ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 1/20

Skating the ‘Burb:

The Regulations and the Negotiations of Suburban Teenage Skateboarding

Prepared for ASA Annual Meeting 2006 in Montreal, Canada

Yuki Kato
Department of Sociology
University of California, Irvine
(katoy@uci.edu)

Abstract

Skateboarding is an increasingly popular activity among teenagers, especially among

boys. But skateboarding in public space disrupts the urban order, as it is an unintended
use of space shared by others in the community. Studies have approached teen
skateboarding from various perspectives including subculture, postmodern geography,
sport, and gender. This ethnographic study of street skating among suburban teenagers
explores the ways in which a suburban community regulates skateboarding in public
places, and how teenage skaters negotiate the constraints imposed upon their activities. I
find that a suburban community attempts to regulate and control skateboarding activities
by building a skate park, implementing prohibitive devices, making skateboarding in
public spaces illegal, and monitoring activities. The examination of the skateboarders’
tactics of overcoming such constraints shows their ability to relocate their activity and
continue to maintain certain level of autonomy over where and how they skate. The study
concludes that space, time and the way space is used determine the types of regulation on
a public behavior, and whether such attempts are successful.

Keywords: Public Realm, Social Control, Skateboarding, Teenagers, Suburb

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Introduction

Skateboarding is an increasingly popular activity among teenagers, especially among boys, and it

“represents a totalizing urban subculture, complete with its own graphic design, language, music,

magazines, junk food, and codes of behavior” (Borden 2000). But skateboarding in public space

“disrupts” the urban order (Irvine and Taysom 1998), as it is an unintended use of space that is shared by

others in the community. It also conflicts with both use-value (e.g., handrails for walking) and exchange-

value (e.g., property value of a shopping center) of a given space, as skateboarders evaluate and

reconfigure urban architecture into a landscape of skating opportunities (Borden 2000, 2001).

Thus, skateboarders often face regulation imposed by the municipalities and the businesses that

intend to discourage or relocate their activities. In contrast to other behaviors in public space that are

legally and socially restricted and contested, such as homelessness, skateboarding involves partial and

temporally use of public space, thus posing a particular challenge to those who wish to eliminate or deter

such activities. The fact that skateboarders often do not distinguish between good skating (e.g., as a sport

at skate parks) and bad skating (e.g., as a trespassing on private properties) (Nolan 2003) further

complicates the negotiation between the regulators and the skateboarders. This ethnographic study of

street skating among suburban teenagers explores the ways in which a suburban community attempts to

regulate skateboarding in public places, and how teenage skaters negotiate these constraints.

This paper focuses primarily on tactics of regulation and negotiation, though the study this paper

is based on has much larger scope 1 . The two questions to be answered in the presentation are:

1) What are the constraints that adolescent skateboarders experience in their daily skating activities?

2) How do the teen skaters negotiate the constraints that they encounter?

Relevant Literature

Public realm has long been a contested terrain of urban social order, where the capitalistic and

political interests strive to rid of the presence of marginalized populations and unintended uses (Lofland

1
This paper is a part of my doctoral dissertation “Finding Their Places in Suburbia: The Spatial Adaptation of
Adolescents in an American Master-Planned Community.”
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 3/20

1998). Baumgartner (1988) finds adult suburbanites employ “moral minimalism” to maintain social order,

while teenagers in the community often fail to abide by such social norms as they cross over the public

and private realm more freely in their speech and behaviors. Despite studies that show suburban teens

aimlessly navigating through the suburban landscape in search of something to do (e.g., Childress 2000;

Gaines 1991), the use of public space by suburban teens is largely understudied. The unique nature of

skateboarding that take place mostly in public realm make it an appropriate subject for investigating how

suburban teen skateboarders experience constraints and opportunities posed by their physical and social

environment.

