Raleigh, Nc Skatepark Design Meeting, Skaters Already Trying To Keep Bikes Out!!!

[psychicmonkey]

Pillar Design Studios is being contracted by Raleigh, NC to design a new concrete skatepark for the city.  Visit this link for all the pertinent info on the first meeting.

http://www.eastcoastsurf.com/surftalk2/showthread.php?t=16626&highlight=psychicflyingmonkey.com

As you will read in that forum, there are already some crusty, crabby-ass skaters trying to keep bikes out.  Don't let them.  All riders in the Raleigh area need to go to this meeting and the other ones, or you'll find yourselves shut out!  Also, I'd really like to know what is said at this meeting on Wednesday, because I'm trying to find out Pillar's real stance on the "bikes riding with skaters in skateparks" issue. Anyone that goes to the meeting please repost and let me know.

Attention moderators:  Could you please start up a bike/skatepark issues forum on here?  I think it would help a lot with getting riders organized and active to get legal places to ride.  Also, I tried posting this in the news, but it wouldn't let me.  Could you please move this thread over to the news?  Thanks.

[NC_Scrapper]

Typical... skater in Raleigh tried to get bikes out of the plaza they were gonna build as well. Hopefully the riders in the area will do something and we'll have one more place to ride. Thanks for the info though and I'll try and pass it along to other people in NC. I wonder if all these skaters who think bikes shouldn't be allowed are aware that NC is one of the biggest BMX areas in the country. I mean, Greenville... Chris Doyle is from Cary, and Ryan Barrett and Leigh Ramsdell and countless others are from Raleigh. I hardly think skaters will get that park all to themselves.

[psychicmonkey]

The important thing to remember is not how many bike riders are in NC, it's how many get together and make sure they aren't shut out of skateparks.  Just look at how bad California's situation is although tons of pros live out there.  Another important thing:  Don't underestimate the political power of salty-ass old school skaters.  I underestimated them before and got burned badly.  It takes a lot of organized riders going to meetings to override that lot.

[psychofranky]

I'd really love to see Raleigh get a bike friendly park, but I don't think the unity's there. I lived there less than six months ago. There's not a big push for park riding in raleigh. In Raleigh bmx racing prevails. Among the freestyle riders theres even less of a backing. Raleigh is about 60miles from Greenville, roughly an hour drive. I would like to see a bike-friendly park I can go home to and session every-now-and-then, but I don't think it'll happen. al the parks that've been in the Raleigh/surrounding areas that allowed bikes, only allowed them durring certain rare(horribly timed) sessions. It'd be on like a Thursday afternoon and it would end about 6:00pm, not enough time to leave work/school and ride. It was a catch-22 though, we'd get a session a week, so every biker crowds the park on that one day. When you pile that many bikers into a small park, people get hurt, ramps get destroyed fast, bad reviews of the park start emerging. When people get hurt the park can say "it was too dangerous to have bikes, ya'll are too big and go too fast", and then ban bikes without really having to explain too much to complainants. They force us to hurt eachother/the ramps and ban ourselves essentially. I'm sure this dosen't just happen in Raleigh though.
Good luck to raleigh though, I hope you guys prevail. I'd go support you guys but I'm no longer a resident and it's a ten hour drive on a work day. Can't pull that one off.

[Takeitback49]

thats true, as far as i can tell back home (in Raleigh) there really is no push for more skateparks, but i think thats because we haven't ever had any that have been worth a damn, with the exception of maybe skate cary

[psychofranky]

Skate cary was amazing but I just couldn't stand the people there. Ryan Barret was the only cool person I got to ride with there. It was pretty cool because I saw him here about a week ago at our public park in Nashville.

Eastwood was fun while it lasted.

And the box jump at Ryan's world was fun but the rest of the park lacked.

[psychicmonkey]

Did any of you guys make it to that meeting, or know anyone that did?  I could sure use info on how it went.  Thanks.