“With all this Drama about UBC, it’s kinda hard being me H-I-P-P-I-E.” Is that Snoop Dogg?? Or just a worse version of it?
I love being stuck in the middle of this stuff. It’s hard for me because I have my negative opinions about things but I also have so much respect for certain people who have created the world we are living in. It’s awesome how this conversation began and then continued on and on. 1 Man made his opinion clear and along with others voiced it loudly. But I wonder how many emails were sent that said that the UBC Park Design was good and people were excited for it. I’m sure there was lots of positive feedback as well. At least I hope there was. It’s very difficult to create a new spot that everyone is going to enjoy, especially when you take in all the factors of Finances, existing pipes and other obstacles in the ground, and how many different suggestions come out of the meetings. After talking with Kyle Dion from New Line yesterday on the phone I am reminded of all of this. Sometimes what we want isn’t always possible in the location dedicated for it to be built, Guildford Bowl was the same way where we were told by the City that we had X amount of square footage, but then the blue prints showed all the gas lines, and that number changed dramatically. The other thing to remember is that just because we didn’t show up for the planning meetings, it doesn’t mean other people weren’t there. Over 300 people gave feedback about what they wanted to see built at the UBC location and the designers have to go from there. I’m sure it was a lot of work just figuring out how to try and please everyone at once, like usual. I think the biggest problem of all is that we, the skateboard community in the Lower Mainland, are completely spoiled with Skate Parks. We almost have too many to be able to respect them all anymore. For all us old guys, let’s reminisce back to the 1990’s and remember how hard and long you used to have to work and how many people would have to be involved with petitioning and finding sponsors for funding and getting the city’s approval to even consider having a skate park. It would literally take years just to get to a planning stage. Those days are over, and New Line Skate Parks are one of the main companies that brought us past those days. Without their positive influence on skateboarding across the world, where would we be right now? And I think we should all be grateful for them and what they have done for all of us.
This UBC Skate Park might not be a destination spot for all skateboarders, but that wasn’t the intent of it in the first place. The design meetings happened and the response was huge. And they worked through all that feedback to come up with something that would appeal to both the street skaters and the tranny skaters. They have been super busy reading through all the emails and replies to this design and have definitely taken people’s opinions into account. As I said before, whatever gets built there will be constructed properly and will be fun for many people.
Love it or not, it’s your choice whether or not to go there. And if you don’t want to, then pick and choose one of the other 60 local skate parks that have already been built for you….