Solano 1

Antonio Solano
Professor Malvin
English 114B
2 April 2015
The Beachy Community
For most people who dont know, the Ventura beach isnt just a beach it also has a pier
that extends into the deep ocean. The beach in Ventura is very well known and that is how a
majority of the people knows Ventura, because of its beautiful beach. A lot of people come to the
Ventura beach to either play in the sand or catch some waves. People also come to either walk on
the pier or catch some fish and throw it back. Although it already makes the majority of people in
Ventura happy and also a lot of visitors, it misses a big part of not only people here in Ventura
but also many people that pass by this beautiful city called Ventura. The big group of people that
get missed are skateboarders and BMXers. The beach itself even has a playground for the little
kids who are just passing by or are too scared to play in the water. The beach has cement to walk
on, but it is not completely flat and is difficult to ride on it comfortable. The whole pier itself is
completely made out of wood and it has a lot of cracks and skaters would not even be able to go
five feet without getting stuck and falling. To add on to that, Ventura only has three skate parks,
but they are simple skate parks that after five minutes one can pretty much use the whole skate
park ever single possible way, and none of them give them a view that a beach could give or
neither give a nice ocean breeze to cool the skaters down. Benefits that will happen to not only
skaters but also to the community already at the beach would be bringing cultures together, have
a safe spot for skaters, add on to the beauty the beach already has to offer, and keep kids from
getting themselves into trouble.
For one to think that building a skate park would not do anyone any good is wrong.
Skateboarding itself is its own subculture with its own distinct language, skill set, world view
and set of values (Synder). Building a skate park near the beach will bring the subculture of

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skaters to the beach, which is pretty much a community itself already. The beach already has
multiple subcultures that range from surfers all the way to little kids playing in the park. Gregory
Snyder states in his article that, skaters also come from a range of class experiences, from
suburban upper middle class, to working class, to urban poor. What the author says is pretty
much skateboarding does not focus on a certain small group of people and is universal to all
groups of people. In adding a skate park to the beach it will add on the subculture of skaters to
the many subcultures that the beach already brings in. It will bring one group of people together
with other multiple groups of people, and it will unite them together and not only unite them but
also help them discover other groups of people.
Now a day, kids sometimes get mistaken as or looked as troublemakers, and if they are
skating older people automatically think that they are up to no good. Skaters usually have their
one favorite place they like to go with their friends, but even after a while they get bored of the
spot and start to venture to look for another spot. Wherever the skaters are, if it is not a skate
park, they are looked at like if they were going to cause some mischief. In the article Skate
Parks as a Context for Adolescent Development the author, Graham Bradley states that antiskateboarding laws date back to 1913. It goes to show even when skateboarding wasnt really
popular or well known they still had laws that restricted them from being used in certain areas.
Skaters need a sanctuary where they can be in their own little habitat and not be considered as a
bad group of people, because in America alone there are around 12 to 20 million skaters
according to a cited source in the article by Bradley. Although in Ventura there are already three
skate parks, but like stated in the first paragraph they are not the most creative skate parks in the
world, so one can easily get bored of it quickly. In adding on a new well thought out Skate Park
that offers skaters many possibilities, not only will it give skaters a new place to skate but it will
also add on to the beauty the beach already has to offer. In addition, it will help people stop

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stereotyping skateboarders by actually seeing them in a skate park and not out looking for a good
spot to skate on.
Back in the time during the incident with Rodney King and all the riots in Los Angeles, it
was difficult for not only kids but young people to be hanging out almost anywhere because the
police could easily pick them up and drop them off somewhere dangerous or arrest them and
charge them for something they were falsely accused of. Young people that were just hanging out
and not causing any harm to anyone was at risk, sometimes it was because of their skin color or
because the police officers were bored and needed entertainment. Kids would get dropped off by
police officers in gang neighbor hoods and would actually put their life at risk or make them
have to cause trouble just to be able to survive. Unfortunately, in a section from the book
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Theresa Allison who is a mother from Los Angeles had to go
through a heartbreaking moment where her son was picked up by officers and dropped off in a
different neighborhood. Now a days, stuff like that really does not happen but with problems and
corruption still going on today in the police force, a kid or a young adult can be easily be falsely
accused in doing something wrong when they were just hanging out in front of the corner store.
With a new skate park built in the beach it would give kids and young adults a place they can
enjoy and do what they love doing. It will make skaters stop having to skate on the street and on
private property and actually give them a place where they can shred, and not be considered as
hooligans when they are just trying to do what they love.
Overall, the Ventura beach was created to please a majority of the people in Ventura and
bring them together while being in something the earth made. Unfortunately, it misses a good
amount of people in Ventura. With an add on, such as a skate park, to things the beach already
has to offer, it would bring the community closer and it would benefit a lot of people. It will not
only bring people closer, but also let one know more about different types of people and what

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they are into. It will benefit in a way such as it will give both kids and adults a safe place to skate
board in. Also, it would stop them from skating on private property and damaging it and making
it look unappealing. The best reason would be it would keep kids off the streets and distract them
from doing something unbeneficial and stop them from doing either illegal or dumb activities.

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Evaluation Letter
The process of writing this essay for me personally was difficult. At first it was
understanding the whole concept of the prompt and what it was really asking. Once after
Professor Malvin clarified and made the understanding of the prompt easier it helped me wrap
my head around it and gave me a couple of ideas on what I can write about. Second difficult
thing for me was that I am not an LA local so I didnt really have a place I really knew about and
could talk about. But that was easily fixed when the professor said we could expand to Ventura.
Since that is where I was pretty much raised, a lot of ideas came to mind and I knew what I was
going to talk about in my essay. The third and last thing I struggled in writing this essay was the
length. It isnt just in the essay but it is in every essay I get assigned where I struggle to do the
length requirement because I always feel like I am just repeating my self over and over. My
strength in writing this essay was being able to pick a location on which I knew about and made
the process of this a little bit easier. My weakness in this essay like every other essay is filling the
length requirement The grade I think I deserve is either a high C or a low B. I feel like I meet
most of the requirements in the rubric. The reason I knock down some points from my grade is
because I felt like I was too repetitive and I only was able to get three sources. I also took off
points because I did not reach the length requirement.

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Works Cited
Bradley, Graham L. "Skate Parks as a Context for Adolescent Development." Journal of
Adolescent Research 25.2 (2010): 288-323. Web.
Smith, Anna D. "Surfer's Dessert." Twilight - Los Angeles, 1992: On the Road: A Search for
American Character. New York, NY: Anchor, 1994. 28-40. Print.
Snyder, Gregory J. "The City and the Subculture Career: Professional Street Skateboarding in
LA." Ethnography 13.3 (2011): 306-29. Web.