Riding The Air New Skate Park In Downtown Spokane Makes Teen Fun Legal

The air was cold and gray, streets were shiny black. Breath turned to clouds in front of faces.

It didn’t faze the dozen kids beneath the bridge at the city’s skate park Sunday - they had new rippin’ boards to thrash, new Roller Blades to grind. The holiday gift harvest needed breaking in and skaters were sweating despite the nip in the air.

The freeze did bother Graffiti Guy. His paint kept coagulating.

“It’s very tricky. A very hard medium,” the 19-year-old explained after blowing a drip in check. But all was well and the work was done - a skater wearing a big-billed orange cap. Funky, cartoony, urban hip.

A kid slammed his board onto the concrete in appreciation. “That’s cool, man.”

So goes the holiday season at the city’s new skate park. And the verdict is in: It’s nice not to be chased off by The Man.

“We’ve always skated under here,” said 15-year-old Darren Capaul. “We just used to usually get kicked out.”

The park was officially opened Nov. 20. But kids have been rolling there, near Fourth and McClellan, since the 1980s. A precedent set back when Reagan was president.

“We used to build things and bring them down here all the time,” Capaul said. There was no city ramp then.

And getting caught meant a $40 fine. Like bicyclists, boarders aren’t allowed to ride on downtown sidewalks. They can only ride on the streets if they don’t get in the way of pedestrians.

Just ask Brad Lewis, 13. The red-haired kid with the short-on-the sides cut has been hustled from Shadle Park. He and friends have been herded clear of downtown banks.

No more. At least not here.

“They’ll let ya skate here,” said 14-year-old Jamie Gould. “They don’t care.”

Right now, the centerpiece is a $24,000 pyramid - a “fun box” - that kids can launch themselves from.

“They’ll build more stuff,” Jamie said. “I can’t wait.”

He’ll have to. At least until spring, when concrete can set properly.

Here’s the wish-list: A quarter-pipe ramp. A half-pipe. A smaller fun box, for those who can’t quite scale the current one.

It’s definitely a scene. On Sunday, the kids were all baggy black sweatshirts and knit caps. The scent was the petroleum bite of wet paint.

It’s an echo chamber ringing with the clacks and thwacks of boards hitting the ground. Hard. And the half running-water, half cat-growl howl of wheels.

Robert Swearingen, 13 and from Glover, whipped out a yellowish cube and started waxing the corner of a ledge. Then, atop inline skates, he slips away backward, treading air.

Then he’s forward again, into a charge, up in the air. Jump, slam, slide - WHAM! He hits the waxed wall and rides it three feet.

Yes, they could get hurt. No, they don’t care.

“We just hang out and skate, do stuff you can’t do walking,” said 15-year-old Blake Becker. “It’s hard to explain. There’s just something about it.”

Sunday, that something was having fun on an otherwise boring, gray day. And it was huddling around Graffiti Guy, watching him work with his Crayola arc of spray cans.

He was covering up a section of that typical, cryptic gang-scrawl. The walls are tangled with it.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “A lot of the taggers just do it to destroy things. I’m in it to promote the art.”

He used to skate, Guy explained. Now that he smokes, mounting a ramp is like running the Boston Marathon.

But the park is all good.

“I think it’s pretty great. It gives them something to do instead of getting messed up.”

, DataTimes