By Ezekial Buchhiet
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 25, 1998

It's bikers, not skaters, who get in the way

Every Tuesday and Thursday I walk to my science class. And every Tuesday and Thursday I very nearly completely lose bowel control when, while walking along the sidewalk, I am forced to dodge Psycho Motorcycle Rider. I can count on this man to twice a week ignore every traffic law instated since Precambrian time and instill in me a deep appreciation for hereditary instincts of survival. I hate this man. But twice a week he gets away with it.

In my mind, skateboarders are doing their best to not be disorderly or in people's paths. The bikes have their own little roads designated for them and them only. We pedestrians have our little paths which we also share with bicyclists newly risen from caves, confused and wondering why the hell we are constantly in their way, walking. The skateboarders, realizing that pedestrians have the right to walk on the sidewalk, create their own paths and peacefully glide along the planters, rails and walls of our fine buildings here at the university.

And, in all honesty, how much of a problem does this create. How many times, on the walk to class, have you had a near-death experience resulting from a skateboard launched off the side of some wall seeking lodging in your nasal passages? In reality, it's the evil bike riders, possessed, perhaps, by some beast of hell risen once again to make pedestrians lives an endless demonically-inspired misery. Skateboards consist mostly of wood, with perhaps three pounds of metal surrounded by plastic wheels. Nobody fears a skateboard. Now a bike. A bike has the Groin Masher. The Groin Masher is the bar on the front of the bike holding the wheel on, and leads up to the handle bars. Sadist bike riders have come to learn that if they bear down hard on some poor unsuspecting pedestrian, they can inflict their own sick version of birth control. I fear bikes.

The skateboarders are a bunch of kids just having fun. They ride around getting their kicks by performing stunts on school property. How much damage could a skateboard cause? I suppose if a boarder simply picked up the skateboard and repeatedly slammed it into one of the several grotesque sculptures floating around campus, they could cost us some money. But this isn't much of a popular move, and even if it was, I'd salute it. Those sculptures scare me.

So my theory is this: Skateboarders cause no more damage than a bike, which I regularly see people performing stunts with on the fountain by Old Main, and are nowhere near as disorderly as your average frat boy, who always seems to get away with anything. It's the cops, with nothing better to do than gain weight and atrophy, jealous of the boarders' funky jive and the fact that they actually are having fun, who cause the problem. Who would really care about the skateboarders if the police didn't make it such a big deal?

Ezekial Buchhiet is a freshman majoring in English.