Cleveland Out Of Money; Builds Skatepark Instead

Cleveland City Council has passed a plan to build a $550,000 skate park on the east side of the Flats. This coming just days after the city laid off hundreds of city workers including police and firemen. I don't want to get into politics on this blog but this has to be one of the dumbest city projects ever.

Now I was too young to remember and experience the Flats when they were in their prime. However, my parents and older relatives took full advantage of the once prime waterfront bar district in Cleveland. For many years now, the once popular Flats have been abandoned and run down due to crime and a rough economy. Shooters is ironically about the only thing left there now.

Are skater-boys really the crowd we want to bring into the Flats? My beef with this is personal. I guess because I grew up in a different culture and possibly a whole different generation. Call me crazy but when we were bored as kids, we picked up a ball of some sort. We played whiffle ball, a pick-up basketball game, or played some old fashioned tackle football.

Thanks to the X-games and MTV, kids are growing up wearing jeans so tight an anorexic model couldn't fit into. Maybe I was a sheltered kid who's parents would watch the Sopranos with them instead of MTV. This is going to be the downfall of America. I never got into the whole "rebel against society" and ride skateboards thing. Its one thing if your living in Canada to want to rebel but this is Motha Fucking America!

And do these kids really need an expensive new park to skate around in? If the Tony Hawk video games taught me anything is that these skaters like to "shread" on random abandoned shit rather than a skatepark. So why is our broke ass city spending half a million on these kids when they can be perfectly happy riding on the shit hole we currently call the Flats?

Anyways, stay in school, wear larger jeans, and be thankful your living in America; a society that is ok with your already weird habits. Also, pick up a damn baseball once in a while. We need more Americans in all these American sports!