Existing studies of skateboarding explore its reinterpretation of urban architecture and geography

(Borden 2000, 2001), anti-institutional subcultral practices (Beal 1995), construction of alternative

masculinity and femininity (Beal 1996; Kelly et al 2005), and functional evaluation of skate parks

(L’Aoustet and Griffet 2001; Owens 2001). Much of these studies are conducted in urban settings, and

focus on the meaning of skateboarding from skateboarders’ perspectives. Nevertheless, skateboarding

often invites negative reactions by adults and those in charge of maintaining public space. Borden (2000,

2001) portrays skateboarding as a process of identifying a use-value in urban architectures, thus crashing

with the capitalistic interests in their exchange-value. This creates an ongoing tension between

skateboarders and property owners or managers, such as municipalities and businesses. This paper

explores this tension between skateboarders and their regulators by approaching it as a social control and

negotiation process. Willard (1998) suggests that adult try to regulate skateboarding because of their

“desire to maintain and enclose youth in spaces over which they have little control” (339). However,

skateboarders manage to interpret and use the space for their activities, despite the constraints imposed by

adults. Thus, I will analyze the tension from the perspectives of architectural affordances (Gibson 1979),

or what opportunities a given social or physical environment offers. In doing so, I will keep in mind the

social place available for adolescents in suburban landscapes.

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Data and Methodology

Methodologically, past studies of skateboarding relied on archival data (Borden 2000, 2001), or a

combination of survey, interviews or focus groups with skateboarders, and ethnography of skate park

users and subcultural practices (e.g., Beal 1995, 1995; Nolan 2003; Owens 2001). There is little

ethnographic observation of street skating, in which skateboarders use architecture in public space for

doing tricks, much less with an emphasis on social control and negotiation. This study combines

ethnography of teenage skateboarders in public space and at a public skate park with conversational

interviews with four police officers, building maintenance staff at a university campus, three skate park

staff, the city’s community services a supervisor, and onlookers of all ages at the skate parks.

The analysis in this paper is based on fourteen weeks of ethnographic observation at public places

in a suburban community in Southern California I call Sunnyville 2 . Sunnyville is a planned suburb with

population size over 170,000. It is designed without designated downtown, but features 20 shopping

centers throughout the community. The community has one public skate park and one privately-owned

skate park 3 . There used to be a public skate park in 1970’s, but it was shut down. The new public skate

park was built in 2000. The city has 11pm-6am curfew for minors, which is strictly enforced by police

officers and security guards.

Initial ten weeks of fieldwork was conducted at a university campus and a public skate park. I

visited the two sites at least once a week, and observation lasted for a few hours each time. Subsequently,

this was supplemented by observations at other public locations in the community as I conducted

fieldwork for the larger project. I asked the skaters general questions about why they chose to skate at the

location that they were at, what they thought of the location, and where else they skated. I also inquired

about the skating culture, such as certain terms that they used to refer to the spots and tricks, and their

encounter with some constraints to their activities.

2
The name of the community has been altered to protect the anonymity of my informants.
3
The privately-owned skate park is part of the arcade park, also featuring batting cage, go-carts, and miniature golf.
I only visited this location twice, because the skate park was significantly smaller than the public skate park and was
more popular with BMX bikers and inline skaters.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 5/20

There were several sites on the university campus that I learned are popular skater hangouts. As I

began to speak with some of the skateboarders and did research on the Internet, I found that there were

some very distinct spots, as the skaters refer to them, on campus that are known to many skaters in the

larger metropolitan area. The public skate park is located at the north end of the community, within a

larger recreational park equipped with baseball and soccer fields among other facilities. I was given

permission by the supervisor of the park to conduct a research during my shift, and visited the location for

more than half a dozen times on different days of the week, at various times of the day. I was introduced

by the on-site staff, the city employee, as a researcher to the park users at times, and often volunteered the

information to anybody I interacted with at the site. 4 I spent most of the time observing the activity of

skaters at the observing bench, which is located right outside of the fence that surrounds the skate park.

Occasionally, I got a chance to speak with some of the younger skaters 5 , their spectators (mostly their

parents), and the staffs. In the end, I got much richer data from talking to the skateboarders on campus,

because I could stay closer to them while they engaged in the skating activities and ask many more

questions in details. Many were in groups of three to six, and usually one or two of them volunteered their

time to speak with me while the rest of them skated.

I was highly aware that my race, gender and age made it more challenging to fit into the scene.

