Editor,
I am 20 years old, a current student at Orange Coast College, and live a short ways up Temple Hills Drive on Cerritos Drive. Hopping on my skateboard and cruising down the hill is my way of trying to do something positive for the environment, saving money, and being healthy. I also skate because I, as well as many other Californians, find it enjoyable. Sure, sometimes we frighten ourselves and get a little road rash, but skateboarding is highly rewarding and is a part of our culture. Banning skateboarding down hills because one kind of skateboarder is irrational.
I have never owned a “speedboard” or participated in any of these so-called races, but I do skateboard down hills. I am not the one going into oncoming traffic or flying through stop signs with out any precaution. I am the one staying below the speed-limit and sharing my feeling of freedom that I get from skateboarding by waving at my neighbors as I cruise by: even you may have seen me. This potential ban could jeopardize my secondary source of efficient transportation when it isn’t necessary to drive my car. With the gas prices predicted to reach $5 a gallon this summer (not that $4.17 isn’t ridiculous enough) my ability to legally skateboard from my house to the beach is vital.
Upon receiving not one, but two of the same notices this week regarding the update on the ban of skateboarding in my neighborhood, I was tossed into confusion and somewhat annoyed. It is wasteful for the neighborhood captains of SNAG to print out hundreds of copies of this nonsense and to pay individuals for hours of work distributing them all in effort to sway the public by scaring them. We hear about your attempt to take away another of our rights in our newspapers, which are delivered by employees in vehicles not individuals sweating with nothing but a stack of paper, pants decorated in painters tape, and two feet.
So let’s think about a couple quick solutions. Maybe instead of completely banning skateboarding down hills we should enforce a speed limit or other necessary regulations. Maybe we could team up with sponsors and build a place for recreational skaters to ride publicly with the money used in your campaign as a start . Maybe we could remember our roots.
I am for skateboarding. I do not support the ban on speedboarding in our neighborhood.
Nicholas Clark Pezzuolo,
Laguna Beach
