There ain't no love for Love

Kyle Arcomano

Persuasive Writing

Reaction Paper 2

The first question I asked myself to was, “what exactly happened to Love Park for skateboarders that make it so different than in the past?” In order for me to get a clear understanding of the situation, I began researching news articles, scholarly journals, and using my personal observations. As a skateboarder myself, I knew that Love Park was a mecca for skateboarding since early 1990’s. I saw Love Park all over skateboarding advertisements in magazines and clips were featured in almost every skateboard video at the time. To skateboarders, Love Park is a perfectly designed skate park located right in the middle of a city. It is surrounded by public transportation which made it a very popular and convenient spot for the skateboarding community. Due to all the fame and a hype about Love Park, especially when the X-games were hosted at Love Park and City Hall in 2001, city officials decided to shut down Love Park for skateboarders in 2003.

“The plan involved both a physical restructuring of the park and the strict statutory

enforcement of a 2000 Municipal Code banning skateboarding in and around the

park. To reinforce their plan, City officials instituted an around-the-clock police

officer patrol of the park area to impose the skateboarding prohibition with $300

citations and possible imprisonment.”

The reasoning behind all of this was simply because us skateboarders are deviant, cause damage, and are worthy of removal. Now skateboarding is not permitted on the grounds, but officials still allow homeless crack heads to roam the property and abuse drugs.

My second question was to figure out “who was in charge of the banning of Love Park?” This is when I had to go outside of my personal knowledge and research databases and news articles from the past. For the most part I knew the city was fully supporting banning skateboarding, but it wasn’t until recently that I found out Mayor Nutter proposed the bill to ban skateboarding and renovate the property. This did not only affect the skateboarding culture around the world, but it highly affected 92 year old Edmund Bacon. Bacon was the famous architect of Love Park who was entirely against the renovation. He was so against it that he stated, “I want to ride a skateboard across LOVE Park and get arrested," which he followed through with in November 2002. He successfully made it through Love Park without getting arrested and earned respect from skateboarders around the world. This went to prove that not everyone in the Philadelphia community supported the new bill.

The final question I wanted to get an answer for was “how have people reacted to the new renovation?” Without a doubt, the entire skateboarding community (whether it be skateboarders, photographers, filmers, magazines, or companies), does not approve what the city of Philadelphia has done. For some people, it was part of their daily routine to hangout and enjoy Love Park. For others, it was worth a trip to experience the skateboarding terrain at Love Park. The skateboarding community responded to Mayor Nutter’s plan by a one million dollar donation by DC shoes in 2004. “The money, in increments of $100,000 a year, would pay to repair skateboard damage and subsidize a monitor to ensure that skateboarding takes place at approved times.” The financial aid was never accepted by the city, and as a result the conflict continues to grow between skateboarders and the city of Philadelphia.

B

I enjoyed testing the limits of Wikipedia until I discovered a few days later that my statement was erased off the site. The topic I contributed to is Love Park, which already had a subheading titled “Skateboarding.” I read through everything that was already posted, which to me was all truth and entirely accurate. After the final paragraph, I added a little bit of my own knowledge of skateboarding at Love Park. The statement I posted was all facts about the consequences of skateboarding Love Park and about skateboarders being banned from the property but the homeless crack heads are still there. I believe the information I contributed was credible and flowed nice with the rest of the statements. Apparently Wikipedia has thought other wise and most likely had a scholar edit out my statement maybe because it sounded illegitimate.

Considering my information was deleted from the site, I do believe Wikipedia is getting to be a more reliable source on the internet because of those who edit out miscellaneous information that people contribute. I heard a rumor that a study was conducted that compared Wikipedia to an encyclopedia, showing that Wikipedia is more than 90% accurate. I think Wikipedia is a good source of information to get an overview of a topic, but I don’t always trust the information on the website. After I get an idea of the topic, I then outsource to a more reliable and scholarly website.