Listen to the skaters!

This is in response to the article about Go Skateboarding Day [Re: “Skate back the streets,” Lucas Wisenthal, June 14]. The trend nowadays is toward cities and skateboarders working together to build skate parks, so skaters can enjoy their sport in peace, without being hassled by security guards and causing problems for pedestrians. Fair enough, I say, being of an age where I prefer not to be seen as a noisy nuisance when I’m skateboarding. The only problem is that no major city in North America is further behind the times when it comes to building decent skate parks than our fair city of Montreal.

If you look at the map that the city provides on its Web site, you might ask, what’s the problem? There are “skate parks” all over the place! The problem is, these skate parks were either manufactured by toy companies, cashing in on a growing trend, who have no idea how to actually build a ramp, or a bowl, or position a rail; or they’re built by contractors and architects who are equally clueless when it comes to addressing the needs of skateboarders.

Atelier Big City, the Montreal architecture firm awarded the half-million dollar contract to build Montreal’s downtown skate plaza, has effectively built something I wouldn’t walk three blocks to skate. Most of it’s unskatable, just like all the ramps, built in factories, that are rotting away in lonely skate parks across the city, while the skaters, for obvious reasons, continue to skate up their favourite street spots, or at the Big O, or at the local indoor parks that were actually built by people who know a thing or two about skateboarding.

This problem is not limited to Montreal, either, it’s Quebec-wide. All over the damn province, municipal governments say to the skateboarders, “Sure, we’ll build a skate park. Now, fuck off back to whatever hole you crawled out of while we negotiate how to most effectively waste all of our money with experts from toy company X, or architecture firm Y.”

St-Jerome even hired some Belgian firm, Rhino Ramps, to manufacture a bunch of boring, useless, little ramps for them. That litter of flashy monstrosities probably cost more than all the backyard ramps I’ve ever happily skated in my life.

In my hometown of Lennoxville, the municipal government spent countless tens of thousands of dollars paving a postage-stamp-sized lot beside the river so they could cover it in prefab, toy ramps that suck.

Hey, Quebec! There’s only one way to build a skate park properly: You have to listen to the skaters! Every step of the way.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. And as a skateboarder living in Quebec, I know we’re partially to blame for not joining forces to make our voices heard. Eric Mercier says there should be something happening at city hall. He’s right. It’s time for Quebec’s skateboarders to form a coalition, such as the Vancouver Skateboard Coalition, which acts as a lobby group to pressure the municipal government to build functional and fun skate parks.

Skate the plaza in Vancouver, or any of the dozen or so eminently skatable concrete parks within a short drive of the city centre. Then you’ll understand what’s wrong with our city.

>> Tom Peacock

Letters page under siege!

Thank you for running the letter by Daniel Douek [Re: Letters, June 28]. I too have lost faith in this paper’s ability to hold off the siege of its Letters page by (let’s face it, pretty much only two or three) vain individuals who seem to have no other avenue in which to publish their vehemence. In no other major North American free weekly have I experienced such a small-town bush-league feel, with the same egos always needing the last word.

Except for the ridiculous overuse of the meaningless term hipster (as if by repeating it enough times it will become true, but like yuppie in the ’80s, it can never be self-proclaimed), the rest of the paper is fine. Here’s looking forward to a Letters page that reflects the united diversity of your readership. Sorry, readers-hip.

>> Jonathan Himsworth

A tragic story

My name is Ghanzarya, and I currently reside in the city of Ottawa. I’m sending you this e-mail because I want to submit to you my tragic story and I want the people of your city to know about my tragic story. I’m originally from Afghanistan and I got wounded in a rocket explosion. I have been through war, misery, pain and tragedy.

The interesting thing about me is that I’m trying to become a movie star and make tragic movies. I also run my own Web site and you can check that up at www.ghanzarya.com. You can get my rocket explosion story, my biography, videos and audios right on my official Web site.

I would really appreciate if you put my tragic story on the news for the people in your city. Can you please put me on your news? If possible, on the front page? You can touch up my story or make it sound better if you want to publish it. Thank you very much for taking your time to read this e-mail and I hope to hear back from you.

>> Ghanzarya Shandaharo