Philadelphia, Pennsylvania * - When the famous LOVE Park * was closed to skateboarders in 2002 *, some wound up skateboarding at Dilworth Plaza, a 'concrete apron near City Hall' that lays nearby on the 15th Street side of City Hall.

It appears that the bureaucracy is at it again, and has rendered the plaza largely unskateable through the $6,500 installation of "cleats and metal discs to railings and benches". Newly installed signs proclaim the ban on skateboarding, bicycling and inline skating.

Scott Kip of the Skateboard Advocacy Network *, who is quickly becoming a de-facto pro-skateboarding spokesperson for the city of Philadelphia, suggested that the city might be sending a negative message to youngsters at the same time that it claims that it is trying to protray a positive image. For example, in a weird twist of life-imitating-reality (and vice-versa), reports indicate that City officials have been working to have MTV * shoot a second version of The Real World in Philadelphia, in order to try to make the city more attractive to the youth demographic.

About the increasingly tight skateboarding ban in Philadelphia, Kip stated "as a message to young people, it's not a good thing." The Skateboard Advocacy Network which he represents advocates the return of skateboarding to LOVE Park.

According to reports, on Monday April 22nd, Philadelphia Managing Director Philip R. Goldsmith and several other planning officials met with Philadelphia constituents who wanted the park reopened to skateboarding. Both sides reportedly hope to find a common ground which pleases all parties.

"He's been flexible," Kip said of Goldsmith. Goldsmith apparently has arranged for the city to prepare brochures detailing the locations of 22 spots in the Philadelphia region in which it is legal to skateboard, and pointed out the city's plans for a new, 30,000 square foot public skatepark * to be built in Fairmount Park, along the eastern side of the Schuylkill River

The controversy partly centers around damage caused to public property by skateboarders, BMXers and inline skater, but Kip expressed that BMX bicyclists, not skateboarders, caused much of the major damage to benches in the plaza.

"Skateboarders don't like BMXers because they ruin the edges and make it hard to skateboard," he said. "There's a lot of conflict even within the subculture."

Goldsmith announced the changes to Dilworth plaza at a news conference where he was joined by Steven Brody, co-owner of Title 10 Skatepark, an indoor skateboard park in Old City named after the ordinance which makes skateboarding illegal in Philadelphia.

Kip also posited that the city will pay a significant price for the ban in terms of public image. He also wondered out loud if Brody's park might lose credibility with some skateboarders, perhaps as being "in cahoots" with the authorities in making skateboarding less legal in the Philadelphia region.

"I'm not in cahoots with anybody," Brody responded. Brody used the conference as an opportunity to pitch his for-profit skatepark as "a tremendous asset to skaters and their parents," and to offer a 50 percent membership discount to all skateboarders, which he said he would donate to the city for use on unspecified skateboard programs. "If a kid wants to skate in the street and get chased by the police, that's his business", Brody was quoted as saying.

This article was based on the philly.com article "Phila. alters Dilworth Plaza to cut its skateboarding appeal", by Michael Currie Schaffer and found at http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/8260224.htm, and "News in brief from Philadelphia" from http://pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1080124544124790.xml

Search this site for more about Philadelphia Skateboard Politics Continue Unfold *