Rolling Toward a New Skate Park
“I’ve been a skater for almost 21 years now,” Gabe Brummett tells me over the phone, and then he pauses for a long time. “… Sorry. I’m eating.”
As a father of two, a full-time UPS driver, and a lynchpin in Eau Claire’s growing skate scene, Brummett is a busy guy – so we chatted during his afternoon lunch break.
“I grew up in a town that had a really strong skate community. I saw it grow from nothing into something pretty big,” he tells me between bites. “I lived in Oregon; I lived in Colorado. I was a part of these really great, progressive skate communities and then I moved to Wisconsin and it was like I went back in time 15 years.”
Eau Claire’s skating scene is growing, but it’s still sort of an unfamiliar thing for this community. But with their precious free time, Brummett and the rest of the Eau Claire Skaters Association are hard at work putting funds together for a project that would put a new public skating facility in Boyd Park in Eau Claire’s Eastside Hill neighborhood.
It’s a great location for the grass roots effort, as Boyd Park is connected to Lakeshore Park’s modest skate park across town via bike path. Skaters can easily – and safely – go from park to park.
"There aren’t many other activities, I don’t think, where you can find someone in their mid-20s participating in the same exact activity as a 10-year-old – and they’re both having just as much fun. That’s skateboarding." – Gabe Brummett, Eau Claire Skaters Association
This is an effort that strives to not only hoist a new skate park into existence, but prove to the community that skate parks – and the skaters who populate them – generally don’t fit the stereotypes that are often thrust upon them. Skaters aren’t punks, delinquents, vandals; they’re kids, adults, parents, and Chippewa Vallians who just want a safe place to do the thing they love.
“Skaters are a very diverse group of individuals. We come from all walks of life, all ages,” Brummett said. “I’m a truck driver. Thomas Kemp – he used to be a city councilman and he’s a professor of economics (at UW-Eau Claire). He still calls himself a skateboarder. There aren’t many other activities, I don’t think, where you can find someone in their mid-20s participating in the same exact activity as a 10-year-old – and they’re both having just as much fun. That’s skateboarding."
“And when the community encourages a diverse group of people to stay in the community, by providing those places, it’s a great thing for the community as a whole, not just skateboarders,” he added.
Plus, having a safe place to skate surely cuts down on the amount of irresponsible skating done at places like Phoenix Park, where park-less skaters used to grind and wear down seat planters and concrete surface.
That is, until the skate park at Lakeshore went up.
Lakeshore: A Skater's Refuge
Local skaters – Brummett included – were a big part of the eight-year effort it took to get the Lakeshore skate area together. It’s a tiny spot near Lakeshore Elementary School in Eau Claire, nestled by student houses in the Randall Park neighborhood. But in a lot of ways, it’s the first refuge for the skaters who want to be able to do their thing without traveling all the way to the old YMCA park off Hastings Way or the park in Chippewa Falls.
“You go and look at any town that has a successful skate park, it’s not one that’s tucked off away out of view.” – Gabe Brummett
Brummett said the funding from that project came through largely because of the tireless efforts from area skaters themselves, who raised and donated as much as they could. The new plan is no exception to that formula: Since last Labor Day, the ECSA has raised more than $5,000 for the new park, through benefit concerts with local hip hop groups, bowling events at Wagner’s Lanes with auctioned-off gear and memorabilia, and tons of events month after month.
And that kind of thing has to happen again. But in a lot of ways there’s more pressure on the Boyd Park plans. It’s a very visible spot, surrounded by a vigorous, active neighborhood rife with kids and families.
But Brummett said once people’s misguided perceptions of skate parks start to change, he welcomes the potential community that could be spawned in and around the new park – not just of skaters and their friends, but in the Eau Claire community as a whole.
“You go and look at any town that has a successful skate park, it’s not one that’s tucked off away out of view,” Brummett said. “It’s in a very visible area that doesn’t exclude anyone. It’s the kind of place where people who are just strolling through the park can sit and watch – or participate – in a comfortable space for them to do so.
“The more places we have for people to do that, we’re all better off as a community.”
To learn more about the project, and follow updates for future family-friendly events and fundraisers, check out the Eau Claire Skaters Association on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EauClaireSkateboarders
