When we got to the bowl, green shirt kept yelling, and mandated that he wasn’t going to let us ride the skatepark.  His shorter, stockier buddy, in a white shirt, stepped up and informed us they weren’t going to call the police; they would handle us themselves.  We tried to reason with them.  I told them that I had just put on brand new plastic-covered pegs, that wouldn’t so much as scratch the coping.  White shirt argued that it didn’t matter, because our bikes are made out of metal, and metal would damage the park.  

“Fifteen parks!” I exclaimed.  “You have fifteen parks in the Valley you can skate any time you want, and you want to hassle us about riding one of them?”  I asked white shirt if he had ever ridden pools illegally before.  He said that he had.  I asked him how he could be against us riding the skatepark illegally if he himself had skated pools illegally.  Hypocritically skirting my query, he kept maintaining that we would destroy the park.  I told him I thought he was biased against bike riders.  He insisted that he used to race bmx, so how could he be biased against bike riders?  I told him that Mike McIntyre used to race bmx as well, but it’s mainly because of his company that we aren’t allowed in the Tempe skatepark in the first place. 

I chilled on the argument for a little bit to ask the Buckeye boys if they wanted to stay, because I sure wanted to.  I had come to ride, and I was going to ride.  “You’ve got to make a stand sometime.” I said, “It might as well be now.”  The Buckeye boys all agreed they were down to stay and not be intimidated by these fools. 

I figured I’d get the party started by rolling up to the bowl edge near the pyramid.  Just as I went to drop in, I heard someone coming up from behind, and then I felt a big whack on my rear wheel.  I flew out the other side and checked it out.  Green shirt had swung his board as hard as he could, trying to take out spokes.  Instead he had hit my brand new, never-been-used Demolition plastic peg with his truck, and it had dented the aluminum core of the peg!  Ironic, don’t ya think?   

Both the Buckeye boys and green shirt came around to where I flew out.  Green shirt’s face was so red, it looked like his goddamn head was going to blow into little bits of magenta that would splatter all over my new Dustbowl shirt!  He screamed, “Go ahead!  Throw that f%*&ing bike at me!!!” He held one end of his board in his hands, ready to Barry Bonds me over the 8 foot fence.  I told him calmly, “I’m not going to throw my bike at you.  If I’m going to fight you, put that board down and we’ll do this like men.”  Green shirt put his board down, ready to fight.  Then I burst his bubble.  “I didn’t come here to fight, man.  I came here to ride my bike.”  He looked at me like I had just taken his dolly.  Then he said, “Well if you drop into that pool, I’m gonna drop in right after you.”  “It’s a deal.” said I. 

I was so caught up in all of this bullshit that I didn’t even think about getting footage of it.  Buckeye Jerry, however, was thinking much more clearly than me.  He pedaled out to his truck right away to get his camera.  Meanwhile, white shirt took a run and flew out close to where we were.  I got into another heated debate with him, but when Jerry returned with camera rolling, he shut up and retreated to the opposite corner, never to be heard from again.   

I began dropping in and taking short runs, being considerate and waiting for a turn each time, as I always do at a park.  Green shirt took runs like normal as well, seeming hesitant to follow through on his threat since we had an evidence-collecting device running.  Before long, though, his hatred got the best of him.  He began dropping in on me and following me when I would take a run.  As he skated behind me, he would screech, “Whoa, dude!  That’s dangerous!” and, “Whoa, shit, this is dangerous!”  He started kicking his board out at me, exclaiming to the camera that he had slipped on a rock each time.  “So he’s trying to intimidate me from riding but attempting to look like he’s not directly assaulting me.” I thought.  But I kept on riding. 

There were other skaters there as well.  Most of them didn’t say anything, but one young skater was fully supportive of us bike riders.  He had gotten sick of green shirt’s bowl-hogging ways before we even got there, and he was happy to lend us some moral support.  He even took a little run on the street course with Jerry’s bike.   

Another skater, an older, stocky guy who was standing on the deck waiting to drop in, motioned for me to take a run right after green shirt had followed me, throwing one of his tantrums.  After I flew out, the older skater flew out next to us, and said, “You know, I used to be a racist, too.”  It was good to know we weren’t the only ones in the park that had properly identified the mindset that green shirt and white shirt were coming from. 

Green shirt did finally get a good one in on me, though.  As I was airing the hip into the coping bowl, he kicked his board out at me and it hit my bike, setting me off balance in the air and making me wreck, falling about 8 feet to the bottom of the bowl.  My inner thigh got knackered pretty good with that one, but I kept riding. 

At long last, the older, stocky guy skated over and informed us that white shirt had just called the cops.  Turns out white shirt had been the smarter of the two, refusing to give any kind of incriminating performance for the camera.  We figured we’d leave, seeing as how we had made our point already, we had some unbelievable footy, and we had planned beforehand to ride street after riding the park.  As I left, I asked green shirt what his name was, because I wanted to give him a credit in the bikes in skateparks documentary I will be making next year. He refused to relinquish it.  “You know, that’s how the Ku Klux Klan works, too.” I told him.  “They don’t want to be identified, and that’s why they wear the white hoods!”  We left the park as I made the motion of pulling a nasty pointy white hood over my dome.  “That’s why they wear the white hoods!”  I kept repeating.   

As many concrete parks as I’ve ridden, I’ve only had this kind of bullshit go down once before. There are a few skaters out there that are very prejudiced against bmx riders, but rarely do they make such a show of it.  I could have fought green shirt.  I wasn’t scared of him.  But what would that have accomplished?  All the skaters in the park would have gotten this image of bike riders coming into “their” park and starting a bunch of shit.  By refusing to fight green shirt, I made him have to attack me.  As a result, he ended up looking like a big ol' dooshbag in front of God and everybody (click here to see video). 

After all was said and done, I couldn’t have asked for better footage.  Too bad I don’t know green shirt’s real name, so’s I can give him proper credit in my documentary.  I guess he didn’t want to be seen by the rest of the world as the bigot he really is.  Just like the racists.  That is why they wear the white hoods, you know.