Editor’s Notebook -- Danette Goulet

As city leaders consider putting a skate park in at Oak View Community

Center at the request of teenagers, I am reminded again why I love this

city.

It would be the third skate park in Huntington Beach, while our

neighbors in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have hemmed and hawed about

putting one in their cities for more than a decade.

A majority of residents in the two cities seem to want the park, but

no one wants it in their neighborhood.

God forbid, should “those skateboarder kids” be recreating in their

neighborhoods.

Although there were fears and objections when Huntington Beach

considered building its first skate park in the early 1990s, city leaders

recognized there was a need and growing desire for the parks. While there

had been some Orange County cities with skate parks in the 1970s, the

craze trailed off a bit and those parks closed. Huntington was the first

to resurrect the idea with the park at the Murdy Community Center.

Such forward thinking is what makes this city what it is -- a place

where children and adults can enjoy healthy active lives.

That is not to say there are no residents in Surf City who are

appalled by the youth and surf/skate culture of the city, but as a whole

Huntington Beach is far more accepting of such things than our neighbors.

This, to me, is key. That’s what makes Huntington vital, alive and fun.

Huntington Beach now boasts two skate parks, one at Murdy and another

at Huntington Beach High School, that I have never seen either empty in

the afternoon and early evening. Can you say that for every other

recreational facility in the city?

And you don’t see kids out there fighting, smoking or doing drugs --

they’re getting exercise and having fun doing things far more coordinated

than I could ever do.

If it were a basketball court or soccer field that teens wanted, the

only question from residents would likely be “how late will it be open at

night?”

But there is this absurd mentality out there that skateboarders are

hooligans.

Although he later retracted it, and is now pushing for a skate park,

Newport Beach Mayor Tod Ridgeway was quoted in January describing

skateboarders as “a culture of defiance.”

That sums up what every generation of adults thinks of every new

generation of teenagers. It has nothing to do with skateboarding.

It used to be “that rock ‘n’ roll music.”

I never learned to skateboard, and frankly am pretty lousy at in-line

skating as one Huntington Beach lifeguard who patched me up on the beach

path at the bottom of the 1st street “hill” can attest to.

But if a skate park is what the youth in the Oak View neighborhood say

they want, what they “need,” then that is what the city should do with

the money they have allocated to that park.

* DANETTE GOULET is the city editor. She can be reached at (714)

965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 danette.goulet@latimes.comf7 .