SKATEBOARDING: A SPORT WITHOUT A HOME

Daniel Seabaugh, 13, has been skateboarding for two and a half years and said he does not know why so many people have a problem with skaters. "The way I see it," Daniel said,"it's just a sport. It's a sport like anything else. That's what I don't understand. People kick us out if we skate on their property, but we don't have anywhere else to go."

There is a place in Cape Girardeau skateboarders call Concrete. Some who live far from Kingshighway have never been there, only heard of it like they've heard of Shangri-La.

A well-hidden, unused parking lot that skateboarders have augmented with wooden ramps and obstacles, Concrete does exist. But for most skateboarders, finding a place to participate in their sport is more difficult than any of the daring and difficult tricks.

Three skateboarders working out on the First Presbyterian Church parking lot last week said they've been asked to leave most of the lots in Cape Girardeau, including both Hardee's, the First Baptist Church and Trinity Lutheran Church. If they skate at Southeast Missouri State University they risk having their boards taken away, they said.

"Every place we go we get kicked off," said Daniel Seabaugh, a 13-year-old skater. His friends, 13-year-old Tony Boitnott and 14-year-old Jamaal Payne, were equally tired of being told to go somewhere else. Being approached by a reporter for an interview, their first reaction was that he was coming to kick them off the lot.

"Where are we supposed to skate?" asked Jamaal. "One cop said skate on the sidewalk, one said skate on the street."

Recently, new signs were erected at the eastern end of the Town Plaza Shopping Center prohibiting skateboarding and loitering and warning that violators would be prosecuted. Skateboarders had been ignoring the faded signs that were already there.

The crackdown came after customers at some of the stores complained about skaters telling them where they could and couldn't park their cars, nearly running into them and panhandling.

One store owner who skateboarded when he was a kid said his store was vandalized in revenge when he reported the skateboarders to the police.

He said the signs have made a big difference. The skateboarders have disappeared.

Cpl. Rick Schmidt of the Cape Girardeau Police Department had talked to the skateboarders at the Town Plaza numerous times. He says complaints have stopped since the new signs went up.

Technically, skateboarders could be ticketed for trespassing but that hasn't occurred so far, Schmidt said.

Both Schmidt and the store owner complained that the skateboarders who were frequenting the Town Plaza Shopping Center often treated people disrespectfully.

But both also sympathize with them. "There's not a good place for them to skateboard," Schmidt says.

Skateboarders have their own language and their own fashions and heroes, but it is an individual sport short on team spirit. Yet a year ago, a group of skaters went to the police department to talk with officers and city officials about where they could and couldn't skate. In response, the city set aside a blacktop area near the Conservation Shelter in Arena Park.

But Dan Muser, director of the city's parks and recreation department, said the skaters soon were jumping on picnic tables and atop the wooden covering over a fish pond.

"We finally had to run them off that. If they had been doing what we told them they could do, it would have been all right. Sometimes they cause their own problems," he said.

Skateboarders also have been told to leave the front of the A.C. Brase Arena Building. "I'm not opposed to skateboarding," Muser says. "But I also see a need of protecting other people."

Muser doesn't think skateboarding is unsafe. "It's safer than a lot of traditional sports," he said, pointing out that participants usually are well padded.

Part of the problem is that some of the tricks skateboarders like to do can damage curbs and benches. "I think there is a little bit of negativism toward people who skateboard," Muser said. "In large part that's because they're skateboarding in areas not designed for what they're trying to do."

A place made for skateboarding is the solution a few communities like Columbia have chosen (see related story). The three skaters doing ollies on the First Presbyterian parking lot have gone to Columbia just to skate.

Building a skateboard park is in the first phase of Cape Girardeau's 15-year parks plan. The possibility of turning the aging Capaha Park pool into a skate park also has been discussed.

Shane West Anderson, parks and recreation director in Jackson, said there is some interest in skateboarding in Jackson but more in setting up a hockey rink for inline skaters. "They (skateboarders) seem satisfied with the places they find on their own," he said. "At this point it has not gotten to be a problem where we need to get them a place to recreate."