Skateboarders pushed to the background of cities

They speak their own language and maintain their own customs. And though they live among us, skateboarders and their craft — or sport — remain practically invisible to Mid-Valley grown-ups.

Yuba City boasts a municipal Ken Wormhoudt creation that dates to 1996 — the bronze age of skateparks — and a "street"- style skate park built with church funds ten years later, north of town.

Both are well-used, but set back, away from the rest of daily Yuba-Sutter life.

"You see skateboarding a lot on TV and in the movies, and it's all over video games," says Yuba City Police Sgt. Lincoln Eden. But local skaters? "I hardly see them."

Dale Fox, 16, a Yuba High School and a regular at both parks, estimates that of the 1,800 students at Yuba City High, where he goes to school, "there are about 20 skaters and a lot of darters."

"Skaters" skate all the time, he explains. Every day. Everywhere.

"Darters" — not so much.

Neither category exists much in Marysville.

David Sian, 18, a recent graduate of Marysville High, caught a quick nighttime skate in the Walgreens parking lot a few weeks ago with his friends.

"We have nowhere to skate, so we go wherever we feel like it. It's skate or die," Sian says, "Until my mom says to come inside."

Bumpy terrain

A couple evenings after their Walgreens session, Sian hopped a fence onto McKenney Intermediate School grounds — one of his favorite spots — and a neighbor reported him to police.

The Marysville cop who issued him a citation, did so reluctantly.

Then he took a turn on Sian's friends' board.

Marysville Police Chief Wally Fullerton says he sympathizes with the town's would-be skateboarders.

"This town doesn't lend itself to skateboarding," he says. "It's an older town with irregular surfaces."

Then he makes a confession.

"I know it's a weird thing to imagine, but I used to ride a skateboard too," says the SoCal native. "Who didn't?"

Eden didn't. The policeman says there were even fewer skateboards on the streets when he graduated from Yuba City High in 1983.

But what the area sk8 subculture lacks in numbers, it makes up for in enthusiasm and camaraderie, Fox says.

The hard-core skaters from his school hang around together, he says. And the environment at both skate parks is far less competitive than in Lincoln, where he learned to ollie —keep the board under his feet in the air —four years ago.

"Everybody's pretty mellow," he says.

Fox says he thinks about skating almost constantly. When he tires of the bowls and the spine at Sam Brannan, he's been known to skate from his home near Hillcrest Park to the skatepark at the Church of Glad Tidings — or "GT," — more than five miles away.

With all the traffic and traffic lights and detours to avoid bumpy terrain, "It takes me about two hours," he says. Skating, he admits, "kind of has an obsession thing to it."

"It probably interferes a little bit at school sometimes," he says. "My head gets pretty focused on skating instead."

And after a full evening of grinding and shredding and other violent-sounding things that takeplace from atop a four-wheeled plank, "I slack on my chores and my homework sometimes," Fox says.

Still, his parents are supportive of his hobby.

"They love to hear about it," he says. They've picked up enough skater vocabulary to share in his excitement when he returns home raving about a backside flip indy he nailed for the first time.

Part of the wave

Yuba City caught the concrete wave early on when business owners grew tired of chasing skateboarders off their property. Mean little wheels can do considerable damage to curbs, stairs, railings and other expensive parking lot and entry-way fixtures.

City officials hired Ken Wormhoudt — designer of the country's first skate park in Santa Cruz, father of world-renowned big wave surfer and skate park architect Zach Wormhoudt — to build them something at Sam Brannan Park.

In the 12 years since the park's features were made, the skateboard industry has become a multi-faceted, multi-billion dollar international industry.

About a dozen equipment companies battle it out at the top of the name brand pile every financial quarter, and each has a clothing line with products coveted by kids — skaters, darters, young fashionistas — and couch potatoes, among them.

Likewise, about 10 skateboard park design companies now keep busy with requests for bowls and staircases and ramps and half-pipes in tiny towns and big cities all over the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.

