Go Skateboarding! A Summer Flashback

I started skateboarding sometime in 1975.  I imagine it was summer at the time.  It was Los Angeles, and Frank Nasworthy had just unleashed the urethane skateboard wheel onto an unsuspecting planet full of teenagers with limitless imagination and blanketed with a palette of limitless pavement upon which to ideate.

38 years later, I still whip my board out while waiting for the bus, in that moment of calm and stillness and, dare I say, boredom, when I am at the mercy of the transit schedule and no other deadline is bearing down upon me.  I skate the way I did in my youth – slopestyle  (yes that’s me), curb tricks, handstands…
Here’s me on Go Skateboarding Day this past summer.

Cruising around the park ‘n ride gives me ample opportunity to police litter.  Pick up a bottle or a rag or a bag or a butt, skate it over to the receptacle, repeat.

Recently I found two pair of jeans and a towel discarded in the lot. I left it for a week to make sure that nobody was coming back for it.  They’re now washed and ready to donate to charity.

A week or two ago, I read the sign laying out the rules for park ‘n ride users.  The “no skateboarding” rule was no surprise to me – skateboarders are used to being outlaws, despite the hard work of advocacy organizations such as Skaters for Public Skateparks to legalize skateboarding in public places (maybe it won’t surprise you to hear that I was a longtime member of SPS not to mention my involvement in local Seattle projects such as the Puget Sound Skateboard Association, and Marginal Way.)

One hallmark of skateboarders is that they appreciate having great places to skate.  The skateboarding community has garnered a lot of appreciation from the nonskating community because of their tendency to police litter at skateparks.  Those of us who are members of the “Old Man Army” habitually travel with brooms and dustpans to clean out the bottom of skate bowls.  I like to take a tour around the park either on arrival or before I leave, to ensure the park is trash free.

When skateboarders first started to build Portland’s  Burnside skatepark as a renegade project in the early 1990s, that area of Portland was high-crime and riddled with drugs and prostitution.  The skaters not only cleaned up the site, they cleaned u the neighborhood.  They brought in a new community, just as badass, but dedicated to good healthy fun.  To this day, the city remembers the great things the Burnside crew did for the Portland community.

Being a part of a community that values making the world a better place makes me feel good.  Reading the park ‘n ride sign, I got to musing – if I split my time at the facility between skateboarding and removing litter, do they cancel each other out?

Deep thoughts, readers… deep thoughts.

Skate on, and pick up trash.

When Nature is a Litterbug

It’s fall in South Lake Union, and the many deciduous trees in our neighborhood are doing the thing that deciduous trees do in the fall – littering! 

Don’t get me wrong – I love the look of sidewalks and streets covered in the kraft-paper look of fall leaves.  But eventually they get pulverized, they rot, and they become a wet soggy mess.  Seattle has been blessed (or cursed – I haven’t decided) with a dry fall, so the leaves are a delight.  However, I’ve noticed that City workers, local businesses, and residents have been expending great amounts of energy to remove the drifts of leaves collecting in their driveways and along planted areas.  

It never occurred to me to pick up “One Leaf A Day” – I draw the line there, folks – nature was here first, whether we planted the trees or not.  And I do not object to a leaf the way I object to the similar look of a discarded paper bag.  I don’t feel that tug of responsibility that draws me to remove human detritus from my surroundings.  Walking down the street shuffling my feet through the piles of leaves on the sidewalk is one of the joys of fall.

That’s right: I am an apologist for nature.  So sue me.

Cities are not so forgiving.  Every day on my walk to work I see workers with large bags and leaf blowers.  They have been at it for weeks, and still I see no dent in the leafy covering.  It made me wonder – how much do municipalities pay for leaf removal during the fall, and where does that money come from?

It turns out that the answer varies from place to place.  A web search brought up a random sampling of information.  For example, the city of Portland, faced with a budget shortfall in 2010, instituted a $30 fee for leaf removal to cover about $800,000 in missing revenue. The move angered some residents, who had always enjoyed free leaf removal before.

In other parts of the country, leaf removal is included in city services and is paid for presumably by property tax revenue, but for homeowners who have to foot the bill themselves, costs average around $400 nationally, though they can be much higher in certain areas – according to HomeAdvisor,  Seattleites can expect to pay an average of $665 for leaf removal, with costs going as high as $1300 a season.

As for me, good old elbow grease with a rake suffices for my yard. My daughter and I love to jump in the leaves.  And the collected material makes great compost.

Enjoy the fall, folks, and appreciate the leaves while you can.