Personal experiences at a public skatepark.

Vision this. You and your friends have been riding for about an half hour on your BMX bike or skateboard at the local public skatepark and suddenly a mini van pulls into the parking lot and out of a van, kids between the ages of 3 to 7 years old come flying out the sidedoor. They run past the playground and go straight to the skatepark, half of them riding bikes with training wheels and big wheels and the other half sliding down the ramps like a slide at the playground. You go across the skatepark heading towards a quarterpipe and attempt to ice pick it and you narrowly miss one of the little ones. The freighted lad or lassie runs off to mommy or daddy who is sitting on the picnic table reading a magazine, not paying attention to the kids, gets up and comes strutting like a rutting buck and proceeds to rip you a new one. After hearing a bunch of colorful words that would make a sailor blush, you exclaim that you are sorry and explain that it is a skatepark designed for skateboarding, BMX bikes and blading. The parent says it doesn't matter, my kid or kids can go wherever they like in this park. They may even demand that their kids can use the skatepark for themselves and you can have the bank in the corner to ride. It is probably not hard to envision for most riders that use the local public skatepark on a regular basis.

After they are done at the skatepark, will the little ones go to the softball diamond and use their Tonka Trucks on the pitcher's mound during a ballgame? Or play dolls in a horseshoe pit while some one is using the pits exclaiming the park is entirely theirs to use as much as everyone else? Of course not. Why do they try it at the skatepark?

After observing and being part of the strange and bizarre phenomena for some time, we came to the conclusion that either the parents and kids don't really understand what the skatepark is really about, or they are looking for a free ticket to sue and using their kids to do it, or they really don't care.

Regardless of the reason, the best thing to do is leave and ride street or ride your ramps at home if you have some. Leaving is the only way to win in a situation such as this. Maybe a sign should be installed on the skatepark stating "This Skatepark is designed for BMX bikes, Skateboarding and Aggressive Inline Skating".