Adapt Victoria Square plan for those using it
Washington Way Skate Park has been a huge success. Drive past on a sunny autumn day during the school holidays and you’ll see it absolutely rammed with people skateboarders and scooter users - vying for a turn on the steps, ledges and ramps which range from kickers for kids to deep bowls best attempted by old boys with sore bones and missing front teeth.
Skateboarding exploded into Christchurch in the late 1980s.
By the 1990s, old people were on board enough that a couple of skate spots were built around the city.
There was a spine ramp at Hagley High, a vert ramp at QEII, Hoon Hay, Hornby and the Thompson Park bowl.
But vert skating was already old by the time the ramps were built and a new group of kids were exploring the streets for a style of skating that would take over the world: street skating.
The king of local street skate spots was Victoria Square, where Christchurch skating spent almost a decade coming of age.
Now it was through the tension that grew between street skaters and elderly people that the need for a street park was first mooted (it’s easy to forget skateboarding was the freedom camping of the 1990s).
If we could just give the kids another spot to skate then surely Victoria Square could get back to doing what it did best: being a dead space that almost nobody used.
Eventually the city fell down and we got a flash new rendering of Vic Square.
Do you know who definitely wasn’t included in the design? Skaters.
Then last week I read a news report about the new cobbles and ledges having been damaged by skateboarders.
You see, since the 90s there has been an arms race between skateboarders and the people that design public spaces.
Because while those who design spaces love to include skateboarders in their architectural renderings as shorthand for ‘‘urban’’, the first
thing they do when they create a space is hire some turncoat skater to tell them how best to ruin the space for skateboarders.
Apparently some damaged ledges and cobbles and the removal of the brass stoppers or fins placed between stone blocks to stop skaters grinding on them will cost $100k to remedy. Now I’m not entirely sure that we can blame the stoppers on the skaters.
Sure, it makes the skating better, but as a scumbag by nature, I’ll bet it was just some old bums that stole the stoppers. Because they were brass. And brass can be turned into money, baby.
So, we have Washington Skate Park, but there will always be a section of young skateboarders who can’t think of anything worse than hanging out with a bunch of kids being watched over by their mummies and rad dads on rollerblades.
... Victoria Square continues to be underutilised and if somebody is using the space at all then this should be encouraged
The guys that want to remain separate from the park will gravitate somewhere and it seems that Victoria Square might be that space.
How about this? Fix it up to a point where whoever is skating it can continue to do so?
Adapt the plan for how a space is actually being used instead of imagining a space from some distant office.
Because as far as I can tell, Victoria Square continues to be underutilised and if somebody is using the space at all then this should be encouraged.
I know an old skater who I reckon could patch the space up for less than $20k ($24k after my finder’s fee).
I’ll send him your way O¯ ta¯ karo.