Pissing in Your Own Cornflakes
I heard a rumor this morning that they’re closing down DeShong. For those of you not from Atlanta, DeShong park is the “street plaza,” wedges, ledges, rails and stairs no transitions to be found. But apparently plenty of drugs and underage drinking. Which, from what I’ve heard, is why they’re talking about plowing the whole thing.
How awesome is that?
Growing up, as I did, in Alabama in the 70s and 80s I remember seeing pictures of Dominguez, Fiola and Blyther battling it out a Del Mar and The Pipeline and I had. Nothing. Maybe familiarity breeds contempt. Lord knows that the kids at the skateparks around here don’t even pretend like they’re looking after the space. Maybe it’s because they’re stupid, maybe it’s because they’re kids. Either way, what the county giveth the county can taketh away and DeShong might be on the short list for the latter.
Damn shame, but not surprising, if it’s true.
That does not surprise me at all. I’ve seen (drug) deals go down at mountian park before, right in front of everyone. I’ve also see kids runing up in the woods at night at baycreek (gee I wonder what they are doing) people running around with beer in a cup (like everyone can’t smell it). Then one night at BC with my kids some idiot that was not even riding or skating was out there starting a fight with a bunch of people and pulled a knife on everyone. I think someone needs to patrol theses parks a little more than they do and maybe it will cut down on some of it but as always that would cost more money.
We were at Duncan Creek this morning and there was a prison detail cleaning up the park. The cop (a former skater) had basically the same “why the hell don’t they clean up after themselves?” opinion as every. single. other. adult. The drug deals and stuff, that’s just icing on the “there won’t be any more of these” cake.
Yea I don’t get it, you got a million dollar park to ride or skate for free and they are trashing it and using it for their dope deals and a hang out for getting messed up . I bet Gwinnett county is really scracthing their heads now and wondering if they should build the rest of them. I don’t even take kids to the parks anymore in the evening or night because of what’s going on and thats not right at all.
Those people trashing the place aren’t serious about riding or skating. Any time you have an unsupervised meeting place of many adolescents, where it is okay to loiter, there’s going to be some bad apples. Unfortunately, these semi-organized sports have ALWAYS had a tendency to attract fringe people doing sketchy things. These people aren’t technically involved in the activities at all, but are there because parks are a meeting place for skaters, BMX people, their friends who don’t ride, girls, etc.
But Gwinnett shutting down the park is not the answer. That would be like shutting down, say, Piedmont Park for the sketchy stuff that goes on there ( historically there’s been plenty of it.)
Darren, I don’t think closing down the parks is necessarily the solution, but you have to remember pretty much every Gwinnett county park is built in a residential area. If the parks get a bad reputation it won’t take long for HOAs to stary screaming “not in my back yard.” Kinda like how they’ve kept MARTA out of the suburbs (without the obvious racist undertones).