There’s a huge hype on skateparks right now and we love it, but If you skated one recently, you’ll agree that it can almost become dangerous how crowded it gets sometimes. We love to see y’all hit the park and have huge respect for new learners, but with learning comes lessons, and how to act and behave at the skatepark is an important one to know.
Beginner or advanced, there are things you need to respect when skating a park. Here are 5 golden rules that you absolutely need to follow next time you hit your local concrete skate park.
DON’T SIT ON THE LEDGE
I know it seems comfortable and looks like a perfect bench to sit on, but it’s not! If you are at a crowded skate park and are sitting on a ledge, there’s a 98% chance you’re stopping someone from skating that obstacle.
So, if it’s the first time you visit the skate park, know that when you want to sit down, you have to locate the real benches. They are usually placed around the skate park and don’t have wax marks or a coping on them. So yeah, if the bench is inside the skate park, remember that this wasn’t meant to be a bench in the first place and that you can’t sit on it unless you want to bum other skaters out.
LOOK WHERE YOU'RE GOING
Just like walking in the streets, driving a car or riding a bike, skating a skatepark will need you to be aware of your surroundings at all time. Even more so when the park is packed. Imagine you’re on the freeway and as you’re about to take the next exit, you’re looking at a plane in the sky instead of all around you. By doing so, there’s a good chance you get into an accident. Well, It’s the same thing at the skate park.
When you are about to drop in, to jump on that rail or just to roll across the park, you have to know what’s going on around you. Don’t look at the ground while you ride and don’t look at the sky either. This has to be the biggest problem one can encounter while at the skate park.
Always look all around you to see other people in the park, try to evaluate their lines to be able to know where they go and not be in anybody’s way. Find your windows, the best time to try your tricks and last but not least, if an outside element catches your attention, make sure you’re not on the board when you look at it!
SHARE THE SKATEPARK
It’s cool If you’re good at skating, but you don’t need to do 5 minutes lines every time you drop in to show other people your skills. There’s fellow skaters there who want to get theirs too!
People sure like to see great skating go down in front of them, but they also went to the skate park for a reason: to skate! If you’re not giving everybody the time and space so they can shred, we can assure you people at the park will end up not being hyped on your moves at all, even if they are very nice.
It’s easy, just skate, do your tricks, impress everyone, but then let them skate too. Take breaks in between your runs so other people have time to do their runs while you’re not in there ripping.
PICK UP YOUR GARBAGE
The golden rule for any public space: Pick up your garbage. Not only nobody likes a dirty park, but not cleaning up could also lead to cities being negative about bulding new skateparks.
If the park looks like a pile of garbage every single day, there’s a chance that the people of your neighbourhood end up not liking having their taxes transformed into a junkyard. That's bad for us because at the end of the day, we need as much people on our side as possible in order to have more opportunities to build new skateparks… Plus, littering sucks, makes us skaters look like pigs and no one likes to prepare for a trick while plastic bags are flying all over the course and empty cans or bottles are rolling everywhere.
LEARN HOW TO STAND UP ON THE BOARD BEFORE JUMPING IN THE PARK
We have nothing against new skaters going to the park to learn how to skate. In fact, we’re all about spreading the love for skating and are happy when we see new faces at the park. That being said, learning the basics in your driveway before hitting is a great way to avoid crashes and make life easier for yourself and everybody else at the park.
If there’s one thing we don’t want, it’s for you to have a bad first session and a negative experience on your board. The thing is, if you don’t know how to stand up on that board before hitting the park, well, accidents are prone to happen. Remember that a skate park is shared between people of all levels and if you stand in the middle of the place trying to learn how to get up on the board, there’s a good chance you’ll end up being in someone’s way.
To avoid getting crashed into or having a board smashing your ankle at high speed, make sure you practiced at least a little bit and know how to move around on your board before you go to the skate park for the first time. Same goes for scooters and bikers: get used to your new toy a little bit before jumping in the pit!