All of the skaters were white or Asian male aged fourteen to nineteen years old, and I was a 27 years old

Asian female. Quite the opposite, being an “outsider” actually enabled me to ask naïve questions about

their experiences as skateboarders, because it was obvious and believable that I did not know anything

about skateboarding. I was also very conscious of the power relations between my teenage subjects and

myself as a researcher. I tried to treat them as expert on the issue (and in fact they were, especially

because I had no clue about the topic) (Thorne 2001; Fine and Sandstrom 1988), and played off my status

4
It turns out that some of the youths at the skate park thought I was volunteering as a way of serving community
service (e.g. to work off traffic violation tickets). I was told by the staff and the teens that this happens sometimes,
and I met one person who was currently “working his ticket off” at the park office.
5
I use the term “skaters” and “skateboarders” interchangeably in this paper. It is important to note that my
informants strongly suggested that skateboarders and inlineskaters are two distinct groups that almost never interact
with the other.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 6/20

as much as possible. For instance, I told most of them I was writing “a school paper,” and I did not reveal

that I was a graduate student unless I was asked. Most of the skateboarders were either pleasantly

surprised to find that I was writing a paper about them, or did not show any signs of interest on the

subject. I did not encounter any particular incidents of hostile or skeptical interactions with any of my

subjects. Everyone was quite satisfied with my explanation that I was doing a school project.

The difficulty that I encountered most frequently in both of the settings was the fact that skaters

were engaging in continuous activities. This was much more prominent in the case of the skate park,

because the area that I could sit and observe, such as benches and chairs, were very limited and were

located away from the skating area. Moreover, the skating noise sometimes interfered with the

conversations. Most of these interactions at the skate park were brief, and individuals almost always had

to yell to each other. At the university campus, I had much better luck of carrying on longer conversation

with the skaters, since I could stand or sit closer to them as we talked.

Some limitations the data include time and space constraints and gender bias. I conducted most of

the fieldwork during the day or early evenings, thus I did not observe or interact with those skateboarders

who may choose to engage in their activities away from public’s eye. I selected the public spaces where I

conducted the observation partially for convenience, but also based on suggestions from some of my

informants. Thus it is not a holistic list of skating spots in Sunnyville. Finally, all of the skateboarders that

I spoke with were boys. I saw five girls skateboarding at the skate park on different days, but they were

younger than teens. Existing studies of female skateboarders focus on gender-based hierarchy within and

outside of skating subculture. Whether girls’ skateboarding practices, in terms of where they choose to

skate and how their activities are regulated, differ from those of boys remains as a future study topic.

Affordances for Skateboarding

Finding places to skate is one of the most essential elements of the skating activity. Websites and

skating magazines list numerous spots, as they call the skatable urban spaces, all over the nation and the

world. These long lists of spots, constantly updated by the members of the subculture, signify the efforts

and abilities of exploratory skateboarders to continuously cultivate new skating environments.

ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 7/20

Skateboarding in public places is called “street skating,” and many skating competitions list it as a

specific category, by providing objects commonly found on the street, such as railings and benches. This

is unique, Borden (2000, 2001) claims, as skateboarders assess urban landscapes based on their use-value

rather than their exchange-value. In other words, skateboarders select where to engage in skating based on

the public space’s affordances. Woolley and Johns (2001) identify four types of affordance determine

where young people in the three UK cities skate; accessibility, sociability, compatibility, and trickability.

They contend that the selection of skating spots depends on a combination of all four types of affordances,

thus the attempts to deter and regulate skateboarding that only consider only one type of affordance often

fail. The findings in my indicate that teenage skateboarders selected places to skate based on a

combination of all four categories of affordance.

During the fieldwork, I observed many groups of skateboarders using the same parts of the

architecture, though not at the same time. I learned that the selection of spots was based on how the

architectural parts served as skating objects and surface. I witnessed numerous occasions in which the

skateboarders hold up their skateboard to assess the directions and angles at which certain architecture

can be skated on, or testing its trickability. One of my informants, Kevin, said “I see spots everywhere!”,

when I asked him whether it was hard to find a spot. He told me that some skaters put wax on the edges to

smooth them. Kevin’s statement that he “sees spots everywhere” indicates that skateboarders constantly

evaluate architectures for their trickability, and such elements are abundant in urban environment. Kevin

listed “straight edges, flat ground, and staircases” as some signs of a good spot.

In terms of sociability, many teens in Sunnyville often complained about lack of places available

for the teenagers to go. In contrast, all of the skateboarders that I observed, except for Kevin, were in

groups of two to eight. Kevin, who would go skating in groups most of the time, described the skating

activities as “a bunch of guys getting together and skating pumps up adrenaline, it’s like football.” When

a group was out skating, there were always some who continuously skated, and others who sat and

watched or talked, skating only occasionally. Skateboarders that I observed appeared to be considerate of
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 8/20

compatibility, as I never saw them try to skate in crowded areas. Nonetheless, their activities often raised

eyebrows and resulted in the residents making nuisance calls to the police.

