| A skateboarding paradise at FDR Park |
| SOURCE : The Philadelphia Inquirer DATE : October 4, 2009 BYLINE : Joelle Farrell |
Johnny "Young Guns" Mateu stood atop a 12-foot-high vertical ramp, his skateboard hanging over the edge
like a plank on a pirate ship.
With his left foot on the front of the board, Mateu stepped his right foot out, dropping the board straight down
the ramp. Its wheels spun over the steel sheets, gravity pulling him to the bottom, momentum pushing him up
the other side.
Back and forth Mateu flew, pushing half his board over the metal coping at the edge, then pulling it back down
with him. A dozen skaters waiting nearby whistled and shouted to cheer Mateu on.
But then he lost his balance and bailed off his board, sliding down the ramp on kneepads with a loud sshhhh.
Like most skateboarders, Mateu will get up again and again, pulling muscles or breaking bones to achieve
one small turn, flip, or twist. He would rather nail a trick here - at a dank, graffiti-covered skater playground off
Broad and Pattison, buried under I-95 - than anywhere else. He has laid up concrete in the "peanut bowl" and
patched holes in the "square bowl" left by road salt dripping off the highway. And his closest friends are always
there to witness his sickest tricks or help him up if he falls hard.
"This is pure," he says.
FDR, one of the largest skater-made parks in the United States, began as a sort of gnarly olive branch
between the city and skateboarders.
In 1994, Mayor Ed Rendell offered skateboarders the use of city land in South Philly on the condition that they
leave JFK Plaza, better known as LOVE Park - a site that made Philadelphia a mecca for skateboarders.
FDR was nothing like LOVE, which was bright, centrally located, and made of smooth, glossy granite.
Skateboarders from all over the world came to one-up locals, whose video recordings of jumps, grinds, and
slides at the plaza made Philadelphia famous.
Crowds began to descend on LOVE, sometimes 50 or more at one time. Their boards left black and metallic
marks, and the city blamed the skaters for cracked granite pavers and chipped edges.
It took officials nearly a decade to push the skaters out of LOVE Park, finally banning skateboarding and
enforcing tickets of up to $300 beginning in 2002, when the plaza was closed for renovations. The community
scattered. Many professionals who helped make LOVE Park famous moved to California. Some
skateboarders began to work with the city to build a park behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while others
risked tickets to skate LOVE.
And some embraced FDR, banding together to make it their own. Using their money and muscle, they built the
ramps, pockets, and bowls that stretch over 30,000 square feet. Although it's unlike LOVE, the park has found
its own fame; FDR hosted the 2005 Gravity Games and is featured in video games and skateboarding
publications.
"Everyone knew of FDR," said Jonathan Stubbs, 22, an Indiana native who moved to Philadelphia in part
because of FDR. "It was always skater-built, skater-funded, skater-supported."
Fun with abandon
FDR is not for the timid.
It is isolated and unlit, except for an orange glow from the highway lights above. The graffiti range from funny to
rude to bizarre. At night, skaters say, they have seen people selling drugs or meeting for sex nearby. Wire
fencing juts up from the ground, which is littered with plastic and glass bottles.
Sending the skaters to FDR allowed them to express a kind of wildness: They shoot bottle rockets at each
other, they drink, they try huge tricks and fall hard. Sometimes fights break out.
"It came with this lawlessness, this recklessness and abandon," said Nick Orso, 30, an engineer. "And that's
what makes it awesome."
FDR reflects its makers and keepers, who are also enduringly loyal to one another and to their creation.
Carlos "Los" Baiza, 36, is one of the elders - a ringleader, the foreman, the concrete genius. He knows
everyone's number and schedule; he knows the electrician, the mason, and the painter. And he is largely
responsible for expanding the park more than fourfold.
Under his direction, skateboarders work through the night, mixing cement with shovels, cutting stone, and
smoothing cement until the surface slips like glass under a board's wheels.
"He can organize a whole army just to get what's in his head out," said Dave Moyer, 32, of West Philadelphia.
Baiza, who grew up in Harrisburg, created skate ramps as a teenager, helped by a wood-shop teacher.
Baiza's carpentry proved invaluable when he came to Philadelphia in 1994. The first task at FDR: fixing the city-
built pyramids, where rough edges tripped skaters up.
