SK8Mud

The second round of public meetings for the Mud Island River Park Land Use Study are comingup this week. The actionists from Skatelife Memphis are asking that skatepark supporters, be they skaters or not, turn out. The meeting details:

1.Memphis Botanical Gardens
Tuesday May 12th, from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location: Memphis Botanic Gardens, 750 Cherry Road (near Audobon Park)


2. Downtown Meeting
Thursday May 14th from 5:45 - 7:15 pm
Location:MIRP Harbor Landing, 101 Island Drive (gate security will give directions) Basically drive to Mud Island and go through the security gates. It's on Mud Island.

Plus check out the findings from the first round.

To me these reports look like the skatepark supporters are making their voices heard loud and clear. There's opposition from Park Services (fearing competition for their much anticipated neighborhood skatepark) and the Regional Chamber (for reasons unknown) to a Mud Island skatepark but every other stakeholder group appears to support or be neutral on it. And the support for it at the open meetings has dwarfed every other idea.

I don't know what will be presented on Tuesday and Thursday but I think skatepark's too big to completely ignore. But look for the machinations of a powerful and secretive cabal of NIMBY geezers if the study recommends putting the skaters under the I-40 bridge, or some other unvisible location.

Great Skatepark of the World

The Web Urbanist has a nice photographic compilation of great skateparks around the world.

All cool but I think a skatepark designed and built for the tip of Mud Island, jutting into and surrounded on 3 sides by the great Mississippi River, would hold its own, and probably more with any of them.

Skatelife Memphis has proposed just such an incredible public use for a piece of land that has been unused since it formed over 100 years ago.

The red line below shows the approximate location of the skatepark.


Nothing but grass, and rough at that.

Yet the Riverfront Development Corp has put Skatelife off since April 2008 so the RDC can do a master plan on Mud Island.

Another master plan.

Another plan.

Another master plan that will cost approximately $800 thousand dollars*, when the highest end skate park is only $3 million. Another plan that won't even start gathering input from the public until late March because it's already taken a year to plan the plan.

In the meantime, greatness flows past Memphis.

So maybe that's just water under the bridge. Skatelife Memphis asks that you attend the public input sessions and let the RDC know your support for the skatepark on Mud Island. Let the RDC see the dynamism and vitality that they put off for at least two years, but can still have.

There will be 4 sessions.

* figure ciphered from the $400,000 matching grant they received from Corps of Engineers to do the study.

SkateLife Memphis Meetings and Fundraisers

A couple of notes from Skatelife Memphis.

1. They're having a couple of fundraisers to help build wooden ramps at community centers in Memphis:
   

   Skatelife Memphis founder, Aaron Shafer, is holding a recycling fundraiser. He needs as many people to get involved as possible. Aaron is collecting aluminum cans and will use the proceeds to buy materials for constructing wooden skate board ramps. These ramps will be given and used by inner-city Memphis kids at various community centers and in lower-income locations. To get involved, simply save your cans between now and October 18. Wash and Crush them. Aaron and other youth who skateboard will collect the cans at a central location that will be announced as the date draw near. For more information please email him at skatelifememphis@gmail.com or call him at 901 481 5615. "
   

   And,
   

   Join the Cork Brigade!!
   
   For all those who want to shrink our landfills for a great cause, here is your chance! No one recycles corks in Memphis until now.....
   
   We have partnered with Terracycle- a New Jersey Plant fertilizer company that makes plant fertilizer out of worm poop! We will serve as the Memphis depot for wine corks. We will receive 2 cents for each cork in return for supplying them the corks. Terracycle has a great story so check them out sometime!
   
   Even though Parks and Recreation will be building our first concrete park, it won't be open until sometime in 2010 so in the meantime there's a lot to be done!
   
   We will be using the cork funds to help build wooden ramps and even some concrete structures in inner city areas of Memphis where Memphis kids have never had an opportunity to skate.
   
   Specifically, funds from the Cork Brigade will go towards our current project that we are working on in South Memphis.
   



2. If you'd like to get involved in Skatelife Memphis, they're having a meeting next week
   

   Meeting this Wednesday (August 27)
   
   August We need your artistic talents to design our T-shirts. Winner takes home a new skate board deck and accessories. We will also be launching a major recycling fundraising drive soon so come for the details and for developing a strategy.
   