Accessibility was limited for some of the teen skaters, due to their age and minimal transportation

options. As described in previous section, the community that I studied is a planned suburb. There is no

recognizable downtown, or where residents congregate for socializing purposes. The primary mode of

travel is automobile in this city, and public transportation by bus is available but the services are limited

temporary and geographically. I asked many of the skaters that I spoke with how they got to the particular

spot that they were skating that day. Only one group of teens out of 15 teens that I spoke with told me that

they took a bus to get to the university campus. Among the skateboarders that I had conversation with,

older ones either drove themselves to the spots or caught rides from adults or other older skaters. In

contrast, I often saw younger boys, about 12-15 years old, skateboarding on the sidewalk in small groups

while driving through the city.

Findings and Analyses

1) What are the constraints that adolescent skateboarders experience in their daily skating

activities?

Through examination of the fieldnotes, I identified four explicit ways in which the community

deter and regulate skateboarding in public places; a) Building a skate park, b) Adding prohibitive devices

to the architecture, c) Creating laws that regulate where and how skateboarders can use public places, and

d) Enforcing these regulations through policing. In this section I will illustrate how each form of

regulation impacts affordances suggested by Woolley and Johns (2001), using the exemplary excerpts

from my fieldnotes. I will further explore the motives behind these regulatory measures, by applying four

types of spatial control developed by Snow and Mulcahy (2001) in their examination of spatial regulation

and control over homelessness. Finally, I will suggest that decentralized suburban landscape has an

unintended consequence of somewhat limiting teen skateboarders’ access to potential spots, especially for

the younger teens or for those without own means of transportation.

a) Building a skate park

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Studies of skate parks show the changes over time in the type of architecture featured in skate

parks, reflecting the changes in the architectures preferred by skateboarders in street skating (Borden

2001; Irvine and Taysom 1998). Owens (2001) suggests that building a public skate park as “a reflection

of the growing tendency to remove adolescents from the public realm” (791). In doing so, adult creates a

distinction between skating at skate parks as good skating, while deeming street skating as bad skating or

vandalism (Nolan 2003). I will elaborate on the issue of bad skating later in this section. The following

excerpt of my telephone conversation with Mr. Cunningham, a supervisor for the city’s community

services, reflects such distinction.

Public skate park in response to the demand

I asked Mr. Cunningham where the idea of building a skate park came from. His response

emphasized that the idea was proposed by the youths in the community, and the community was

generally supportive of the idea. Young skateboarders attended the city council meetings to request

the building of the skate park. He also acknowledged that reducing the street skating activities was

actually one of the driving hopes behind the city’s support for the development of the public skate

park. He added, “And now the police can refer skaters to the park, instead of telling them that they

can’t skate at all in Sunnyville.” (April 28, 2003)

Based on Mr. Cunningham’s accounts, the public skate park in Sunnyville was built primarily in

response to the request by the skateboarders. Having a legitimate place to skate in the community has an

additional benefit, as it helps law enforcement officers and security guards justify steering skaters away

from general public space to the “designated skateboarding place”. Building of a public skate parks not

only aims to limit spaces that can be skated, but how skateboarding should be conducted. Most skate

parks, both public and private, enforce a set of rules of conduct for the park users. Most of these rules are

protective, in order to ensure the safety of the skaters and avoid potential liability suits. The rule that was

most strictly enforced at the skate park was the requirement for safety equipments, such as helmet and

elbow and knee pads. The Sunnyville skate park has an on-site staff that enforces these rules, although
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 10/20

some staff were more lenient than others. All three of the staff that I spoke with agreed that they only

occasionally experienced difficulties with the park users resisting to follow the rules.

b) Adding prohibitive devices to the architecture

Skate Stoppers®

(I was speaking with Alan and Rex, who were holding up their skateboards against a concrete bench

by Humanities Hall.) They gave me some examples of the architectural designs that are made to

prohibit skating. One was the flat metal pieces they called the “bumps,” and another was the design of

the handrail on the staircases. Alan pointed to a set of two handrails in the middle of the staircase

leading down toward Humanities Hall and said “It doesn’t make sense to have the ‘bumps’ on the top

handrail, ‘cause nobody would skate it.” I asked him why not, and he explained that it’s because there

is another handrail right after the top one, implying that whoever would skate the top handrail end up

hitting the bottom one before landing. (April 8, 2003)

