— Vern Laird, Germantown skater and filmer for 411 Video Magazine, after last Saturday’s X Games-related skateboarding event at City Hall.

By 2 p.m. on Saturday, the anticipation of the more than 6,500 spectators lining the metal barricades around Dilworth Plaza, City Hall, had reached an anxious pitch. Rain-soaked fans pushed up against the fencing 20 deep, hung in tree branches and climbed atop roofs across the street. The skate spot renowned for its natural elements was now adorned with obstacles as if it were a video game incarnate. A DJ spun hip-hop and punk from atop a 20-foot-high ABC Sports booth. And eight of the world’s most respected street skaters roamed around, waiting for the spot to dry.

During this, one ESPN official laughed as he told the story of City Hall security screaming at them the day before for drilling a contest handrail into the plaza’s granite steps and slabs — the same ones that skateboarders are infamous for "destroying" downtown. Judging from figures the Capital Program Office once submitted to City Council, the drilling was probably about $6,000 of damage. But no matter: ESPN had the city’s blessings.

"It’s kinda surreal," said Jefferson Pang, Zoo York Skateboards’ team manager and judge at last weekend’s X Games street skating contest. Pang has come down from Brooklyn to skate Love and City Hall numerous times. But Saturday’s event was an odd big-money promotion of real-life street skateboarding, not sponsored by any actual skateboard companies but by a city government that had banned it.

Brad J. Lilley, the contest announcer, worked up the crowd: "The city’s behind this, the TV networks are behind this and all of you are behind this — we’re making history." History in that not only has ESPN never held a true street contest, no city government has ever held one like this. Not on its own sacred land. But cries of hypocrisy aside, it might be the least it could’ve done; it could’ve been recognition that Philadelphia’s athletes, at least where the X Games are concerned, are skateboarders. After all, the only Philadelphians scheduled to compete, of the 350 athletes attending, competed Saturday. Four professional skaters, given passes to skate City Hall for the day.

In June 2000, City Council heard testimony on a bill that would criminalize skating. Managing Director Joe Martz testified that day. It was a reprise of his role in 1994, when, as deputy commissioner for public property, he testified about a bill that he requested forbidding skateboarding at the Municipal Services Building. In 1994, though, the city’s skaters had Jesse Rendell, the mayor’s skateboarding son. Because of him, the mayor gave an oral promise not to enforce the ban at Love until an alternative facility was built. Barely anything of that plan was built, and the rest of it is DIY history.

As for downtown skating, at the 1994 hearing, then-rookie pro Rick Oyola called it: "[Y]ou are going to start at MSB, then you are going to go to Love Park, and then you are going to say City Hall, and then that is going to take that whole block. … We all know that. I mean, you guys know that."

Last September, City Council did take the rest of the block, as well as the rest of the city, too. Skating on public property could net a $300 ticket, a violation transferable to the parents of a minor.

In a meeting with an ESPN official that this writer participated in while working at another paper, that official told of going on a walking tour of downtown spots for the street event. He told of how big ESPN wanted this street event to be. He told of how when he saw Love Park so much in TransWorld Skateboarding, skating’s highest circulation magazine, he said to his bosses that that’s where they should be. And he told of how during that downtown tour, they said to Martz they wanted Love, and how Martz explained the situation that went down just weeks before — passage of the bill banning skating — but that City Hall was a possibility. (He also mentioned that ESPN’s biggest fear was that skateboarders would band together and boycott the games, in light of Philly’s anti-skating legislation, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.)

That was last winter. And then, like now, Martz, who requested the first bill to single out skateboarders from all other action sports, wouldn’t return this writer’s calls.

By 3 p.m. Saturday the pros took to practice, and an eerie kind of excitement ensued among the fans — nearly all of them personae non grata any other day. A heckling friend of resident and contestant Kevin Taylor jokingly shouted to him, "Five-0! Five-0!" and Taylor played along, hunching forward and scanning the area for police. The weirdness of it all, the strange feeling of how blown up skateboarding was allowed to be Saturday, was usually broached with contempt or hope. Host Sal Masekela even announced, "Hopefully when we leave, the city will find a way to stop giving you tickets for skating here." Afterward he said, "With us being here, it just doesn’t make much sense that kids can’t skate here."

