Bob Cuddy: Skateboarding (near graves) is not a crime

I’ll grant you that skateboarders are not the quietest people you can have in the neighborhood. But do they really make enough noise to disturb the dead?

Some folks on the North Coast think so. They are objecting to a proposed skateboard park at the Cayucos Morro Bay Cemetery.

Their chief complaint: All those skinny, long-haired kids doing thunderous high ollies and crooked grinds on their rumbling boards would run counter to the decorum of a cemetery.

“A skateboard park would interfere with the solemnity of…grieving families,” was the way Morro Bay Councilman Bill Peirce characterized some neighbors’ point of view.

Some who worry about the skateboard park—called Norma Rose Park after a community activist who lobbies for youth—also fear skaters could be in danger crossing Highway 1 to get to it.

In response to neighbors’ complaints, the Morro Bay City Council this week sent a letter to the county Board of Supervisors suggesting skateboarding is an inappropriate use in the area.

I think there is another cultural element at play: the way society looks at skateboarders.

The ebullient kids, full of piss and vinegar, could hardly be more different from the folks who go to a cemetery, above or below ground.

Former county Supervisor Shirley Bianchi hinted at this last week when she supported the skateboarders. Bianchi said, “What we’re telling our kids in Cayucos is that dead people are more important than they are.”

Bianchi and her then-legislative aide Richard Macedo worked for a decade to make this park a reality.

Macedo believes that “if people are opposed to the presence of skateboarders” because of what they perceive the skateboard subculture to be, “there’s no way they’re going to get past that.”

But there are rebuttals to other arguments.

First, “this is not a quiet cemetery,” Macedo noted. It is next to Highway 1, which brings its own cacophony.

Second, no skateboarding would take place during funerals.

As to safety, the kids don’t have to cross Highway 1. There is a way in from Cayucos, under the highway and past the water treatment plant. Most youngsters likely would use this.

Finally, this would get the kids off Main Street, in the same way the Los Osos skateboard park removed youngsters from the commercial district.

In other words, it’s good for business.

This discussion is premature because there is no money to maintain the park once it’s built.

“I don’t see that project going anywhere for two years,” said Pete Jenny, county parks manager.

But it will be built one day, and with all due respect to those who visit the deceased at the cemetery, or who will attend burials there, I think their fears are unfounded.

Personally, when my time comes to push up daisies, I’d feel better if I knew kids were having fun above my final resting place.

For those who prefer the silence of the grave, well, think about Bianchi’s remarks about the living and the dead. As Macedo said, “This is a rare chance to help the children.”