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04/25/2002 Entry: "Love Park, RIP"
It's a sad day in Philadelphia. According to SkateNerd.com Love Park has finally been fenced in, and renovations that will, among other things, make it unskateable, are underway.
Love Park is the mecca of east coast skateboarding. I've been in the area many times, but skated it only once, during a Free Mumia rally, on a borrowed skateboard that had most of its tail missing. Like Pulaski Park in Washington, DC, Love has tons of skate history. It's been in more skate videos that nearly anywhere else and numerous legendary tricks have gone down over the huge gap from the top of the stairs into the fountain.
Despite the city's insistence that skateboarding is not allowed there, they were perfectly willing to be bought out by ESPN, allowing them to have the X-Games street contest there. Furthermore, for a city whose population is shrinking, it's not going to help them if some professional skateboarders, making six figure incomes, decide to move out.
But, besides all of that, I just remember Love Park being this expanse of smooth marble and buttery ledges where people of all ages spent hours and hours of their lives skateboarding and learning new tricks.
Zeb Snyder, a local skateboarder who works at a skateshop, says, "I think when I'm older I'll look at this and say this is the best time of my life, skating at Love."
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