Fig.1 Skate Stoppers implemented at one side of the bench Fig. 2 Waxed and scratched side of the same bench
The devices that Alan and Rex are pointing out serve to reduce trickability of the architecture in

the most direct way. This makes the surface or edges of otherwise trickable architecture into unskatable

one (Fig.1). Two of the skaters that I spoke with told me that some skateboarders would apply wax to

smooth out the skating surface (Fig 2). During my interview with Mr. Houston, a staff at the campus

facilities management, I learned that the devices that Alan and Rex referred to as “bumps” are called

“Skate Stoppers®”. They are “specially designed brackets that deter unwanted skating/biking by

eliminating the long, smooth edges that skaters and bikers seek out” (Skate Stoppers Company Website).
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 11/20

According to Mr. Houston, they implemented these devices a few years ago to numerous locations on the

university campus, especially in the areas known to be frequented by skateboarders. There are various

types of Skate Stoppers®, and some are more discrete while others stand out in contrast to the original

architectural design. When I asked where the devices are heavily implemented, Mr. Houston responded

“you can’t miss ‘em, they’re everywhere!” It appears that the authority of the campus struggled to cover

as many trickable architecture as possible, though my informants’ statement suggest that regulators’

ability to detect trickability affordance is not as sophisticated as those of real skateboarders. That many

non-skaters are oblivious to these devices reflects their efforts to do so as discretely as possible (Fig. 3).

c) Creating laws that regulate where and how skateboarders can use public places

Throughout Sunnyville relatively large signs that specifically prohibit skateboarding and

inline skating on the premise were posted at shopping centers, at civic buildings, and school

campuses (Fig. 4). Making skating in general public area illegal indicates that the city and the

businesses deem street skating as bad skating. Ordinance as such is usually enforced on a daily

basis by police officers and security guards, who could legitimately chase the skateboarders off

general public areas.

Fig.3 A student sits on the scratched bench Fig.4 A sign at one of the Sunnyville shopping centers
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 12/20

d) Enforcing these regulations through policing

“I got too many tickets already.”

I explained to Tony that I was interested in skaters that come to the university campus. He told me

that the campus was voted as a number-one spot for skating several years ago in a skating magazine.

When asked if he comes to skate there often, he said “No, I got too many tickets (for skating)

already.” He gave an example of the time when he got two tickets at once for grabbing onto a bike

while being on a skateboard. He said that he noticed during the last few years they began to put more

prohibitive devices and cops had been giving many tickets. He said the campus is not a very popular

place to skate anymore. (April 8, 2003)

An account from a campus police officer that I spoke with supports Tony’s description of the

rigorous policing of campus during the last half a year. Many of the skateboarders told me that they got a

warning from police officers for not wearing helmet 6 being told to go elsewhere by security guards while

doing a session at a shopping center. The tickets that Tony refers to are issued for the violation of the

section 2113 of the California Vehicle Code, which enables university campus to establish rules

governing the use of all vehicles on campus, including bikes and skateboards. Moreover, Sgt. Jenkins of

the campus police told me “depending on the amount of damage caused by a particular skater, tickets may

be issued for vandalism or trespassing (if the violators have been previously warned about skating on

campus)”.

Interestingly, the police officers are there to regulate skateboarding often in response to some

complaints by local residents. The teens are aware of this. One of my informants, Troy, said that they only

stay in one location while skating around the neighborhood, because “People would call cops on us.”

Thus, creating ordinance against skateboarding and enforcing it through monitoring of the area ensures

that compatibility affordance of the area remains low for the skateboarders. The issue of compatibility

becomes more salient in suburban context, as the public space in Sunnyville designed for specific

6
In Sunnyville, those under 16 years old are required to wear helmet while operating a vehicle, such as bicycle or
skateboard.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 13/20

purposes. For instance, shopping centers are to be used solely for shopping, not for hanging out or simply

traveling through. When skateboarders engage in the act that disturbs this expected order in the public

realm, it generates strong negative reactions by other users of the space.

