From the Mar 10 – Mar 16, 2005 issue

News

Skating on the Margins

Facing a Skate Park Shortage, Guerrilla Skateboarders Build Their Own

by Amy Jenniges

Seattle's newest skate park is hard to find. The small space is wedged between a half-dozen strands of train track in SoDo, under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Lumbering freight trains drown out the noise of skateboard wheels scraping the pavement. The park doesn't have any signs or lights, and from across the street, the viaduct's columns obscure the view of the park's two quarter pipes.

Skateboarders sought out the otherwise useless piece of property, figuring no one would mind if they built a DIY skating spot there. Seattle, with just two municipal skate parks to satisfy an estimated 100,000 skateboarders in the region, certainly needs more bowls, half pipes, and ramps, the skaters argue.

Unfortunately, the new park could be short-lived. Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) employees working a few blocks away discovered the hidden park last week, and reported it to the department. On Wednesday, March 2, an SDOT supervisor came out to inspect it, since it's on SDOT property. Skaters are now worried the city will demolish their concrete structures any day.

Skaters conceived the small "skate spot" last fall. "We knew the end was coming in Ballard," explains Dan, a lanky guy in a Ballard skate bowl T-shirt (he and the skate park's other caretakers wish to remain semi-anonymous). That bowl is slated for demolition in April, to make way for a grassy new park, with a new bowl--which won't be ready until November. Seattle Center's skate park will also be demolished and rebuilt in an as-yet-undecided location over the next few years. As far as skaters were concerned, the city needed another park. So last October, after "scoping it out for about a month or so," Dan and a few friends christened the SoDo space the Marginal Way Skate Park.

Meanwhile, skaters started showing up, helping with construction on the weekends--there's one freestanding quarter pipe, and another built into a viaduct support wall--or just stopping by in the evenings, when skaters would circle their cars around the space, leave their headlights on to light up the park, and take turns zooming from pipe to pipe. "Word was getting around pretty fast," Dan says. "We're not actively promoting it, but we aren't hiding it either." (Just this week another skater, Shawn, started a website in its honor, at marginalwayskatepark.org.)

But on March 1, after they'd spent a weekend pouring concrete for the second quarter pipe, the skaters found out that SDOT staffers doing bridge repairs a few blocks away had stumbled onto their guerilla project. A neighborhood resident told a third guy, Tim, that "the city had been taking photographs of the site and was preparing to demolish [it] in one or two weeks." On March 2, SDOT South District Supervisor Laura Mithoug paid a visit--the skaters believe she stopped by to determine exactly how to tear down the sturdy concrete quarter pipes, built over cinderblocks and bricks. Mithoug gave them a pointed hint: "She told us how to get a permit to get a temporary stay," says Tim. Mithoug did not return our calls.

The guys are currently looking into a permit, but as a backup, they've also fired up the skateboard community's political machine, which was honed during last year's battle to save the Ballard bowl from the wrecking ball (the effort was partially successful, as the bowl will be rebuilt). Skaters are calling skate-friendly city officials asking for help, and the Puget Sound Skateboarding Association started a letter- writing campaign last week in support of the skate spot. But Tim and his buddies aren't sure what will ultimately happen to their skating place. "We're just trying to do something we enjoy," he says.

amy@thestranger.com