See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Nathan Tempey
Brooklyn Daily
BAM’s film series about skateboarding culture get its name from a laptop sticker slogan, “Skateboarding is Not a Crime.”
But is it true?
Skateboarders certainly spend enough time dealing with cops, as most people know. And while skateboarding down a New York sidewalk is not a crime — “skating recklessly” is, thanks to a law passed by Mayor Guiliani in 1996 that defines recklessness as “threatening the health or possessions of another person” and makes it punishable by tickets of $50 or $100. The law has not been widely enforced since it first went on the books, according Manhattan’s Uptown Skate School. The code also requires skaters under 14 to wear safety gear.
Most thrashing happens elsewhere, though. Skate aficionados gravitate to designated skateparks and, for so-called street skating, to “skate spots,” or architectural features that lend themselves to tricks. The most mundane piece of urban infrastructure can become a skate spot: a planter in a city park, a cellar door outside of a bodega, a brownstone’s front stoop, and even the inside of an abandoned warehouse are all fair game.
Street skating is where skaters most often run afoul of authority figures, if not the law. When young people gather outside of any business or residence, making a racket and not spending money, someone is bound to take offense. Security guards usually shoo skaters along in instances like these, but if the four-wheelers are still behind a schoolyard fence or in a business parking lot when the cops come, the result can be a trespassing charge. Then again, if skaters are shralping in a city park where “No Skateboarding” signs are posted, they could find themselves on the receiving end of a $50 ticket.
Skater haters often complain that skateboarders are destroying precious surfaces with their grinds and slides (one Windsor Terrace thrasher basher goes so far as pouring syrup on ledges that skaters like). But the effect of skateboard grinding on hard edges is incremental and, absent a young hothead throwing her board through a window in anger over not landing a trick, property damage arrests for skateboarding are rare.
And as for wood and concrete skate spots built in out-of-the-way corners of the city, such as the do-it-yourself skate complex under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway at Graham Avenue in Williamsburg, the Department of Transportation occasionally tears out the hand-sculpted ramps, but night builders have so far always bounced back and cops seem to look the other way.
There are also sanctioned skateparks in the borough, like the elaborate set of concrete bowls at Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge. But with the city’s approval comes the city’s rules. Helmets, pads, and a signed waiver are technically required for entry to all city skateparks, but visits will show that enforcement ranges from lax to nonexistent. The possibility remains that a cop could roll up on a park full of un-protected skate rats and issue each of them $50 tickets which, needless to say, would be a big bummer.
For a full list of public skateparks in Brooklyn, visit www.nycgovparks.org/parks/B380.