to all you germantown ditch skaters...
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to all you germantown ditch skaters...
please read this thread: http://www.skullandbonesskateboards.com ... hp?t=25511
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Andy Bittner
- GBJ
- Posts: 394
- Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2002 2:00 am
- Location: Gaithersburg, MD
Nothing New
Seth, I'll reply here, since I know the guys here and don't know the guys there. This is a pointless fight, and skaters portraying themselves as victims being deprived of some sort of inalienable right to skate ditches really isn't going to change the inevitable. I can show you one ditch rendered permanently unrideable within just a mile or so of the Germantown ditch and another over in Olney (all Montgomery County, Maryland locations).
Perhaps someone local will begin an effort to end your skating by taking your plywood and lip obstacles, or tarring the surface, but that won't work for long, which'll only make your adversaries more determined. Eventually they'll involve the county and other businesses in the area and come up with enough reason for you not to be there that, eventually, they will come up with a real anti-skating solution that will not adversely affect anything but skaters.
The nearest case in point would be the ditch once known as "Martin Luther King" or the "MLK ditch". Just north of Martin Luther King Jr. JHS on Rt. 355 in Germantown is a small church and immediately north of that, right on the other side of the driveway, is a little back-to-back ditch leading into a 100-year flood plain for the development just to north of all of that. We used to skate that ditch regularly until sometime in about 1988, when they finally put an end to it by actually creating hard-cornered, very durable, cast-stone contours running with the flow of the ditch but across the skating lines. Done deal.
My other example would be the Cashell Ditch in Olney. This ditch is an outflow spillway for another 100-yr. flood plain on the east side of Cashell Rd, just north of Hines Rd, in Olney. Another little back-to-back, lip trick ditch we kept this one good for awhile, until some local, non-skating derelicts began hanging out there at night. The inevitable mess ensued, with graffiti, broken glass and fires begin burnt in the ditch. Eventually nearby townhouse residents, a couple hundred yards away became annoyed with the noise, bothered by the eyesore, and concerned about whatever element must be making the mess. They tried tar, gravel, MORE broken glass, and eventually got permission to alter the structure by hiring professionals to pour a whole new concrete bottom with many, large, quarter-shot type stones sticking up out of it. This was sometime back in '87 or '88.
In that particular case, I actually stopped and checked in on the guys who were doing that unfortunate work, as they were doing it, and they themselves were pretty cool. They were being paid by their employer to be doing what they were doing, but otherwise thought it was pretty lame that these people were so committed to stopping people from riding skateboards. They were good guys, but we skaters, so good at making enemies, lost their sympathy while I was standing right there. As we are having this honest, almost apologetic conversation, some person (obviously a skater) drives by on nearby Cashell Rd., screams "F--K YOU! A--HOLES!" and throws a rock through one of these gentlemen's windshield. Nice.
You should, at least, give the Germantown Ditch a rest for awhile. Sometimes if we just let the matter go away for awhile (a few months or years, not a few days!), life (a new job, retirement, re-location, death) will take the bothered party out of the picture and you can get a second good run out of a good ditch. If you push them to their limit now, then they'll somehow manage to render the ditch permanently unrideable, and that's the last thing we want. If you really want to know how bad things can get for a spot, drive on over to the former-MLK ditch and take a look. The obstacles you'll see have successfully thwarted skating now for about as long as you've been alive.
While I'm here I'll also note the following, re: unspoken agreements with the police station around the corner. 10:1 odds says that station is the same precinct where you'll find Corporal Lester Troup, the one and only, angry, intolerant, extremely unpleasant, Germantown-based, Montgomery County police officer who makes it his responsibility to run us out of the Park and Ride whenever he happens to see us there. He has some rank in his precinct, so if they are one and the same, pushing a "friendship" with the Germantown MCPD precinct won't get you all that far either.
In the meanwhile, go skate Riverdale or resurrect one of the Shady Grove Metro ditches, because no one's ever going to win an argument that, because it is a piece of publically-owned infrastructure, people have a right to ride skateboards in a run-off and drainage feature.
(I'm not a member over at that other site and have no interest in joining in order to make one post, but if you want to copy this one over to there, feel free.)
Perhaps someone local will begin an effort to end your skating by taking your plywood and lip obstacles, or tarring the surface, but that won't work for long, which'll only make your adversaries more determined. Eventually they'll involve the county and other businesses in the area and come up with enough reason for you not to be there that, eventually, they will come up with a real anti-skating solution that will not adversely affect anything but skaters.
The nearest case in point would be the ditch once known as "Martin Luther King" or the "MLK ditch". Just north of Martin Luther King Jr. JHS on Rt. 355 in Germantown is a small church and immediately north of that, right on the other side of the driveway, is a little back-to-back ditch leading into a 100-year flood plain for the development just to north of all of that. We used to skate that ditch regularly until sometime in about 1988, when they finally put an end to it by actually creating hard-cornered, very durable, cast-stone contours running with the flow of the ditch but across the skating lines. Done deal.
My other example would be the Cashell Ditch in Olney. This ditch is an outflow spillway for another 100-yr. flood plain on the east side of Cashell Rd, just north of Hines Rd, in Olney. Another little back-to-back, lip trick ditch we kept this one good for awhile, until some local, non-skating derelicts began hanging out there at night. The inevitable mess ensued, with graffiti, broken glass and fires begin burnt in the ditch. Eventually nearby townhouse residents, a couple hundred yards away became annoyed with the noise, bothered by the eyesore, and concerned about whatever element must be making the mess. They tried tar, gravel, MORE broken glass, and eventually got permission to alter the structure by hiring professionals to pour a whole new concrete bottom with many, large, quarter-shot type stones sticking up out of it. This was sometime back in '87 or '88.
In that particular case, I actually stopped and checked in on the guys who were doing that unfortunate work, as they were doing it, and they themselves were pretty cool. They were being paid by their employer to be doing what they were doing, but otherwise thought it was pretty lame that these people were so committed to stopping people from riding skateboards. They were good guys, but we skaters, so good at making enemies, lost their sympathy while I was standing right there. As we are having this honest, almost apologetic conversation, some person (obviously a skater) drives by on nearby Cashell Rd., screams "F--K YOU! A--HOLES!" and throws a rock through one of these gentlemen's windshield. Nice.
You should, at least, give the Germantown Ditch a rest for awhile. Sometimes if we just let the matter go away for awhile (a few months or years, not a few days!), life (a new job, retirement, re-location, death) will take the bothered party out of the picture and you can get a second good run out of a good ditch. If you push them to their limit now, then they'll somehow manage to render the ditch permanently unrideable, and that's the last thing we want. If you really want to know how bad things can get for a spot, drive on over to the former-MLK ditch and take a look. The obstacles you'll see have successfully thwarted skating now for about as long as you've been alive.
While I'm here I'll also note the following, re: unspoken agreements with the police station around the corner. 10:1 odds says that station is the same precinct where you'll find Corporal Lester Troup, the one and only, angry, intolerant, extremely unpleasant, Germantown-based, Montgomery County police officer who makes it his responsibility to run us out of the Park and Ride whenever he happens to see us there. He has some rank in his precinct, so if they are one and the same, pushing a "friendship" with the Germantown MCPD precinct won't get you all that far either.
In the meanwhile, go skate Riverdale or resurrect one of the Shady Grove Metro ditches, because no one's ever going to win an argument that, because it is a piece of publically-owned infrastructure, people have a right to ride skateboards in a run-off and drainage feature.
(I'm not a member over at that other site and have no interest in joining in order to make one post, but if you want to copy this one over to there, feel free.)