Gnarly mom

Marisa O’Neil

When she was 13, Barbie Ludovise wanted a place to ride her

skateboard.

So in the late 1970s, when the Newport Beach City Council

announced its plans to close down an empty reservoir popular with

skateboarders, she decided to take action. She and some of her

skating friends wrote speeches, marched into a City Council meeting

and asked them to keep the reservoir open or provide a suitable

alternative.

“I remember all the City Council members sitting there, smiling as

us,” said the skateboard fanatic, now known as Barbara Odanaka. “They

thought we were cute, but still voted us down. Unanimously, I think.”

She didn’t get her skate park then, and Newport Beach still

doesn’t have one. But nearly three decades later, the 41-year-old’s

spirit and determination spawned a book, a club and a budding

phenomenon: skateboarding moms.

Her first children’s book, “Skateboard Mom,” came out a few months

ago, and since then, her club for skateboarding mothers has tripled

its membership. And the media has latched on to the idea of grown,

responsible women doing ollies and kick-flips.

“Let’s face it, the image of a mom and the image of skateboarder

are two different things,” she said. “People like the idea of moms on

skateboards. You’re never too old to play and make time to do

something that gives you absolute joy.”

Odanaka will be signing her book at Costa Mesa’s Borders Books,

Music & Cafe today. She’ll bring along some of her 20 skateboards for

children to see and touch.

She first took up skating at 10, but stopped when her

cross-country coach at Corona del Mar High School told her she’d have

to choose between the two.

At 34, after prematurely giving birth to her son Jack, she slipped

into a depression. When a counselor told her she needed to find

something she loved to do and do it 10 minutes a day, she knew just

the thing.

“It didn’t even take a nanosecond,” she said. “I said:

‘skateboard.’”

Her husband, Paul, bought her a new longboard skateboard for her

35th birthday. When he came home from work, she said, she’d hand Jack

off to him, head up a nearby hill with her board and skate down.

“I was like a new person,” she said. “I’d literally do 10 or 15

minutes a day and come back a much happier mom.”

The former sports writer, now living in Laguna Beach, also found

she wanted to write children’s books. “Skateboard Mom” is her first,

with two more in the works.

Other moms, such as 41-year-old Sherri Cruz, have decided to take

up skateboarding for the first time, after hearing Odanaka’s story.

The Newport Beach resident, mom to 9-year-old skateboarder Rhiannon,

took up the sport five months ago and goes to a skate park at least

once a week.

“I kept quiet about it a while,” she said of her new obsession.

“Then I got outed at work. Everybody’s like, ‘You skate?’ Nobody

could believe it. But other people were like, ‘Wow, that’s really

cool.’”

Her daughter likes having an activity she can now do with her

mother, Cruz said. Odanaka’s son Jack, however, isn’t as impressed

with his mother’s skating.

“My mom skateboards, and I don’t really take any notice of it,” he

said.

The fear of falling and getting hurt always looms in the back of

their heads, the women said, but the satisfaction of nailing a trick

far exceeds the worry.

Though skateboarding moms are catching on, not everybody’s up for

the challenge.

“Not on your life,” said Kathy Escher, another type of skateboard

mom.

Escher’s 8-year-old son Kole has been skateboarding since he was 2

and has a halfpipe in his driveway. She used to skateboard down

Spyglass Hill when she was a teenager but said she wouldn’t dream of

it now.

“I’m 45,” she said. “I’m not getting on one now. Sometimes I kick

around on his board, and I feel like I’m going to break my neck.”

* MARISA O’NEIL covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4268 or by e-mail at marisa.oneil@latimes.com.

*

FYI

WHAT: Barbara Odanaka will be signing copies of her children’s

book “Skateboard Mom”

WHEN: 2 p.m. today

WHERE: Borders Books, Music & Cafe 1890 Newport Blvd, Costa Mesa