England Made Me By Tony Moss I know what you think of us British guys… With our bad teeth and eccentricities, our shitty weather and our complex sports, our funny accents and our royals…I'm sure we all seem more quaint and bizarre than any other nation on earth. Except for Geoff Rowley, let's be honest, Britain hasn't really produced many top calibre skaters, and despite the ground it is gaining now, skateboarding is still a minority pastime over here. But it is gaining momentum. And this is, allegedly, a problem. A recent newspaper article cited skateboarding as having "ruined" a new development in Manchester. It claimed that an office worker eating lunch at this location could have his or her suit "ruined" by the damaged concrete ledges. It's true. Skateboarders are a menace. We vandalise concrete, we intimidate passers by with our displays of self-injury, we endanger the lives of those who walk past us with our lack of control. Hell, we eat babies too, just for good measure. So of course the local councils step in, they get together with people who skate, they ask us what we would require for skateboard facilities that we could use in both good an bad weather. After all, they reason, if "the kids" are skateboarding, then they are not causing public damage, getting into trouble with the law, or spending their time taking drugs or drinking. Then they carefully take a small portion of the budget they have for building new football pitches and recreation centres and pass it on to a committee who can carefully design facilities for our use, in safe and easily maintained locations. No, they don't. They ignore the fact that there is a blatant requirement for such facilities. They prefer, instead, to put more money into security patrols, vicious bullyboys in nylon uniforms who terrorise young children into moving on using threats of violence, but mysteriously manage to avoid mentioning anything to people like myself, a six foot tall and hardly sickly looking skinhead. They pay the wages of these thugs and they erect signs warning that such a damaging pastime is forbidden. It is my ambition to steal all of these signs from around Manchester and beat them together and make a mini ramp. Until that day I have to write letters and hope for the best. It's not just the law that skateboarders find themselves on the wrong side of. In Manchester, of the facilities that have been built, the only permanent concrete fixture is located in a police no-go area. Now overgrown and covered in broken glass, it was never a very well designed little park, and though I have skated it myself, it was not a comfortable experience. I was in constant fear of being shot by some kid with a pellet gun, or jacked by a group of knife wielding hooligans. As far as less permanent facilities around the city, they too are built in unpleasant areas where people using it would be a target to robbers. These invariably end up being burned to the ground before long by the very drug and drink abusing kids that skaters are hoping to avoid becoming. Then, when this is brought to the attention of the council, we are told that they will not be building any more parks because we always end up spoiling them! There are a couple of options available to us. Continue skating and risk arrest and confiscation of our boards (which incidentally is illegal in this country, but that is another issue), skate the existing free parks and risking being attacked, paying for the use of indoor facilities, or travelling long distances to find the few designated spots that are available to us. One example is a rather sweet little mini ramp about an hour from here, in a very well off area. This was paid for and is maintained by a local church and a school. We are willing to put money into our skating. We are willing to work for it. We will design and help build the ramps. But we need support and not prohibition. Back to the Reports/Articals.