Once Baiza and other skateboarders started working with concrete, they didn't want to stop.
"No one is going to build it for you," said Steve Faas, 35, an FDR veteran. "You do it yourself."
Baiza estimated that skateboarders had spent nearly $80,000 out of their own pockets to build the park.
About once a year, the FDR regulars - Baiza calls them "The Ripper Council" - decide what to build next. Each
new piece of the park is distinctly named: the CIA pocket, the revolution pocket, the Indian wall, the toilet bowl.
The only rule is that whatever is built has the hardest, meanest slope, the toughest angle or roughest edge.
"We started skating because it was the gnarliest thing you could do," Baiza said. "You were supposed to die
on your skateboard."
FDR regulars say the city lets them build without permits or interference. Fairmount Park officials, who oversee
FDR Park, say they keep an eye on the construction. The city could be liable in the event of injury, said Barry
Bessler, a spokesman for Fairmount Park.
When the frame is built and it's time to "sling the mud," or put concrete up, the crew works feverishly. On a
recent afternoon, two dozen skaters helped build the "hubba ledge," an angled granite shelf built off the side of
the peanut bowl. Powered by beer and eggrolls, skinny skaters ran buckets sagging with concrete up a plank
balanced on a four-foot pyramid, where others spread it over the stone and wire wall.
"They're madmen," said Steve Miller, 24, of Fishtown, who owns Exit skate shop in Northern Liberties. "The
way they work with concrete is barbaric."
The result is a park only skateboarders could create.
"It's awesome. It's like a roller coaster," Mateu said. "You lock into the bricks, go off the end. It's like woo! Right
down the waterfall."
And then there is the vert ramp, where regulars fly fast and high. Just dropping in on the ramp - hanging the
board off the end and then riding it down - is dangerous, terrifying, and exhilarating.
"You let every bit of what's normal and what you're supposed to do go out of your head," Faas said. "It's a fall, a
free fall."
Skateboarding is as much about courage as it is about skill. It's about falling and realizing you're OK. It's about
getting hurt and healing, pushing to the edges of what's conceivable and having your friends bear witness.
"It's the edge of controlled chaos," Faas said. "You're out of control, and you somehow come out of it. You
come out of things sometimes and you're like, 'I can't believe I just lived. I should've died.' "
Beyond the adrenaline, skateboarding can offer its own serenity.
"That concentration, that focus is a form of meditation," Orso said. "It's pulling you out of anything else that's
around you, and it's giving you clarity."
Skate tough, or else
FDR is built for transition skating, a style developed in empty swimming pools in Southern California. LOVE
Park drew street skaters, a more stylized form in which skaters tackle urban obstacles like railings, banks,
and ledges. Not every skater can do both.
And the FDR regulars don't hide their desire for intensity. Bicyclists, whose foot pegs damage the concrete,
are chased out with insults, or even flying bottles. If a skater isn't going hard enough, regulars may well berate
him.
"You either skate tough or get the f- out," Baiza said. "We got the fire down here. It's sad to say we're big mean
guys, but come on. We got to thin the herd."
Even skaters like Orso, who love FDR for what it is, say the city needs more to offer youngsters and street
skaters. In 2001, Orso and other LOVE devotees formed the nonprofit Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund to raise
money for a large skatepark behind the Art Museum.
The $4.6 million plan includes ledges along landscaped blocks and a platform surrounded by walking paths.
The park has secured more than $3 million in matching money from the city and the state, but the group still
needs to raise about $1.5 million, said Josh Nims, who cofounded the organization.
The organization has also helped build a popular pocket skatepark in Kensington. They call it POP's Park.
Miller, together with the New Kensington Community Development Corp. and friends of POP's Park,
transformed an empty blacktop lot at Trenton and Huntingdon into a skate park with beginners in mind: Long
steps are great for learning how to ollie - bringing the board up with your feet when you jump.
Unlike FDR, POP's closes at dark and bans profanity, graffiti, and truants.
Miller and others plan to work with the city to create more pocket skateparks, which are cheaper and easier to
finish. POP's Park cost less than $30,000, he said.
The devout skaters of FDR keep the city's wilder side raging. On a recent night, Baiza, Faas, Mateu, and crew
drank beer and watched people learn the curves of the park they've built.
