Skate Park Convocation

June 28, 2004

I was driving past the skate park. A brand new concrete cubist strategic game board the size of an Olympic pool is nestled in the crotch of a busy east/west highway and the main north/south thoroughfare. Behind a chain link fence and some scraggly blackberry bushes it speaks quietly of a post apocalyptic LA as depicted by Disney. The rails and ramps look like the recreated bone gray ruins of an industrial structure long ago burned down, sand blasted and picked clean. The community built it and probably tried to enforce the use of helmets for the first 5 hours of its use. Helmets are only for sanctioned competition. If you want to know where your kids are you better let them ride tough without the lids. They’ll be hanging at the cool new skate park. Bring on the rulebook and watch them leave to grind those trucks down the fluorescent-lit rails leading to the door of the nearest 7/11.
It was hot and clear today. The older teens skipping class were pausing with the noses of their boards in one hand and tails on the ground. You know how they stomp down casually on the back end of the board and the nose comes up into their hand? They stand at ease staring at the 40 or 50 dark blue robed college graduates in mortarboard hats and gold tassels. The theatre beside the skate park has just played host to a college convocation ceremony. Some rocket scientist of a photographer has decided that the city view behind the theatre would be a brilliant backdrop for the group photo. He has lined them all up on the hem of the skate park with their backs to the skaters and is snapping his Leica SLR from atop a stepladder some twenty feet on the other side of the grads. He hopes, through the proper angle, to hide the immediate rumpled background of concrete and capture the grads against the city scene in the distance. I pass by right at the time the skaters are sniping the well-groomed and straight-backed grads with the first wiseass cracks. The heads of the first grads to rise to the bait are snapping their heads around to fire back. The middle aged photographer in the khaki vest with those film canisters pockets is waving his free hand madly and beginning to shout in what I fear will be a vain attempt to shepherd his idiotic plan to fruition. The light turns green and I must drive on. I am forced to keep this exact moment in my head and not taint it with what I think might happen in the next ten minutes. I want to remember the potential energy of the situation and believe this could go either way. I want to believe there is a 50% chance it could all turn out well. When will street smarts hit the ivory tower?