   The meeting will be Wednesday August 27 at Cafe Eclectic (603 N McLean Blvd Memphis, TN 38107
   (901) 725-1718).
   
   Please RSVP (if you can come) so I can copy enough hand-outs for everyone attending.
   
   Hope to see you soon!

Suggested Skatepark Sites: Binghamton Park

Skatelife Memphis' efforts to build a public skatepark here have recently cleared another hurdle when the City Council approved funds for a skatepark in committee. The City Council must still approve the full budget.

Here are some photos I took of a suggested location, Binghamton Park.

It has a playground for small kids while their older siblings skate.



It has several clear rectangular areas bordered with trees that can provide shade, without creating obstacles for construction or too much overhead debris for skaters.

Here are 2 rectangles, the smaller next to the large tree, a larger defined by the trees in the middle.



Here's a much larger rectangle that leaves room for the soccer fields (which appear to be used quite a bit).


Other points:

• 4 blocks to Sam Cooper Boulevard, 2 blocks to Poplar. I think you could get to it in 30 minutes from anywhere in the county.
  
• It has on street parking going both ways on at least 3 sides of the park.
• It's in a diverse neighborhood.
• It felt safe when I was there. There were 4 or 5 families using the playground.

With or without a skatepark, Binghamton Park is a really nice Memphis park.

Why We Need A Public Skatepark

Memphis skaters need a skatepark and Memphis needs a skatepark.

Skaters need a challenging, fun, accessible, legal, and public place to skate. This city needs the energy, enthusiasm, youth, diversity, cameraderie, visual dynamism, creativity, numbers and fun that the skaters bring.

We need a public skatepark.

Rolling and Staggering Towards a New Memphis

We had the Skatepark Demo at the Fairgrounds on Thursday.

No one in my family is a skater -- yet -- but I still wanted to see it. When I saw all the cars outside the Youth Building, I assumed something else was going on. When I saw the people riding bikes and carrying skateboards, I knew something really exciting was going on. The turnout was incredible!

Here's a very short video of my experience before the batteries in my digital camera ran out.



Luckily amiev was also there, capturing the energy, enthusiasm and capacity of the turnout.

And Aaron, the mastermind of the event and of Skatelife Memphis, has done a post-vitam of the event. Note to activists: use Myspace.

The next day, the Memphis Zombies walked again. And there was no sophomore slump. The Zombie horde was at least equal to last year's, and their audience was significantly larger, imho.

Here's some recaps.

Here's Paul Ryburn's video chronicle of the passing Zombie throng.



Here's a couple of apprentice zombies.


And I heard a great piece of heckling from a Beale Street bouncer:

Look! It's a zombie Gerry Cooney!

SkateLifeMemphis Intro Video

Visit SkateLife Memphis' website and blog for more info.

And visit Cafe Eclectic for the first Skate Life Memphis meeting on Tuesday, April 29th at 8:00 p.m. (hat tip to My Midtown Memphis).

SkateLife Memphis: My Cooper-Young Delusion

Skatelife Memphis is working to build a skate park in Memphis. I propose a location in Cooper-Young.

It's not the Cooper-Young neighborhood itself, but a specific urban space

that motivates the delusion. It's just south of the intersection of Central and Cooper.

The primary spaces (A and B) aren't even side by side. They are separated at ground level by Cooper. The formerly abandoned railbed (henceforth known as the skatebed) and the Cooper-Young art trestle (A+B) will join them together.

It will contain this east of Cooper space (whose ramp and pronounced topography gave me the idea in the first place)


joined by the elevated skatebed and art trestle, over Cooper, ...


to this space

(and possibly other spaces (?)) west of Cooper.

I don't know what the status is of space A. The building adjoining may be in active use. Also, the owners of Sully Vans on Cooper may have purchased the rail bed closest to them (there are vans parked on the skatebed in the Google Earth image.)

Space B, west of Cooper, is for sale.


This and the other lots west of Cooper have lots of trees along the skatebed to the south. These could provide some strong cooling shade in the summer and fall.

So why do I call this a delusion?

1. SkateLife Memphis has already decided on Mud Island as their preferred location.
2. I'm not even a skateboarder, skater or skatist!

No matter, all matter -- we still need showmanship of place.

And I love the vision of people rolling back and forth across the trestle, up with the art.