Venice Skate Plaza

If skateboarding, at least according to the world of pro-'boarder Tony Hawk, is an art form, a lifestyle and a sport, then it has found a canvas, a brand and an audience at Venice Beach. The Venice Skate Plaza was unveiled last fall to a beaming crowd of mostly testosterone-loaded males from 9 to 33 for whom there is skateboarding in this life, and then there is more skateboarding in this life. 

The park is a generous space – some 16,000 square feet of rounded, dipping, humping and swirling concrete laid out like a giant bear claw print in the sand where 'boarders can test their mettle and have something to brag about. 

The park sits in throwing distance from the Santa Monica bike path that runs 22 miles down the Los Angeles littoral, from Malibu to Manhattan Beach and contains throngs of bikers, skaters, boarders, runners, amblers and scenesters on any given day. The sun provides, the beach abides and the Venice boardwalk supplies when it comes to reasons to make a stop in Venice. 

Venice Skate Plaza cost the city eight months and $3.5 million in concrete. And the 'boarders that use it think it was time and money well spent. Venice is considered Dogtown by aficionados – the epicenter of skateboarding. Until the park came to be, avid skateboarders would use public sidewalks, the bike path and the nearby skate dance area to show their stuff.

Now there are places aplenty to skate and vamp. The dance park is where to go with roller skates on, an iPod screaming in your ears and some like company to do some parallel boogying with. It’s where you find the blond girls in bikini tops and short shorts rolling between break dances and hip-hop pantamimes. 

The skate park is for serious rollers only who know how to take their board and command it into back flips, corkscrews, pretzels, even windows. Neophytes need not apply. There is a flow to this place and the object is to get on your board (or rev your inline skates) and stay on it. Slow boards are no boards and wipe outs -- well, it happens. Usually there is a healthy crowd of spectators along the edge to abet the glory and worry about the falls, and a beach full of ease at the end of a hard day’s roll.

- by Lark Ellen Gould, Los Angeles Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Lark Ellen Gould

Lark Ellen Gould has penned seven books on Las Vegas and Los Angeles as a veteran news and travel writer. Her work appears in the L.A. Times, Elite Traveler, Travel Agent Magazine and other national forums. She lived in Boston for many years, earning her masters degree and then traveling the globe for stories. Today she lives in LA and still travels the world on assignment while filling the pages of her travel site: www.wheredaily.com, along the way.