It was dumbfounding to conceive of the extra exposure that Dilworth Plaza will now get, above and beyond the skateboard media coverage that police Capt. James Tiano lamented about in his testimony at last summer’s Council meeting. Three spots on the same block, one of which is featured in the best-selling Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 PlayStation game. Now City Hall would be on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2; parent company Disney had swept in and was about to show off the city to the entire nation. As if that weren’t enough, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. people were happily passing out pins with the Love insignia.

Within an hour after the event, when more than 20 skaters were sessioning the six-stair that the contest featured so prominently, police officers had repositioned the metal barriers to end it all, ushering everyone away. As a well-known downtown officer who’s on a friendly basis with many skaters put it, "On the one hand, I think [the X Games are] good for the city. But on the other, the next day things’ll be back to normal."

— Steve Williams, West Philadelphia pro, on police sweeps through Love Park; from TransWorld’s The Reason video

But back to normal isn’t exactly comforting for city skaters whose unappreciated devotion to Philadelphia is ignored. In last year’s Council meeting, local skateboarder Bernie McDonald testified that he’d rather have a replica of Love Park to skate than "getting chased and beaten by police" at 16th and JFK. A disbelieving Councilman Frank Rizzo tried to get McDonald to retract the statement for accuracy’s sake, so McDonald elaborated: "I’ve been slammed on my face by the police, I’ve been kicked in the gut, I’ve been punched in the head … at Love Park at City Hall." Rizzo asked McDonald if he had complained. He replied: "I tried to complain about an officer once … Whenever I called back they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ … They just ignore you ’cause you’re just some punk kid on a skateboard."

The hardest part for anyone involved in this is what to do with the skaters. Not many expect the city to do much. X Games officials, like host Sal Masekela and street contest announcer Brad Lilley, hope that through this event, the city will be more aware of skating’s stature here. "It’s great to have the City of Philadelphia welcome us with open arms," said Lilley, "but a lot of local skaters are pissed about not being able to skate here. It took money [to have the event], but it’s not really about that. It’s about raising awareness."

"It’s bringing more and more attention to it. Hopefully, John Street will change his mind, take it back how it used to be in ’93. They’re gonna see how big skateboarding is, and how it’s one of the best sports around here." Spencer, a 17-year-old North Philadelphian who was forcibly arrested for skating at the University of Pennsylvania last year, adds, "John Street knew what he was doing — if the city doesn’t want people to skate here, they shouldn’t have [the contest] at City Hall."

Pang, the judge, agrees with the unnamed officer that nothing will come of it, except for economic inflows. "I’m sure the city bent over backward for all the money the X Games are bringing in, but I don’t think it’ll make a difference."

And it probably won’t. After the skateboard ban, the councilman who introduced the bill, Michael Nutter, told the Inquirer: "This is not the end but the continuation of more work, because we have made a commitment to build a facility in Center City." But Franklin’s Paine Skatepark Fund, a nonprofit looking to build more parks in Philadelphia, has seen nothing about that.

For the first time, the city can see skateboarding as producing something. Without the X Games skating might only seem like a negative, a loss in the capital budget. But ask recruiters at any college; ask University of the Arts admissions, which has placed ads in skateboard magazines. Ask contemporary clothing stores and local galleries. Ask those armchair city historians who cry about the low retention among college grads. Skateboarding is one of the activities, primarily of the young, that ESPN and Comcast and the city has invested in "branding." Maybe it’s not producing like so many other things to do in the city that reduce it to some level of commerce. It’s raising the level of enjoyability, adding something more to the city than just consuming and living. And if some people stopped to think about what they’re trying to end, it could be appreciated for what it is: recreation.

— Kerry Getz, grabbing the microphone again after accepting his Gold Medal at the street contest.

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