Skate park decay

By Jed Smith
It took almost a decade’s worth of lobbying to get it built, but today, if local skating supremo John Fox’s claims are to be believed, Waverley Council is letting Bondi’s $800,000 skate park fall into disrepair.

Depicted in a series of photographs forwarded to the Bondi View, Fox pinpoints what he believes are serious safety risks that have resulted from failure to properly maintain the facility.

Of particular concern is the council’s reneged promise to build a section of the skate park designed for beginners. The result is what Fox calls a ‘terrible’ situation in which ‘five-year-olds on Scooters’ mix it with 30-year veterans of the sport launching themselves off ramps at speeds ‘of 40 to 60 km/h’. It is an environment Fox predicts will lead to ‘someone getting nailed’.

‘He always says that,’ shrugs off council spokesperson Danielle Lee-Ryder of Fox’s claim the council has forsaken its promises. ‘Waverley Council invested $800,000 in building the Bondi Beach Skate Park. We have spent approximately $35,000 on maintaining the skate park this financial year,’ she said. And as for the graffiti, ‘[the council] is currently in discussions with a contractor to fix up the patches resulting from vandalism and graffiti’.

Although the council is quick to douse the claims, one need only visit the park to have any concerns validated.  Graffiti is splashed across most surfaces, children play in close proximity to jetting riders, and on close inspection, the chipped surfaces where council workers have ineptly tried to remove graffiti are visible.

The combination of visual and practical glitches in the park leads to what Fox says is a ‘skate park [that] looks like a ghetto’. And according to Fox this is having serious ramifications that go beyond skateboarding.

 In the caricatured metropolitan life of a Bondi youth, in an era for young people in which issues such as binge drinking, drug culture, obesity, youth suicide and depression are of unprecedented concern, it is important to provide young people with maximum support in making healthy decisions.  According to Fox, the council is not holding up its end of the bargain and as a result, ‘it’s disenfranchising the young’.

Whether or not he and the council can agree on an adequate level of expenditure for the skate park’s maintenance is secondary to the council ensuring young people feel supported.  Anyone on a walk down to the park can see how young people might feel that they aren’t.