Yesterday’s Go Skateboarding Day competition down at Vicki Park was a big success. A good turnout and a great vibe. Amazing tricks were landed and overall everyone had a good time! It was great to celebrate the achievement of getting a new professionally built skatepark in Leamington, and a great showcase of the local skaters who continue to show the demand for this kind of facility.
Throughout planning of this event Walker made the smart decision to run the event past the council, giving the comp a state of legitimacy that helped cement our efforts. The whole thing felt really awesome to be a part of and it reminded me of why I love skateboarding, and why I love the skate scene in Cov and Warwickshire. The whole day had the DIY “just do it” attitude skateboarding thrives on.
The day was mainly without fault, and the only problem came from one thing: scooters. Now, it was definitely not ALL scooter kids. Several kids turned up early and stayed for the whole day, sat at the side of the park, cheering, watching, and hoping for free stickers. This was cool, and awesome to see them supporting the scene. An older scooter lad turned up and I chatted to him at length about Go Skateboarding Day – he threw out the idea of a Go Scoot Day where they could do a similar event, to which my response was “Of course!”. These events bring the community together and show the need for more skateparks, so it’s all positive.
The problems came from young kids, with little skatepark experience, and their somewhat condescending and rude parents. My skates at Vicki Park always produce rants about this subject, but on Saturday it was especially annoying as we had spent months of our free time planning this event, for a park we spent years getting built. To have the park for one day to ourselves didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me.
One kid wondered on and immediately got in everyone’s way, standing on top of funboxes and pumpbumps with his scooter. The minute he was told “no scooters” and his mum told him to get off, he burst out into the most unbelievable tantrum. The mum spent 5 minutes trying to calm this kid down, as he went red in the face screaming because he couldn’t do the skatepark equivalent of riding a push bike down the fast lane of the M25.
A 5 year old in an Arsenal kit wondered on in and just dropped in, snaking 3 people and then scooted into the bowl and failed to turn in the deep end and slid down the ramp. Music was blaring out, Walker was officiating a comp and shouting down a loud speaker, there was clearly an event on, yet this kid’s parents were fine with him just pushing onto the park and sliding around.
Several people told him “no scooters today”, and he went and told his parents. They told him to ignore us and scoot anyway. These nobheads were sporting the “I want to speak to the manager” starter kit and started kicking off at skaters demanding to know why their precious little offspring was being told he couldn’t ride his cheap Toys R Us scooter.
They were repeatedly told that we had cleared all of this with the council, we had permission, it wasn’t safe for their kid and they had other skateparks nearby they could use. Walker showed them the official documentation, to which their response was “Well we’ll be talking to the council about this”. Walker dared them to, knowing they would be told to fuck off. They also claimed “We came all the way from Coventry so he could ride this”, they said completely unaware that Lucas, George and several other Cov heads were stood nearby who had ALSO travelled “all the way” from Cov for our event, and are also the guys trying to get a new skatepark that their kid would probably end up using. The irony was strong in their self entitlement. They accused us of not properly advertising the event despite us posting it on all social media related to SOS and Terribleco, and affiliated council pages. Everyone in the skateboarding and youth community in Leamington and Cov were aware of our event – sorry, I guess we missed “self entitled upper middle class twatsicle weekly” from our advertising list. It was one of thousands of events ran in conjunction with GO SKATEBOARDING DAY, if you had a modicum of intelligence you could’ve googled it and found out that there was a local event going on related to it.
These rants run long, but these stupid fuckers don’t seem to get it. I don’t give a shit if you get paid £60,000 a year and shop at Waitrose. I don’t give a shit if you’ve travelled from fucking Cambodia. Just because you’re kid has a scooter you bought from a toy shop and can drop in doesn’t give you the right to tell skateboarders how to use a skatepark. Especially when you are getting arsey with skateboarders who raised funds and helped build the skatepark you are kicking off about. If you want the entitlement you so clearly think you deserve, fuck off back to your fancy house in your Range Rover and build a skatepark in your massive back yard. At least that way your kid might actually learn how to use a fucking skatepark, instead of you trying to bully the locals into letting him get in the way and slide down ramps.
The Terrible Company 
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