Do hippies dream of bygone Skateparks?

"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?"-Gaff, Bladerunner.

Adey

I still dream about the old South Shields skatepark. As often as once a month I flow about the place in my sleep. BMX dreams often bring about infinite trick balance and stunt based impossibilities but largely my dreams of South Shields are highly realistic and based on my own skill level. While asleep I'm jumping hips, wallriding the red fence, busting kickouts over the driveway and smashing into harsh flatbanks. I awake groggy headed, wileing out, confused, breathless  and filled with the overwhelming desire to session the park. Only to realise seconds later that it is gone.

Sure the new park is infinitely better for learning tricks and it's the kind of facility that my 13 year old self would have wished for with all my might to have and to ride. As I grew and also in hindsight I've realised how unique and awesome the old park was.
Things must move on.
I just loved that old park so much it hurts. I loved its concrete and its tarmac. It hurts to lose it. It hurts that I can never again have a 540 tyre tap session on the bowl. It hurts that I can never tool at it and blast the gap over the bowl again. It hurts that the place shaped my style and my friends' styles and that the younger kids who grew up after ride sort of different. It hurts that I had lines that I wanted to do there and won't ever be able to do. It hurts when I see footage of this place, it's like looking through photos of a long lost friend missing and presumed dead. It hurts my stomach when I remeber the old park, I begin to well up and feel sort of sick. I just fucking hurts.

I wish so badly that I could go back there, back to 95 96 or 97, back with my crew, back to spending all day everyday down there. The dramas, the fights, the falling outs, the battles with radgees, the bong smoking, the cider drinking, the bike progression, all these events were integral parts to my growing up. Fragile memories disappearing into the emulsion of a past life like tears lost to the rain. Good times, bad times and times that shaped a man. All now gone.

I'm an atheist and thus not allowed to enjoy an afterlife, even talking about it brings up waves of hypocrisy related nausea-If I was a good and deluded religious type and I was allowed to choose a place to spend my eternity it would be a sunny afternoon with my BMX at the old South Shields skatepark.

I find all this incredibly hard to put into words, the old skatepark is the only place that taps a deep well of emotion in me, more so than anywhere else, more so than my family home, or any place I've ever lived or travelled to.

Was the park really as good as I remember or was it just the era, the friends and the rose tinted nostalgia filling me up with warm thoughts. Through my youth the park was my retreat and escape from a life I hated. School would finish and I would race to the skatepark. I hated school, I loathed it, I had few friends, I was misunderstood and I was utterly unhappy there. I found friends and rad times at the park, I found an outlet for my aggression and energies, I found a way to be infinitely creative and I finally had something in my life that I was proud of and something that I truly loved. I also found something to keep me out of the house for long periods of time. The Skatepark scene was totally disassociated with the aggressive 2 faced sheep-brained asshole fuck-ups at school. I had my own friends and scene, I knew older kids that were so influential to my thinking that many of their views guide my decisions to this day. The park was something special and tight and unique and now it's gone.

I can appreciate the new South Shields park and I have had many awesome days there but for me it just isn't the same, the magic has gone.

I love my current friends in Newcastle and I ride in one of the healthiest scenes in the country and I'm totally happy with it, so why do I still dream of those glory days at South Shields skatepark night after night? What is my subconscious trying to tell me?

It's impossible to go back there.
It has been destroyed.
The old scene no longer exists in any sort of recognisable form.
My old life has been destroyed.
And on and on it goes.

Me

Mouse

Michael Knight

Near the new ASDA in Shields there used to be a well. It served the town folk well and was an important part of the community. It's now covered by a concrete slab.

All that it was, now gone.
Gone, forgotten, destroyed.
All those conversations and relationships and chit chat and banter and all that water.
Covered by the finality of a concrete slab.
Gone forever.

Life can be cruel.