Here's a little trivia for you: what does San Diego have three of, Orange County four of, Portland and Seattle two of, and San Francisco none of? The answer: skateparks. Congratulations to all of these cities for stepping up and giving the youth, and not so youth of today, a place to hang out and skate. San Francisco on the other hand, home to one of the most innovative and progressive skate scenes in the world, doesn't even have a couple pieces of plywood in a park that resembles a rickety launch ramp let alone several beautiful concrete skate parks filled with rails, ramps, hips, and pools.

How can this be? Nobody really knows, but to say that it's a tragedy is an understatement. Skaters in the city are constantly having run ins with San Francisco's finest, most of whom are equally as jaded about the situation as the skaters. But neighbors complain and every once in a while a tourist gets a board to the shin, so it's their job to enforce the law.

Maybe it's that the street skating and hills are so good in SF. Thankfully, the hills aren't going anywhere, but most of the spots that have made the city such a Mecca for skating are being bulldozed or covered with anti skate hardware. The Embarcadero is gone for the most part. The only section that lived through the bulldozer's wrath is a couple hundred-foot slabs of concrete with a few ledges that on any given Saturday resemble an overcrowded WW II battlefield more than a skate spot. What's really interesting is that people still come from all over the world to skate it, many of whom don't even know that it's a painful memory of what was, rather than what now is. When all hope was lost a new skate spot appeared, creatively named "the new spot", but as of lately it's plagued by the same old problems; overcrowding, increased police presence, and all the joys that only a sketchy part of town can bring.

What's the solution? Everyone knows, even the Da Mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown. It's time to give the city of San Francisco the world-class skatepark that it deserves. The city is the epicenter of the Internet movement and currently enjoying a new level of wealth and prosperity because of this. It's time to invest some of that dotcom tax money into providing the youth of today, and tomorrow, with what they really want and need - a place to safely skate. The fundamentals of recreation resource management (a great minor to have in college by the way) tells us that one of the goals of planners should be to provide the maximum amount of recreational opportunity per square foot. All you have to do is visit the spot on the EMB that I mentioned above, the one with 400 people running into each other and swearing in 20 different languages. Then, take a drive for a few miles and see the many tennis courts that Golden Gate Park houses to know that something went wrong. It's not worth being jaded and bitter about a surplus of tennis courts, lots of people enjoy tennis, my mom loves it, but it's time for city planners to recognize that a lot of people enjoy skateboarding as well. The bottom line is that skateparks make lots of people happy, including police, neighbors, people walking their dogs, and tourists who have taken boards to the shin?.. skaters, in-liners, and bikers like them a lot too.

Enter the San Francisco Skatepark Coalition (SFSC); a non-profit organization headed by Kent Uyehara of FTC Skate shop in San Francisco and supported by the X Games and local SF skate companies. Its mission: Do what it takes to get San Francisco a skate park by using grass roots efforts, as well as good old fashioned politicking.

Picture the scene? On July 29th Bucky Lasek, Mathias Ringstrom, mini shredder Shaun White, Dave Osato, and Dave Voelker, and a cast of characters from the FTC, Spitfire, and Think teams joined the SFSC for a fundraiser/ benefit in front of city hall to try to accomplish a common goal. The ramps were provided and built by the X Games and consisted of a few fun boxes, quarter-pipes, rails, and a half pipe. SF's DJ J Boogie provided music and ESPN Bro J Brad Lilly was on the mic getting the crowd pumped up. Massive amounts of gear were donated and raffled off including a couple complete FTC skateboards, DC shoes, Billabong clothes, Jack's Toys, a GT Bike, and lots more.

The event went off. It was a sunny day, rare for San Francisco in the summer, and the skating and riding was out of control. Bucky, whose knee is so bad that he was limping, pulled out all the stops and his injury didn't stop him from boosting out of the pipe and even taking a run or two on the street course. Mathias, just coming off of a big best trick contest win, wowed the crowd with his technical innovative style, throwing front side impossibles in the pipe and some other tricks that I've never even seen before. Voelker's powerful big style was an instant hit with the crowd and probably went bigger than anyone else. I've never seen more nervous moms than when he lined up 8 kids from the audience and bunny-hopped over them. Osato, a staple on the street course, killed it on the pipe as well. Shaun White, Burton and Volcom's little snowboarding prodigy, jumped on a plane with his mom from filming in Mount Hood to show the people that he's really not afraid to go as high, if not higher, in the pipe as the big boys. He's also not the slightest bit afraid to throw huge melon 360's over the launch box. To round it out, the guys from FTC's team brought a completely different style and bag of tricks to the course and came out in full force to support the cause, tattoos and all.

The only time the skating stopped was when Da Mayor, who insists on being called Da Mayor, showed up to make a speech on the flat bottom of the half pipe. Willie, who's son is a skater, made his speech, posed for a few pictures, and seemed fascinated by Shawn, Bucky, and the crew. Later when cornered by the local news, he announced that it was his goal to have a world-class skatepark in San Francisco in the very near future.

All together everyone had a good time at the event and got a chance to get their picture taken with Da Mayor, or vice versa. The event altogether raised a lot of awareness and some serious money that was donated to SFSC. My wish is that next year at this time I'll be writing about San Francisco's huge new skatepark.

For more information on the SFSC call Kent Uyehara at (415) 386-1666 or Moniqua Plante at (415) 392-9830.

For more information on Skateparks in general, check out the Skatepark Association headed by Heidi Lemmon at www.spausa.org

Want to build a skatepark? Check out Tim Payne of Team Pain, he built the famous Animal Chin Ramp in Guadalupe and the halfpipes at the X Games. His specialty and mantra, as of late, is concrete parks for the masses. www.teampain.com

John Tyson and VPI build the X Games Street courses as well as countless other ramps around the world. www.sk8ramps.com

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