Hoping to ride the rails again

450 sign drive for a skate park

Zadak Rice skateboarding at Somerville High School, a legendary spot for skaters until the city renovated the plaza to discourage youngsters from using the ledges, steps, and railings there. (Scot Liberatore)

Now that dogs have their own park in Somerville - two, in fact - will skateboarders be next? A year after high school renovations closed a popular skating site, the long-dormant movement for a city-built skate park has woken up.

A local group, Save Our Somerville, is spearheading the skate park drive, focusing on Albion Park as a potential location. Since the city had already funded improvements for that space, the group thought they might get in on the action.

SOS youth spent August collecting more than 450 signatures on a petition. A skate demo they organized on Aug. 30 on an improvised course at Conway Park drew about 200 people, said SOS president Matt McLaughlin.

Contrary to public perception, "There wasn't one fight. Nothing," Mike Sampson, 17, told the Somerville Board of Aldermen at their Sept. 9 meeting, where they submitted the petition, which does not specify a particular location.

Still, Terry Dolson, 17, told the aldermen that SOS canvassed "neighbors around Albion Street and most of them were all for the skate park."

Public opinion didn't always support the city's previous, de facto skate park: Somerville High School, where ledges, steps, and railings drew skateboarders and rollerbladers like bees to honey.

To local skaters, it's their Paradise Lost.

Somerville High was "legendary," Sampson said. "There's a lot of pro videos filmed there."

Though he's based in Kansas, Jeremy Stephenson of the rollerblading magazine Be-Mag, recognized the high school plaza from "tons of old videos," he wrote in an e-mail.

SOS member Adam Rich, 21, said out-of-towners used to ask him where the high school was. "Depending on our mood back in the day, we would either say, 'It's right over there,' or we would give them really weird directions."

"People have come from the West Coast," said Scot Liberatore, 22, last weekend. "All of a sudden, 13 to 15 pros [would] just come up and make you look stupid."

A lifelong Somerville resident who has rollerbladed for over a decade, Liberatore said the school accommodated skateboarders and rollerbladers, beginners to experts.

The plaza out front had "a good flow to it," he said. Skateboarders would come down a slanted ledge, around a pillar, and off the stairs. The concrete on the plaza was pitted where they used to jump down from the ledge.

He pointed at a set of "kink rail" metal banisters behind the school. "These are classic rails. Absolutely. . . . In many videos." He pulled up a video on his iPhone: A young man slid down the inclines and across the flats, then jumped down to the parking lot.

"It was the worst, being in school and being able to look out the window and see this," he said. "That's why I can't do fractions."

The gates to Eden closed last summer, when the city renovated the plaza in front of the student restaurant, removing slick stone and putting flower barrels on ledges.

School spokeswoman Gretchen Kinder said that the city made the changes specifically to discourage skating, but "I don't think it has actually been successful."

Black smears on the slanted ledge - now rough concrete, not smooth stone - show some people still skate there.

But Liberatore said that although rollerbladers still use the advanced rails out back, most skating had stopped. The plaza had been the main place for skateboarders and a training ground for beginning bladers.

"You can't get up to level three if there is no level one or two," he said. "I was so upset. I really almost cried."

At the Sept. 19 meeting, Sampson said, "there's really not any place to go" in Somerville.

"These young kids who were like 12, 11 years old have to go to Boston to find something . . . and that's dangerous for a little kid," Liberatore said.

The aldermen - one recalled discussing the issue as far back as 1996 - were on the skaters' side. "This is a need that we have to address," said board president Dennis Sullivan at the Sept. 9 meeting. Alderman Bob Trane suggested Foss Park, recently earmarked for $2 million in state funds, as a potential location.

The SOS activists envision a city park that pays tribute to the high school site - with real-world features and no half-pipes.

"I want it to bring kids back into skateboarding and rollerblading. It's a positive thing. It keeps kids out of trouble," Liberatore said.

McLaughlin said, "We're trying to show that a skate park can be a real positive thing for the community."

Still, the victory - if it comes - might be bittersweet. At the school, Liberatore leaned against the smooth banister. People went by with baby carriages and bikes, but no one with a skateboard. "I would never want a skate park if this was still here," he said.

A meeting to review designs for Albion Park is slated for later this month or early October.