For the Love of Skateboarding

This is the last Action Project for my Journalism course. The purpose of this project is to write a spot story about an event that you attended. For my spot story, I chose to go to the largest skate park in Chicago - Grant Skate Park. I chose to go there to create my spot story because skating is a very important part of my life and the sport get a bad reputation. I just want to show people the average day of a skateboarder and help get rid of the stereotypes about who we are. While completing this project I also learned a lot about my friend; we never really talk about him as a skater and why he skates. We kinda just skate and go with the flow. Now, since I got to interview him, I know and respect him more after learning his reasons for skating and what skating has done for him. I am proud of the video I made to accompany my spot story, which shows us skating at the park. it was a very fun day and the video of my friend and I skating is pretty cool in my opinion and I hope whoever views it feels the same.

BKJ, Grant clips (2015)

For The Love Of Skateboarding

by BKJ, GCE Chicago 10/24/15

“I don't get up everyday and skate to get known or be professional; I don't really care about that. I do it for the love of the sport and because it keeps me away from bad influences in my life.” These are the words of my friend, Rafael P., who believes that skating is life. As a fellow skater myself, I agree with him and feel that this is how people should view skaters. In reality, we are not all bad people. Rafael first started to skate as a kid in the Philippines because he had a boogie board and thought that skating was the same thing but on land. So he got his first skateboard and from then on he grew to be the kid he is today - one that doesn't go a day without wanting to skate.

On Monday, October 19 at around 3:30 pm, I walked the 8 blocks to Rafael’s house so we could go to the skate park.  Together, we skated to the brown line, which we took to Belmont. Then, we transferred to the red line and took it to Roosevelt. We skated for a block and a half to Grant Skate Park. The ride to the park was for the most part silent (other than the rough sound of skateboard wheels) because we were thinking of tricks that we wanted to get on film and make the best of the day.

The park is almost a full block long and has many obstacles for Chicago skaters to navigate such as the 8 stairs, the 6 stairs, various ramps, rails, rock gaps, marble benches, etc.. Grant is basically all gray besides the orange edges on the ledges and ramps. At the entrance of Grant along the right side there is an artsy stone formation with many colors that extends along the whole wall.

When we arrived at the park, it was rather unusual to hear Rafael say, “damn Grant is surprisingly empty today.” Grant opened Monday, December 8, 2014, and from that day until this one, the park attracts hundreds of people a day. Not only do skaters love going to Grant, but a usual day there will see scooters, bikers and skaters, and even a few people who just want to enjoy and maybe take photographs of the beautiful park. That day, Rafael and I only saw around 50 people, and so, yes, to us this made it feel "empty".

We spent our afternoon at the park casually skating around and when we had thought of something we wanted to film we would take turns filming each other.We eve saw something  unusual thing that happened at the park on that day was that there was a guy who had a pitbull on a leash pulling him around the park for almost 2 hours. I had a great time that afternoon. I felt very accomplished at the end of the day because we got a lot of footage and we landed most of the tricks that we came there for.

On a normal Monday, Rafael and I wouldn't have gone to Grant, but I did not have school since I’d broken my arm playing basketball and had to go to the hospital to get it checked out. Ironic, eh? Still, even though my arm was broken and I was mad that I had to keep the cast on for another 2 weeks, I was still relieved that I could enjoy skating with Rafael.

Rafael had another reason to visit the park that day. He had gotten an IPhone 5s and wanted to film with it using the slow motion feature, so we went to get footage for our skating YouTube channel. What better place to do that than the best skate park in Chicago?

Skaters have always been thought of as dirty, scumbag, potheads that don't go to school and only do bad things and that is not true for all skaters. One of my friends named Henry is a straight A student and he said that skating is fun but the one thing that he hates is that everyone looks at him bad and thinks down about him just because he is on a board.

More people should know about skating. Nowadays people like to assume they know everything about something without really knowing much about it at all, and this leads to all kinds of misconceptions and stereotypes. Not everyone knows about skating, but when people see a skater, they often think of someone who is dirty, has no life, doesn’t go to school, does drugs and other illegal things, and just is an all-around bad person. assumptions like these make me feel like I am being judged every time someone looks at me.

In my personal opinion and experience, skaters are some of the most dedicated, passionate and biggest dream chasers there are in the world of athletics. For a skater to get up from falling down 8 stairs, rolling an ankle and getting bruised and scraped up and have enough willpower and mental strength to get up and try again and again no matter how many times he or she fails obviously shows the greatest levels of dedication and passion for the sport.

For some kids like my friend Rafael, skating is an escape, one that helps to keep him strong, motivated, and free. Rafael "stopped smoking and stealing and hanging out with people that will distract me from following my dreams”. He made the value and importance of skating very clear, and I know this is true and real for many people, not just my friend and I. Skating has given me an escape from problems; when on a skateboard I feel invincible to any negativity. Skating has done so much for me and my friend. I don’t know where i would be in life without skating but I know it would be a bad place.