The X-Games — an Olympics for alternative sports, including skateboarding — has done much to promote both the sport, and the aesthetic associated with it.

It also has helped lighten the skateboarder's reputation as a perpetual outsider and a punk.

With three years of experience on a skateboard, Cyrus Sayles, 14, is a veteran.

The Gray Avenue eighth-grader says he's seen signs of punkhood in a few of the skaters who frequent the park.

But for the most part, "people have calmed down," he says.

A kid on a BMX bicycle drops in on the boys. A black studded belt holds his pants just above his thigh tops, and his briefs announce themselves loudly.

The skaters yield.

"They're not supposed to be here," says Daniel Forzaglia, 14, of the two-wheeler. Bicyclists are forbidden from riding on the park's features, he explains, "but they're cocky."

Skate, skate, skate

Forzaglia, and a third skater Jacob Ortmayer, 13, also attend Gray Avenue Middle.

Going to school right next door to the park, they say, is a lucky break.

There have been less than lucky breaks there though.

Sayles' love for "catching air" once led to an injury requiring several stitches in the top of his head. Last weekend, while he took turns with his friends, carving it up inside the wavy craters at the park, he claimed to be nursing a cracked rib.

"It hurts," he said, "but it's all good."

Jacob Ortmayer, 13, has been skating only 9 months — thus far — without becoming a "Tom Broke-off" — injured skater. But his habit has developed other trouble.

His dad, Justin Ortmayer, 30, shows up late in the hot Saturday afternoon session to relate his displeasure.

"He was supposed to be home half an hour ago," the dad says, waving his arms around. "It's too much. Skate, skate, skate."

Ortmayer gives his son an earful.

"It's a hobby, and there's worse things," he says before heading home, "but you have to balance your responsibilities."

Jacob explains that he'd gotten carried away here a few days earlier, and missed football practice.

"I was having a lot of fun and didn't get home 'til 8:30," he says, sullenly. "It made him mad."

Getting stoked

Deez Skateboards, right down the street on Spiva Avenue, featured a 5,200 square-foot indoor skatepark for nearly six years.

Owner Derrek Lee, 36, charged kids $5 to get in out of the cold or heat or rain, and work on their skate tricks.

It was popular for the first few years.

"But when the church (skatepark) opened, that kind of killed us," he says.

He closed the venue in March, and now features more motocross equipment in his store.

"Skateboarders are cheap," he says.

To date, no organized effort has been made to put a skate park in Marysville.

A few city council members have uttered the words, "skateboard park," during public meetings, and a few parents have inquired about the possibility.

But, as Fullerton points out, it's difficult to learn the sport without a smooth surface to ride on.

"We have enough park space," he says. "Skateboarding is a good outlet. Anything that's not putting kids behind a video game is good."

Skateboarding's most visible star, Tony Hawk, promotes a grant foundation for low income cities to start design plans for skate parks.

But money, Fullerton says, is only part of the picture.

"You need support to build it, and people will have to supervise it."

On the rare occasion the subject surfaces in Marysville, the news usually puts skaters in a less than favorable light.

City officials created an ordinance in 2000 banning skateboards and bicycles from Veteran's Park after kids started using a granite memorial there as a ramp — before it had even been completed.

Sayles and Sian both say Marysville is, generally speaking, non-skater territory. The town, they say, has far more BMX enthusiasts than skaters.

Sayles says he thinks skating is more of a social outlet than bicycling.

He and his buddies at Sam Brannan say they want to start a Web site to show off what they're able to do, and to invite other local kids to join their skating group.

Fox says he has a loosely-knit group of his own.

Next weekend, he'll celebrate his birthday with a trip to a skate park in Grass Valley. His parents, six siblings — including his younger brother, Kodee, who skates with him — and a half dozen skater friends will be with him.

He can't wait to show off his noseslide nollie bigspin out.

"It's the craziest thing," he says. "It'll be sick."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com