"Once you get into the inside, it's pretty soft," Faas said about FDR's image and the people who created it.
"This is our house."
"This," Baiza corrected him, "is our church."
like a plank on a pirate ship.
With his left foot on the front of the board, Mateu stepped his right foot out, dropping the board straight down
the ramp. Its wheels spun over the steel sheets, gravity pulling him to the bottom, momentum pushing him up
the other side.
Back and forth Mateu flew, pushing half his board over the metal coping at the edge, then pulling it back down
with him. A dozen skaters waiting nearby whistled and shouted to cheer Mateu on.
But then he lost his balance and bailed off his board, sliding down the ramp on kneepads with a loud sshhhh.
Like most skateboarders, Mateu will get up again and again, pulling muscles or breaking bones to achieve
one small turn, flip, or twist. He would rather nail a trick here - at a dank, graffiti-covered skater playground off
Broad and Pattison, buried under I-95 - than anywhere else. He has laid up concrete in the "peanut bowl" and
patched holes in the "square bowl" left by road salt dripping off the highway. And his closest friends are always
there to witness his sickest tricks or help him up if he falls hard.
"This is pure," he says.
FDR, one of the largest skater-made parks in the United States, began as a sort of gnarly olive branch
between the city and skateboarders.
In 1994, Mayor Ed Rendell offered skateboarders the use of city land in South Philly on the condition that they
leave JFK Plaza, better known as LOVE Park - a site that made Philadelphia a mecca for skateboarders.
FDR was nothing like LOVE, which was bright, centrally located, and made of smooth, glossy granite.
Skateboarders from all over the world came to one-up locals, whose video recordings of jumps, grinds, and
slides at the plaza made Philadelphia famous.
Crowds began to descend on LOVE, sometimes 50 or more at one time. Their boards left black and metallic
marks, and the city blamed the skaters for cracked granite pavers and chipped edges.
It took officials nearly a decade to push the skaters out of LOVE Park, finally banning skateboarding and
enforcing tickets of up to $300 beginning in 2002, when the plaza was closed for renovations. The community
scattered. Many professionals who helped make LOVE Park famous moved to California. Some
skateboarders began to work with the city to build a park behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while others
risked tickets to skate LOVE.
And some embraced FDR, banding together to make it their own. Using their money and muscle, they built the
ramps, pockets, and bowls that stretch over 30,000 square feet. Although it's unlike LOVE, the park has found
its own fame; FDR hosted the 2005 Gravity Games and is featured in video games and skateboarding
publications.
"Everyone knew of FDR," said Jonathan Stubbs, 22, an Indiana native who moved to Philadelphia in part
because of FDR. "It was always skater-built, skater-funded, skater-supported."
Fun with abandon
FDR is not for the timid.
It is isolated and unlit, except for an orange glow from the highway lights above. The graffiti range from funny to
rude to bizarre. At night, skaters say, they have seen people selling drugs or meeting for sex nearby. Wire
fencing juts up from the ground, which is littered with plastic and glass bottles.
Sending the skaters to FDR allowed them to express a kind of wildness: They shoot bottle rockets at each
other, they drink, they try huge tricks and fall hard. Sometimes fights break out.
"It came with this lawlessness, this recklessness and abandon," said Nick Orso, 30, an engineer. "And that's
what makes it awesome."
FDR reflects its makers and keepers, who are also enduringly loyal to one another and to their creation.
Carlos "Los" Baiza, 36, is one of the elders - a ringleader, the foreman, the concrete genius. He knows
everyone's number and schedule; he knows the electrician, the mason, and the painter. And he is largely
responsible for expanding the park more than fourfold.
Under his direction, skateboarders work through the night, mixing cement with shovels, cutting stone, and
smoothing cement until the surface slips like glass under a board's wheels.
"He can organize a whole army just to get what's in his head out," said Dave Moyer, 32, of West Philadelphia.
Baiza, who grew up in Harrisburg, created skate ramps as a teenager, helped by a wood-shop teacher.
Baiza's carpentry proved invaluable when he came to Philadelphia in 1994. The first task at FDR: fixing the city-
built pyramids, where rough edges tripped skaters up.
Once Baiza and other skateboarders started working with concrete, they didn't want to stop.
"No one is going to build it for you," said Steve Faas, 35, an FDR veteran. "You do it yourself."
