20-year-old dream comes true: Manila opens skate park

WHAT was once a dream is now a reality: The country’s first skate park which charges no entrance fees can be found on Zulueta Street corner Quirino Avenue in Manila. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

AFTER years of playing hide-and-seek with authorities who want them off the city’s streets or parks, skateboard enthusiasts in Manila finally have a place they can call their own.

Thanks to a partnership between the city hall and a local youth organization, a 1,700-square-meter government lot in Paco has been transformed into a skate plaza, complete with a six-foot deep “bowl” and obstacles named “Snake Run,” “China Gap,” “Quarter Pipes,” “Stairset” and “FunBox.”

“This is a dream come true after 20 years of continuous lobbying,” Richard Espiritu, president of One Manila Org, told the Inquirer during the special park’s inauguration on Saturday.

The group which has about 2,000 members in the city had long been pushing for the project until an agreement was reached in 2013 under the administration of Mayor Joseph Estrada.

The 34-year-old Espiritu has been skateboarding since the age of nine—either in public areas where the police always shooed him and his friends away, or in private spaces where security guards also drove them off.

“We did not have our own place back then; we [would always] run away from the police,” he said, recalling how he was once caught and detained for three hours.

Skateboarding not a crime

Now grown up and working as deputy chief of the Manila Traffic and Parking Bureau, Espiritu has this to say about skateboarding: “Our sport is not a crime.” Like any sport or hobby, skateboarding can help keep the youth off drugs and other vices, he stressed.

It is also an outlet, a form of expression, since most of the skateboarders are also artists, he added.

The park which also includes a basketball court and a stage was built at a cost of P13 million, the funds drawn from the Office of the Mayor, according to assistant city engineer Rogelio Legaspi.

Admission is free and the park is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

Located at the corner of Zulueta Street and Quirino Avenue, the skate plaza was designed by Alain Privado, an architect by day and, for the last 11 years, a skateboarder by night.

“I based my concept on skate parks in other countries like the United Stated, China and Japan,” Privado said. “I visited Singapore and they seem to have skate parks in every district. In the United States, the people welcome and patronize skateboarding. In the Philippines, not [so] much.”

Like Espiritu, Privado observed that skateboarders in the country were stereotyped as idlers or, worse, street gang members. “I skateboard but I am not [a troublemaker]. The problem is not the sport but the discipline [among skateboarders],” he said.