staying

fit and keeping out of trouble.

Let’s get the kids off the street. Stop the fogyism. Quit complaining.

Build the skate parks.

* BILL SHARP is a Newport Beach resident and the publisher of Surf

News, a Costa Mesa-based magazine covering surf and skating culture in

Southern California.

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