Pandemic Parking lot is no more.
This place, where I spent dozens if not hundreds of hours skating during and after the pandemic, has been destroyed as they totally rebuild the city hall complex. Yes, this was the south parking lot of our municipality’s city hall. It joins my freestyle practice spot, which was on the other side of the city hall, on the east side of the public library. They even destroyed the brick banks that ran along this sidewalk (yeah – the sidewalk is gone too),
Here is a picture of my poor old parking lot today…
To say I am unhappy about this does not capture the depth of my loss. I have no idea if any of the new shit will be OK to skate when it is done about 2 years from now. This place was about 5 minutes from my house. It was peaceful in the evenings and weekends. Both the freestyle spot and Pandemic Parking Lot gave me the solitude I really love for skating.
Yes, I’m being kind of childish about this. I don’t care. Fuck progress. Progress is bad. Change is bad. When things are good they should stay good.
I’m a 60-year old skateboarder and I am not – fucking – happy.
Now I have to find some other places nearby to skate. Places with some shade. Places with no damned kids running around. Places I can play my music loud through my bluetooth speaker and not disturb anyone. I will likely be forced to go up to Allen to the skatepark, which is annoying. It is a 20 minute drive under best conditions and there are people there.
One would think that finding a simple parking lot would be easy, but as my friends Chris and Brian have noted, a good skate spot is more than the concrete. It’s the energy of the place. The vibe. The way it makes you feel. It’s not that easy.
So, we shall see. Like I said, it will be at least two years until this complex reopens. I suspect it will be longer. Due to a bad fire in a server room a few years ago the entire city hall building was torn down and it is being moved to a different position on the land. The public library, which opened the year I moved here as a child, has been gutted and all the surrounding area has been ripped up. I can’t imagine the library will be done in two years. There’s just too much to do. And to totally build a new city hall? Longer. It has to be.
It’s silly to place too much value on a skate spot. We skateboarders know this, but we always do it anyway. It’s like getting a dog or a cat and saying “I’m not going to get so attached this time” and then of course you get more attached. This parking lot was my getaway. When the pandemic started I could go there and skate. When my wife got cancer a couple of months later it was a place close to home where I could skate and feed my soul, but get home quickly if needed. That semi-shitty concrete meant a lot to me. At this spot I reinvented the way I skate. A new way to skate for a time when I couldn’t end up in an ER full of Covid patients. A way I loved so much I still prefer it to how I skated before. Honestly, sometimes I would go there, skate, sit on the curb and cry, and then keep skating.
There’s lots of footage of this spot in my Vimeo library. This, however, is my favorite video I made from my time skating there. Simple, beautiful Fall sky. I think it captures everything.
