I Want to Get to the Top So Bad But It’s So Far Away

At Highland Skate Plaza tricks are perfected, ankles are shredded and sometimes kids almost feel like they’re flying.

Photography by Greg Plumis

The design of Highland Skate Plaza’s outdoor area mimics that of a downtown business plaza — cement ledges and walkways, sloping brick expanses. Skaters — from ten-year-old beginners to veterans in their late twenties — arrive here daily to practice their art.

There’s also an indoor park, much smaller than the outdoor version. Here kids attend skateboard camp or get private instruction from the Bellevue Parks & Recreation staff. They swing up and down the weathered quarter pipes, half pipes and ramps. Above wooden benches gouged and smoothed by time there’s a poster board, on which hours, rules and lesson times are written in faded blue marker. A card is tacked up on the wall, sent to the park staff by a student: “I am so happy at how much I have improved since Monday! I look forward to class every morning. Thank you, Joey.”

On a weekday evening in July, the outdoor park is bustling: skaters are working on ollies (the deck flips frontside up), nollies (when the nose flips first), fakies, kickflips, heelflips. There’s lots of slamming (falling over). The smallest kids wear helmets. The older ones can’t afford that, socially. Helmets are not cool. Dust from a nearby softball field drifts toward the skate park in a brown haze. Summer is full of green and breeze.

Skaters troop up the hill to the park from the nearby strip malls or spring from parents’ cars. Two look-alike boys, nearly grown up, lie on the grass, one skateboard between them, smoking, exchanging quiet monosyllables, checking messages on an iPhone. If they’ve been carving along the park’s surfaces, it seems they have no plans to continue now. Summer’s magnetism is insistent and tells us to kick back and rest.

Behind the boys the session continues at all levels, with basic and even advanced bangers executing grinds (sliding across a ledge or rail), backside grinds, fity-fifty grinds and kickflips. Skaters mix up the standard terminology, making their own language to name favorite tricks.

Friendly chat aside, there’s the classic kid imperative to fit in, to be cool. But there’s a larger imperative: they come here because they love this sport. And as with any sport, they’re reaching for a higher level. There’s always the next try.

“What’s the trick?” one newcomer calls out to the others. Someone answers, “Kick to fakie.” A few boys try to ride up a pyramid-like cement block, then perform an ollie after making it down. A clutch of bemused women observes from the park’s perimeter. There’s lots of gentle cussing throughout the park.

It’s an orderly scene: kids wait their turn to try the trick. Conversation is brief and brisk. “I wanna go to Jamba Juice, do you wanna go to Jamba Juice?” One response: “How about McDonald’s?” Another: “I don’t know, I just want a Dick’s, man.”

Other comments filter across the park.

“Suicide Girls are nice . . . ”

“Did you do it?”

“Remember that day when . . . ”

“You didn’t pop!”

“I didn’t wanna overdo it.”

“I wanna get to the top of it so bad but it’s so far away!”

“It’s so much easier to fakie because you can just nollie out of it.”

The wheels rumble out the words.

One boy in green shoes complains about the difficulty of the pyramid. His sideburns are curling with sweat. Both his Achilles tendons are scraped bright pink. His knees: also raw and pink. And a circuitry of little scrapes over his ankles. He carves through the park again and again.

Three girls arrive and commence their practice. One is Kristin Eberling, the Seattle program coordinator for Skate Like a Girl, a community of female skaters and their allies. She tries out a move, then laughs, “I hate that trick.”

Back indoors, lessons are over, and parents retrieve their kids. Kevin Fretwell, one of the Bellevue Parks and Rec staff and today’s instructor, begins to close the place down. He’s taught kids here for four years and likes the job. “At almost all times there’s like five people working out in the park,” he says. “It closes at eleven. After closing time, they have the dimmer lights. We have security cameras. There’ve been a couple of incidents, but usually it’s been pretty good and pretty positive all around.” Kevin empties garbage into a plastic bag. He grabs a skateboard, then rolls down the driveway to throw the bag in the dumpster.

Calin Garcia works on his tricks, shirtless. A long white scar trails from his shoulder blade down his back. “I ran into a ledge and it split open,” he says in a matter-of-fact way. He puts on his shirt as the sky gets darker.