Snow and Mulcahy (2001) find that the forms of spatial control enforced to remove homelessness

from the public realm vary in three types of urban space; marginal, primary, and transitional spaces.

Containment attempts to keep the homeless invisible from the general public by keeping them in one area,

while displacement physically removes the homeless from the areas previously used by them for daily

survival. Finally, exclusion bars the homeless from entering the public realm that are used by ordinary

citizens. They argue “to understand the spatial dynamics associated with homelessness and other marginal

groups, attention must be directed to the interpretive, framing practices of the relevant contestants.”

(Snow and Mulcahy 2001:165). Thus, I will apply these concepts to the three forms of regulation toward

teen skateboarders in Sunnyville, while being sensitive to the way the act of skating and the intended use

of a public space are defined and regulated as such.

Building a skate park is a form of containment, whereby the community tries to concentrate

skateboarding in one designated area, in hopes of discouraging the activity in other public area. As I

illustrated above, this also involves added regulation over skateboarding, as the skaters are required to

wear protective gears and limited skate only when the park is open. Implementation of Skate Stoppers, in

contrast, is a form of exclusion, as it deters access to a particular piece of architecture. Its primary and

obvious goal is to protect the property, for both its exchange-value (e.g., cost for repairing damage) and

use-value (e.g., damaged railing could harm other users). This appears to be most effective in preventing

skateboarders from using a particular piece of architecture, and general public tends to be oblivious or

indifferent to the existence of such devices. Similarly, implementing ordinance against skateboarding in

public is an attempt to exclude skateboarders. This is often enforced through policing of the area, which

results in displacement of skateboarders. My informants’ experiences suggest that the ordinance itself is

not the strongest deterrence factor, but enforcement of ordinance by police officers and security guards

has stronger effects on discouraging the skateboarding in the area. Nonetheless, monitoring is limited
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 14/20

spatially and temporary, thus the skaters could continue to skate at the same spot, when they are not being

watched, especially for a short period of time.

My data suggest that none of the intended attempts to regulate and limit skateboarding in public

space is entirely successful by itself or even when used in combination with each other. I will elaborate

more on how these attempts fail in the next section. Surprisingly, however, almost every teenager I

encountered seemed to be experiencing some levels of limited mobility, due to the fact that they lacked

own means of transportation. Although they never addressed this issue as a significant constraint when I

asked them about where they go to skate 7 , suburban decentralized landscapes and purpose-specific design

of public space somewhat limited where, when, and how the teens can skate in Sunnyville.

“Can I use your cell phone?”

(Rob was one of the skaters I found on the university campus on Sunday afternoon. While we were

talking and watching some of them skate, he asked if somebody had a cell phone that he could use.)

Rob asked if anybody had a cell phone he could use, and nobody offered one. There was a brief

exchange between Rob and one of the skaters, and I caught Rob yelling back to him saying “but I live

in ______ (a city about 30 miles south of the community), how else am I supposed to get home if I

don’t catch a ride with my mom!?” The skater laughed with a very low voice, and David (who drove

here in his own car) looked at me and slightly shrugged his shoulders. (May 4, 2003)

During the fielwork, I witnessed ten other incidents very similar to this; a teenage skateboarders

either using or asking to use a cellular phone to call for a ride. This is another form of exclusion, though

unintended. Some of them carried their own cellular phone, which appeared to have given them some

extra flexibility in their mobility. The urgent need for cellular phone results from their inability to get

around freely in the community. I did not find any skateboarders waiting at bus stops nearby these

locations during my fieldwork. I also never saw the bus near recreational park, where the skate park is

located, and bus services to the park are infrequent. Many of the skateboarders at the university campus

utilized a combination of transportation methods to get around. In above example, Rob caught a ride from

7
Information about how they get there was provided only when I asked them the question specifically.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 15/20

his friends to get to the university campus, but had to be picked up by his mother in order to get home at

the end of the day. At the skate park, I noticed that those who come before the sunset tended to be

younger and were sometimes accompanied by adults, most likely their parents.

2) How do the skaters react to the constraints that they encounter?

Teenage skateboarders that I studied employed various tactics to overcome the constraints placed

upon their activities. Data is not sufficient to draw any conclusive relationship between the type of

constraints and the type of reactions. Instead, I will illustrate the ways in which the skaters managed to

regain control over where and how they can engage in skateboarding. The most prevalent tactic was to

move on to a new location for skating, when access to one spot is made difficult or impossible through

Skate Stoppers or ordinances. As Rex said, “every time they think they’ve done everything, people always

try new things.”

