It's a burlesque ballet: bodies twisting in midair, legs akimbo, as their skateboards flip and clatter down steep bowls and quarter-pipes.

Sometimes they successfully land their kick flips, 180s and ollies, grinning as their feet grip their spinning boards and smash back to earth. And sometimes the sheer number of flying bodies — mostly adolescent and teenage — makes collisions and injuries seem inevitable.

"After a couple of spills, you get used to it," said Lisa Pollardo of Lake Stevens as her 8-year-son and his scooter tumbled down a concrete bowl at the Snohomish Skate Park.

Snohomish County is riding the latest national trend in civic recreation, with five city-built skate parks opening since 1998 *, a sixth to open next month and six more in the discussion or planning stages.

There's also one in the King County portion of Bothell.

The image of skateboarding has improved dramatically over the past decade, popularized by the X Games, Bart Simpson and clean-living athletes such as Tony Hawk *. Parents who remember skateboarding down childhood sidewalks seem less likely to associate the sport with punk rockers, graffiti or anti-establishment gangs.

Now entire communities are coming together to raise money for skateboard parks, to give kids a place to practice their moves without breaking local no-skating laws or damaging public and private property.

"The kids just need somewhere to go — they're riding in the downtown area, they're riding in a lot of places where they're not welcome," said Gene Brazel, the city of Monroe's public-works director. His city is building a skate park set to open Oct. 19.

While most local parks are built along traditional lines, with bowls, "fun boxes *" and quarter-pipes, the county's latest park, the month-old Marysville Skate Park, was designed for skaters who learned their sport on the streets.

Stairs with metal railings, lots of grinding rails and raised ledges dominate the park, which was designed with the help of local youths. One recent day, about 60 youths jostled for space in the $387,000 park, now the town's most popular hangout.

On a scale of one to 10, the park rates an 11, said 16-year-old Ian Grote — just because it's a Marysville skate park. "We didn't think we were ever going to get it," he said.

"There was nothing to do before," added Aaron Boyd, 18. "We used to go to other parks — one time we drove 70 miles one way (to Oak Harbor) just to skate."

Although all of the skate parks in Snohomish County recommend helmets, and Snohomish requires them, most skateboarders hurtle through the air bareheaded. Even in Snohomish, where police have begun handing out tickets for violations, many skaters on a recent afternoon were eschewing helmets.

The parks all are unsupervised.

Kurt Hill, 11, wears his helmet only because his mother makes him. That helped this summer when he collided head-on with 14-year-old Devin Riddle atop a pyramid at the Snohomish park, which opened in March. Riddle broke his two front teeth on Hill's helmet.

Skateboarding is hardly a fad — Southern California * surfers created the sport in the late 1940s, and it really took off in the 1970s, when polyurethane wheels * replaced the old clay ones. Hundreds of public and private skateboard parks opened all over the nation, but by 1980 they all had closed, victims of liability fears and the sagging economy.

Washington * and California both solved the liability puzzle in 1997 *, amending state laws so cities cannot generally be held responsible for injuries sustained by skateboarders or in-line skaters at skateboard parks.

Everett, which helped push that change, opened the county's first skateboard park in 1998. Bothell and Lynnwood (in partnership with Edmonds) followed suit the next year. Stanwood built its park in 2001 *, and Snohomish and Marysville opened their parks this year.

Mill Creek, Sultan, Lake Stevens, Arlington, Granite Falls and Mukilteo are planning, or seriously discussing, future skate parks.

Snohomish mom Laurie Carter supports the parks because they provide teens with a positive, healthy outlet.

"I like what I see here. I don't see smoking, I don't see fighting or anyone smoking marijuana. They must be really enjoying it because they aren't causing any trouble," she said, taking in the action at the new Marysville park.

Everett youths Seth Estes, 14, and Michael Capeloto, 13, represent the new generation of skateboarders.

Good kids, both enrolled in honors courses at Everett High, they got serious about skateboarding a couple years ago. Now they have a portable grinding rail they set up at the end of their street for practice, and they've visited a dozen skate parks.

"Over the years, people have given skateboarding a bad reputation. It's important that people not look at us like punks," Estes said.

Some teens get into the sport for the image, buying their clothes at Zumiez * and walking around campus carrying skateboards they don't really know how to ride, the teens said.

It takes a lot of work to master even the most basic moves, such as the ollie — a simple leap into the air, with the skateboard floating beneath one's feet.

The sport's difficulty is an intrinsic part of its popularity, said Dave Duncan, a former pro skater who now designs skateboard parks.

"It's a really rewarding sport," said Duncan, of Huntington Beach, Calif. "Once you've got a move, you've got it for the rest of your life. It really fills (skaters') souls, in terms of making them feel like they really achieved something that day."

Duncan prefers the traditional skate parks to the street-skating style. Just as the street parks mimic the real-world skating environment for modern kids, the traditional concrete bowls, quarter-pipes and half-pipes were modeled after the earliest dare-devil skating terrain: empty California swimming pools and drainage pipes.

A good park is a cement paradise, he said, with a variety of bowls and "snake runs" that can create the same sensation as riding a roller coaster.

"The problem with stairs and rails, it's what they were forced to skate in the '90s because that's all there was," he said.

And in Marysville, that's all they want.

"This place is awesome," declared Dirk McGillivary, 15, a student at Marysville Alternative High School.

"Skate parks are usually all vert (traditional), and this is all street. It's what everybody likes."

Diangelo Harris, 16, agreed.

"This is the best thing that ever happened to Marysville," he said.

This article was originally entitled "Skateboarders Hitting Their Stride" and was found at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/ 134541698_skateboard25n0.html

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