Boarder wars

The city and neighborhood associations are cracking down on skateboarding just as the sport is poised to hit the big time. With few places to skate freely, what's a shredder to do?

by Yvonne Abraham

Travis Perry and Ricky Greenwood are flying.

It is a perfect, breezy Saturday afternoon, and Copley Square is jammed with people, faces turned up to the sun, pulling every last minute from the summer. Locals lounge on the grass. Tourists snap pictures of grand old Trinity Church. Determined-looking Back Bay shoppers walk briskly along the path that runs through the square.

Perry and Greenwood take turns jumping the Trinity Church stairs. They wait till the path below is clear, push off on their skateboards, clear all six stairs, land at the bottom, and roll away, fast. And they skate along the edges of the steps, trying to stay vertical with just two wheels on the stone. They prefer the bigger marble stairs behind the fountain, but today, italian-ice and lemonade stands have parked themselves in prime push-off territory, and there are too many people there. It's better at night, when the square is less busy.

Right now, the church will do. The skateboarders alarm some of the tourists -- the sound of the wheels hitting the bricks all of a sudden, then clackclacking toward them, can be disconcerting. Occasionally, one of the riders misses and falls, his skateboard bouncing on the ground, or rolling away on its own, until one of them chases it down. Mostly, pedestrians stay out of their way, and the two teenagers get caught up in their grinds and ollies. So caught up that at first they don't see the police car slowly pulling up beside them.

Travis Perry and Ricky Greenwood are busted.

Skateboarding as a sport may be exploding lately, but life for Boston skaters is about to get a lot more difficult. There are 6.7 million skateboarders in America now, compared to 5.4 million in 1993, according to research company American Sports Data. But neighborhood groups, and now City Hall, are not quite as enamored of the sport as are its growing ranks of devotees. It's already illegal to ride a skateboard in city parks, including Copley Square. A city ordinance likely to be approved by City Council next week also bars skateboarders from all city property -- from the recently refurbished Boston Public Library to the vast, barren City Hall Plaza. Although the city has offered to build a skateboard park in East Boston next year, right now there's nothing to take the place of prohibited areas. Which, despite the sport's fast-widening mainstream appeal, is driving skaters further toward the fringe.

Skaters say people don't understand them, that they're victims of stereotypes, not to mention discrimination. Their critics say skateboarders scare other people away from public places, cause injuries, damage property, and ruin everybody else's good time.

Forward to part 2

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.