Rex’s statement, “people always try new things,” not only implies that they can find a new space

that has not been protected by the authority, but also that the way they skate them can be modified to

adapt to the new environment. The abundance of trickable architecture from the perspective of

skateboarders, even in suburban Sunnyville, made this an easy transition. Moreover, Borden (2001)

suggests that discovering new spot itself is a part of skateboarding subculture as reconfiguration of urban

geography. Thus skateboarders would not consider it a burden to have to go find a new spot and explore

new ways of doing tricks on the spot.

During the fieldwork, I heard many of the skateboarders describe their use of the architecture as

“skating them.” Such expression illustrates their attitude toward the space as something to be discovered

and conquered. Thus, implementing Skate Stoppers may effectively turn most skateboarders away from a

particular piece of architecture, but it is virtually impossible to cover every possible trickable urban space,

considering its abundance. One of my informants, Alan, did mention that some skateboarders would

attempt to modify the architecture, when some piece is in their way. I only found one piece of architecture

during my fieldwork that has modified in such way. This may be because the search for a new place to

skate is much less costly, both time and resource-wise, than cutting off pieces of metal to create a spot.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 16/20

Building a skate park does create a space solely for skateboarding, but all of the skateboarders

that I spoke with said they used both skate parks and street skating. Scholars are generally not optimistic

about the potential of a skate park for discouraging or eliminating the street skating (L’Aoustet and

Griffet 2001; Owens 2001). This is partially due to the architectural limitations of skate parks, but also it

is highly challenging to meet the needs of diverse skateboarding subcultures. While some skateboarders

may suggest skate park as a solution to the ongoing tension between skateboarders and those who try to

regulate their activities (e.g., Owens 2001), there will always be some skateboarders whose identification

emphasize social resistance and rejection of spaces created by adults (e.g., Beal 1995).

One reason why the skateboarders may not be satisfied skating only at skate park is because of

the limited architectural features at the skate parks. Rex, one of my informants, told me that the public

skate park in Sunnyville does not have enough edges to do tricks, so it was mostly for smaller kids or

those who are practicing skating. In fact, I noticed that there were many young skateboarders, as young as

5 years old, who visited the skate park during the day on the weekends. These children were often

accompanied by adults who either skated with them inside the park, or watched them by the fence

surrounding the skate park.

The teens also dislike the additional control imposed on their activities at the skate park. Chris,

another informant, said that wearing gears make it difficult to do certain movements, so he does not like

to wear them if possible. He added “you just have to know how to fall” in order not to get injured. Some

of the skate park staff that I interviewed, however, thought that this may be an excuse for wanting to look

cool without protective gears. I witnessed some of the teenagers resisting the rules of conduct by wearing

the gears under their baggy clothes.

Cops have nothing better to do than…

(I found a group of 14 year old boys who were skateboarding behind one of Sunnyville’s community

centers on a Friday evening.) Chris said they live in the area, and they just walk around and skate at

different places. Mike said they don’t stay long at one spot, because “somebody’d call a cop on us”. If

they are caught, then the police would call their parents and they get into trouble. Troy said he has
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 17/20

been stopped “five or six times by a cop for not wearing helmet, but you just tell him that you didn’t

know about the rules.” He chuckled, and said added that it should only work the firs time, but he

evidently got away with it each time because the police did not recognize him. Chris added that the

cops in Sunnyville “have nothing better to do than to top the skaters”, and others agreed. (December 2,

2005)

All of the skateboarders that I observed in public space were moving from one skating stop to

another. As Mike suggests, the length of stay at each spot ranged from 15 minutes to over one hour.

Going from spot to spot allows for a variety of spots to try out, but also minimizes the possibility of

getting into trouble with the law enforcement agents. The short duration of activity allows the

skateboarders to navigate the public space more freely, when compared to the homeless persons, whose

use pf public space is for longer-term. Sunnyville teenagers, both skaters and non-skaters, often expressed

their resentment toward police officers, whose mission, according to the teens, was to pull them over for

minor traffic violations. Troy’s tactic of avoiding citation is a unique way of taking advantage of his

young age. Police officers that I have spoken with did not list skateboarders as one of the at-risk

adolescent population that they pay extra attention to. In fact, one of the officers said that it takes away

from dealing with other more serious issues when he has to respond to a call from the residents about

skateboarders or teens congregating in general. Teen skaters appear to be aware of the fact that the police

officers are responding to the nuisance calls form the residents.