Baiza estimated that skateboarders had spent nearly $80,000 out of their own pockets to build the park.
About once a year, the FDR regulars - Baiza calls them "The Ripper Council" - decide what to build next. Each
new piece of the park is distinctly named: the CIA pocket, the revolution pocket, the Indian wall, the toilet bowl.
The only rule is that whatever is built has the hardest, meanest slope, the toughest angle or roughest edge.
"We started skating because it was the gnarliest thing you could do," Baiza said. "You were supposed to die
on your skateboard."
FDR regulars say the city lets them build without permits or interference. Fairmount Park officials, who oversee
FDR Park, say they keep an eye on the construction. The city could be liable in the event of injury, said Barry
Bessler, a spokesman for Fairmount Park.
When the frame is built and it's time to "sling the mud," or put concrete up, the crew works feverishly. On a
recent afternoon, two dozen skaters helped build the "hubba ledge," an angled granite shelf built off the side of
the peanut bowl. Powered by beer and eggrolls, skinny skaters ran buckets sagging with concrete up a plank
balanced on a four-foot pyramid, where others spread it over the stone and wire wall.
"They're madmen," said Steve Miller, 24, of Fishtown, who owns Exit skate shop in Northern Liberties. "The
way they work with concrete is barbaric."
The result is a park only skateboarders could create.
"It's awesome. It's like a roller coaster," Mateu said. "You lock into the bricks, go off the end. It's like woo! Right
down the waterfall."
And then there is the vert ramp, where regulars fly fast and high. Just dropping in on the ramp - hanging the
board off the end and then riding it down - is dangerous, terrifying, and exhilarating.
"You let every bit of what's normal and what you're supposed to do go out of your head," Faas said. "It's a fall, a
free fall."
Skateboarding is as much about courage as it is about skill. It's about falling and realizing you're OK. It's about
getting hurt and healing, pushing to the edges of what's conceivable and having your friends bear witness.
"It's the edge of controlled chaos," Faas said. "You're out of control, and you somehow come out of it. You
come out of things sometimes and you're like, 'I can't believe I just lived. I should've died.' "
Beyond the adrenaline, skateboarding can offer its own serenity.
"That concentration, that focus is a form of meditation," Orso said. "It's pulling you out of anything else that's
around you, and it's giving you clarity."
Skate tough, or else
FDR is built for transition skating, a style developed in empty swimming pools in Southern California. LOVE
Park drew street skaters, a more stylized form in which skaters tackle urban obstacles like railings, banks,
and ledges. Not every skater can do both.
And the FDR regulars don't hide their desire for intensity. Bicyclists, whose foot pegs damage the concrete,
are chased out with insults, or even flying bottles. If a skater isn't going hard enough, regulars may well berate
him.
"You either skate tough or get the f- out," Baiza said. "We got the fire down here. It's sad to say we're big mean
guys, but come on. We got to thin the herd."
Even skaters like Orso, who love FDR for what it is, say the city needs more to offer youngsters and street
skaters. In 2001, Orso and other LOVE devotees formed the nonprofit Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund to raise
money for a large skatepark behind the Art Museum.
The $4.6 million plan includes ledges along landscaped blocks and a platform surrounded by walking paths.
The park has secured more than $3 million in matching money from the city and the state, but the group still
needs to raise about $1.5 million, said Josh Nims, who cofounded the organization.
The organization has also helped build a popular pocket skatepark in Kensington. They call it POP's Park.
Miller, together with the New Kensington Community Development Corp. and friends of POP's Park,
transformed an empty blacktop lot at Trenton and Huntingdon into a skate park with beginners in mind: Long
steps are great for learning how to ollie - bringing the board up with your feet when you jump.
Unlike FDR, POP's closes at dark and bans profanity, graffiti, and truants.
Miller and others plan to work with the city to create more pocket skateparks, which are cheaper and easier to
finish. POP's Park cost less than $30,000, he said.
The devout skaters of FDR keep the city's wilder side raging. On a recent night, Baiza, Faas, Mateu, and crew
drank beer and watched people learn the curves of the park they've built.
"Once you get into the inside, it's pretty soft," Faas said about FDR's image and the people who created it.
"This is our house."
"This," Baiza corrected him, "is our church."
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