About Blythewood
The Town of Blythewood, SC, is a small (yet rapidly growing) community, neighboring South Carolina's capitol city of Columbia. There are maybe four stoplights in the downtown area of Blythewood. Twenty five years ago, there was nothing but a gas station and a few houses. Today, skate spots are still few, yet there are still lots of skateboarders at our school and in surrounding areas. There is plenty of growth, Industrial, and residential. Yet for skateboarders, there's a hole in this town, with no skate spots, no park, and no skateshop, there is no local "skate scene". The few spots here are growing increasingly unfriendly to skateboarders, as we are constantly run off from them. What Blythewood needs is a skatepark.
Back Ground
This all began when local Bryan Gross along with Matt Yarborough, Paul Watson, talked to the mayor (Mayor Amoth) and brought his attention to the postive benifits of having a public skatepark in Blythewood.
"We had just got run off from the "Asian Flavor five", and were really tired of being kicked out from places, so we decided to talk the mayor into building a public skatepark for us," Said Bryan Gross.
He agreed, if we could get 150 blythewood residents in favor to sign a petition for it. We did just that in under two months from November (when the petition began). Later, the job of organizing, planning, and promoting was turned over to Mason Rauch as of now, the concept of building a skatepark in Blythewood has been approved.
During the fall of 2006, we joined POUR IT NOW, and formed our own branch; POUR IT NOW- Blythewood. This was on the terms that we would form a board, and raise $1000 in six months for the Blythewood skatepark, the due date was April 15th of 2008 and we successfully reached our goal. This was thanks to volunteers and a much appreciated $250 donation from Mr. Micheal Gibson of Blythewood. Now we continue to raise awareness for the skatepark to the town council and the community of Blythewood, and the idea of a skatepark is constantly growing into more of a reality.
Why We Want and Need it
Also, you may be a business owner, or where you work, At least once, you have probably had the problem of kids, skateboarding or biking were you are trying to run your business. You fear that we will start "trouble" and "scare of customers". You say that if we get hurt, you will be liable. You may also complain about us "scuffing up" well painted handrails and curbs. But skateboarding isn't just some rebel pastime that kids do for fun. For many serious skateboarders, it's a commitment, a way of life, and a source of confidence and indivuality. Any skateboarder can tell that every time they land something new, how great they feel, and how proud and confident it makes them. It's also a positive outlet for anger and stress. It helps teenagers to forget all the pressure that they face, and all the anger pinned up, and enjoy life. Also it's a good form of exercise. But all this is thrown out the window if they are prohibited from doing it, or they have no place to. Skateboarding keeps many kids from sitting around and playing X-box all day, doing drugs, or getting into gangs, and other lazy or destructive activities. Yes, you can also hurt yourself doing it, but the same is true with pretty much any other sport. But the bottom line is we're going to skate and there's no stopping us. If we have a good, free, "come and go" skate-park with good design, we won't have to "disrupt" your business. This won't garruentee that you will never have skaters at your business again, because all skateboarders enjoy variety in skating at different places, but we're not going to go through trouble just to skate in Blythewood. We'll have no need to if we have a skatepark, Blythewood has hardly anything to skate. This is one great benefit for the general community. Another benefit is the attention it will bring to Blythewood. Having a skatepark will definately put Blythewood on the map, people all over the midlands and further will be talking about our skatepark. This will also bring more growth to Blythewood.
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