By Hudson Genovese and Chris Steinmeyer
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 9, 1998

Skaters enraged by column

To the Editor

This letter is concerning the Feb. 25 article, "Skateboarding: Good times or bad news?," about skateboarding and its light and dark sides. yes, I am a skater so my opinion is a little on the not-so-objective side, but I am also a reasonable, 145-pound man, not a "180-pound tub of testosterone" as Eric E. Clingan so thoughtlessly wrote in his anti-skating editorial.

Let us begin with stakeboarding as a juvenile pastime and a sport like little league, which turns to baseball, or any other youth league sport which may turn to a pro career. Are they all juvenile tendencies? Or has the public been subjected so long to these art forms that they have come to accept and exalt them as all should someday accept skating? If skating is discredited as an art form and a sport then where does rollerblading stand in all this nonsense? I suppose today's fad-ridden society has immunity from slander.

As for an honor roll sticker and a skating sticker, I invite you to strike up an intellectual debate with me or any other of my ex-national honor society peers and your ignorance will be delivered to a moment of clarity.

I find it a personal attack and quite threatening that a person of Eric's stature would make such naive comments. Rodney Mullen is a professional skater who reads calculus books in his spare time. This could be one example to debunk Eric's brash statements.

One idea other than banning skating form Tucson in all its forms would be for the city to take the money that they would spend on increasing police patrols and modifying the city's already over-subsidized government buildings and build a large-scale, quality skatepark with all the benefits of a city and ramp only in a fairly condensed area. It's crazy, but it just might work.

I am one in a growing population of "juvenile, rock-headed, reckless, childish-toy-riding, rough-'n'-tumble rednecks," but I am one who can impress himself not only by skating but writing also. Some other of my boardriding colleagues might not be so apt to retaliate through society's accepted methods. Pay heed, Eric's article is the most enraging thing that I have come across in some time and if I wasn't so educated, I would need some [other] way to vent my frustration on such mindlessly generalized statements.

Eric, I urge you to set down the thesaurus and hug your local skateboarder. And as for Ezekiel [Buchheit], the rational, educated, voting member of society, who we need to see more of: thanks for the solidarity.

Hudson Genovese
Music Freshman

Chris Steinmeyer
MIS Sophomore