Interestingly, however, skateboarders appear to be least concerned with the damages that their

activities cause. During my conversation with David, I pretended that I had just noticed the Skate

Stoppers 8 . David called it a “metal thing” and said “that’s why they make skate parks”. David said he did

not really know “why they don’t like us, but maybe they just don’t like teenagers hanging out.” This

comment was in distinct contrast to the explanations given to me by the police and the campus police

management, which listed noises and property damage as the primary reasons for regulating

8
I tried to conduct “interview by comments” (Snow et al. 1982), whenever possible and appropriate, in order to
intrigue some conversations with my subjects, who tended to not initiate any conversation with me.
ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 18/20

skateboarding activities on campus. This was consistent with the teenagers’ lack of concerns over

property damage that their activities cause to the architecture. None of the skateboarders mentioned the

property damage as the possible explanation for why the city or the businesses would try to regulate their

activities.

Discussion and Conclusion

Above analysis shows how existing attempts to deter and regulate skateboarding often fail. I

argue that these attempts reflect adults’ conflicting attitudes toward children; that they are so vulnerable

that must be protected or that they are so dangerous that they need to be controlled (Valentine 1996). The

rules of conduct at the skate park reflect the former, whose the motive is to protect the skateboarders from

the potential injury. This discouraged some skateboarders from using the facility, as many of the boys did

not consider falling as a bad experience. In addition, legitimizing skating through building a skate park

may have an ironic impact on street skating. I observed many younger children being introduced to the

sport at the skate park, where their parents are willing to let them skate in a safe environment. These

young skaters may be the future army of street skaters, who will begin to seek out spots outside the skate

park once they reach certain age or mobility level.

Implementing Skate Stoppers and passing ordinances against skateboarding frame street skating

as vandalism. This frames street skating as bad skating, in contrast to good skating at the skate park as a

sport. However, as Nolan (2003) suggests, skateboarders do not make such distinctions, thus many

skateboarders continue to skate at both skate parks and general public areas. The monitoring by police

officers or security guards to enforce rules against street skating more effectively communicated such

negative attitudes to the teen skaters. Geographic constraints, which resulted in the limited mobility

among the teenagers, function as a mechanism of limiting teenagers’ access to some potential skating

spots. Although the community was not intentionally designed to limit the mobility of the teenagers, the

unintended consequence of decentralized and automobile-based landscape appear to have a direct impact

on their activities than any other intentional regulatory approaches.

ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 19/20

My findings imply that skateboarders' selection of certain public spaces for their activities is not

primarily based on the marginality of the space. Marginal space has little use-, political-, economic- or

symbolic-value to most populations in a community and thus is frequently utilized by marginalized

groups (Duncan 1983; Snow and Mulcahy 2001). The marginality of certain spaces may increase the

attraction of skaters to them, due to the lower risk of being caught by the police. However, marginality

itself does not provide a sufficient spatial environment for their activities. In fact, desirable spaces for

skating can be, and very often are, in primary spaces, such as staircases on a university campus. Thus,

while the tactics of control and regulation imposed upon street skating resembles those employed to rid

the public space of the homeless, the skateboarders’ ability to negotiate and overcome such constraints

differ from the options available to the homeless. The abundance of trickable architecture and short term

use of public space allows the skateboarders to maintain certain level of autonomy over where, when, and

how they skate.

The analyses indicate that the difficulty of regulating behaviors in public realm results from the

complexity of spatial, temporal, and social contexts in which the activities take place. Skateboarding uses

public space temporarily for unique and unintended purposes. This makes it a challenge for those who

strive to contain, displace, and exclude them from general public space. Finally, the teenagers’ reactions

to the constraints reflect “moral minimalism,” or maintenance of social order through avoidance

(Baumgartner 1988). This poses an interesting contrast to many existing studies of skateboarders that

portray their activity as social rebel and resistance through breaking of urban social order (e.g., Beal

1995). The way teenagers at large experience constraints on their access to public space and how they

negotiate such limitations call for a further investigation in the future.

ASA Annual Meeting 2006 Kato Skating the ‘Burb 20/20

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