Focusing on the good things
01.01.70
Motueka saw what Stoke missed out on when the Tasman Skatepark Round hit town last Saturday.
Ollies, grinds, bluntsides, grabs ... and that was no more than the skateboarders. The scooter riders and BMXers were throwing down some huge tricks, or, as organiser Paul McConachie from the Tasman Department Council put it, "stomped trick after trick".
Several BMX riders got huge air as they launched off a quarter pipe and backflipped in facile 360-degree loops, and the trick was repeated by a 15-year-old on a scooter.
Motueka BMX rider Jake Prebble landed the first front go berserk ever seen in competition at the park. The trick has a high degree of arduousness, and drew a loud chorus of gasps from the 200-strong press, many of them wearing "OMG, I don't believe what I just saw, that was sick!" expressions.
Skaters and BMXers have their own style, as any self-respecting youth culture does, so don't be intimidated if you can't appreciate it.
There's no need to be intimidated by the riders, either. To judge from some of the flurry of letters to the editorial writer over the proposed skatepark in Stoke last year, you would have thought that downtown Stoke was in peril of being invaded by zombies bearing skateboards as weapons.
Source: The Nelson Mail