Grinding out a community
As new skate park takes shape, skaters keep practicing and forming bonds
Nathan Benaflor has been spending his winter break in eight-hour days at the Santa Clarita Sports Complex, endlessly trying to perfect his skills.
Only a sport like skating could inspire the 18-year-old to come to the Santa Clarita Skate Park every day.
Kids like Benaflor, and longtime skaters like Mike Riederer, have been congregating at the skate park for many years.
“It’s a place for us to learn new tricks and meet new people,” Benaflor said. “And everyone here is so friendly.”
When the new skate park was built in 2009, the skating community saw an uptick in people as they came out to the new “transition”-styled park.
This one has bigger “bowls,” a term to describe the shape where the ground caves in up to 10 feet deep, and also had a “plaza” with flat ground for the skaters to cover.
There are also stairs for them to jump off, more ramps and rails to practice tricks such as the “kickflip,” where a skater rotates the board underneath their feet while jumping in the air.
Some skaters sit on the
sidelines to watch their friends take long laps around the park, dipping and swaying in time to music playing on headphones or sometimes even just the way of the wind.
“On a regular day, you’ll see so many people coming here as part of the skating community,” Riederer said. “Some people here are as young as 4 to 5, and then you have old guys like me who are 45.”
The skate park is chock full of aspiring skaters, even if sometimes it can get a little dangerous.
Julian Gonzales, 15, recently broke two of his fingers and had to get staples in his leg. Despite the injuries, he was back at it within days. He’s currently on winter break, but during the school year, he still makes sure to skate from the time school gets out at 3:30 p.m., to when the park closes at 8 p.m.
“I’ve been coming here for about a year,” Gonzales said, waving his pink cast in the air. “And there’s so many cool people here — there’s even people like scooters and bikers. Everyone here trades tips, everyone’s friendly and no one fights. It’s such a chill place.”
A new skate park is under construction at the Castaic Sports Complex, anticipated to be done in the upcoming months. Riederer lives in Castaic, but said he will still come to the skate park at the Santa Clarita Sports Complex quite a bit.
Although it was approved two years ago, the need for a skate park at the Castaic Sports Complex was a long time coming because of the growing interest in skating throughout the SCV, Riederer said. That need was voiced by the community in various community meetings in the years leading up to the new Castaic skate park’s approval in 2016.
Riederer has lived in the Santa Clarita Valley since 1998 and feels a sense of camaraderie with the younger skaters.
“Even if you don’t know someone’s name, you start seeing them every time you’re here,” he said. “It is a really good community.”