tony hawk in the white house/open road outside the white house advocating for the legalization of skateboarding in DC. live twitter updates @skateable

obama with tony hawk and other founding fathers. tony in the center with skate shoes, black suit. Pictures from twitter @tonyhawk

Write to us about youth advocacy. Send us movies. Write to us about skateboarding. Send pictures. Come to our Creative Writing workshops. Volunteer to advocate for and build skate spots, advocate for youth, and support free youth programs.

We've been building parks for 20yrs and we've never seen anything like this. Right now kids want to skateboard, and they are willing to work for it, so they've started to convert our playgrounds into skate spots. These spots are skateable parks, not segregated skate parks, with community gardens, art, music, and youth culture, open to all.


tony hawk getting ready to meet with president barack obama

Come to some of these spots and volunteer, write to us about your advocacy projects, upload advocacy videos to youtube and send us links to your youth service projects. Participatory projects with youth leadership are the wave of the future, please send us yours. openroadpark@gmail.com

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness
One day Billy called and said Here's an idea. Maybe next week when school's out, spring break, we skate in front of the White House. I said Yes. Because I always say Yes no matter what the question is then I sort it out later. It's why I'm careful who my friends are. Do you want to do it legally, with a permit? Yes, I have to, Billy said. I can't get arrested.

So I start finding out what it takes. First I need to figure out what DC is. I know it's a district, but if it's not a state, does the city have a city government? Who handles permits? I know that sounds stupid, but I didn't know. So I call the National Parks Service. Yes, you would talk to us about permits for demonstrations or sports events in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. But you can't skateboard there. It's grass.

What about the sidewalk? You can't get a permit for the sidewalk. But anyway you can't skateboard on the sidewalks on DC. You can't skateboard anywhere unless it's permitted. Like a skatepark.

What about a demonstration in the park, and we skateboard in the street? The street would be the district. The district you mean like the District of Columbia district? Yes. Do you know who I would ask there? DOT.

But, back to the park, could we have a permit for a demonstration about skateboarding in the park? Yes. And could we build stages, and could we skate on those stages? I don't know. That's a good question. Let me give you to my supervisor. Good luck.

The supervisor is interested. She wants drawings of a skateable stage. How many people would we expect? A thousand come to our events in NYC.

(to be continued)

Photo courtesy Tony Hawk Foundation

tony hawk with open road and manhattan bridge skateboarders. SteveR@5boro set this up with Tony, thanks Steve and 5boro!