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Skateboarding the Square
Several years ago, deep in the ‘90s, all the battle lines were different than they are now. Things controversial then aren’t controversial now. Things not controversial then are controversial now. Reading back issues of Metro Pulse can be disorienting.
Some of us are old enough to remember a time, back before we worried about the trees and the concrete, when the most controversial thing about Market Square was skateboarders. Before al Qaeda, they were regarded as Knoxville’s chief menace. In decisive action, City Council banned skateboarding from the square altogether. It became a furtive pursuit known only to certain reckless desperadoes.
It was interesting to see skateboarding return this past Saturday, right out in the open. It looked like an organized act of civil disobedience, a revolution, a skateboarding jihad. But it was actually the Next Day 2004 Skate/Bike Exhibition, right there on the no-skateboarding square. The official event had little publicity, but drew a couple hundred kids of all ages to watch a dozen skate-boarders, and almost as many trick bicyclists, performing impressive feats of a sort we used to see on the square before the ban.
The police were right there but didn’t raise a baton. One police officer remarked, “I think we should have this every two weeks.” Jill Colquitt, who works at nearby Yee-Haw Industries, said the authorities were at first leery of the idea; one law-enforcement official told her Market Square was “the most illegal place to skateboard in Knoxville.” But, she says, “maybe because I don’t wear my pants down around my hips,” she was able to navigate the city’s events office, and the Market Square merchants organization, and make this exception.
The event drew a number of parents, whom teenagers often find necessary for driving purposes. “We need more of these,” remarked one mom. Considering the event collected dozens of signatures on a petition to build a public skate park, maybe we’ll get it.
Later on, an over-capacity audience of 420 crowded the grassy patch to see the opening night of the Tennessee Stage Company’s appealingly wacky production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not summer until Bottom makes his first appearance.
Hey, that Horse is Slick, Now
Watch out if Knox County Law Director Mike Moyers asks to trade horses with you; he and nine other local officials recently attended the week-long Harvard Negotiation Project, a negotiation workshop at Harvard University. The trip was sponsored by Knoxville’s Cornerstone Foundation, which also sent a contingent of Knoxvillians to last year’s program.
“It was very intense. You learned way more than the usual ‘haggle’ mode of negotiating,” Moyers said. “It was a lot of work, but a lot of insight, too. The skills we learned were applicable to everything from negotiating the end of wars to deciding what movie you’ll see with your wife.”
Instructors at the forum were Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton, co-authors of the best-selling Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreements Without Giving In. The two men were key negotiators when the South African government moved to end Apartheid.
About 150 people from all over the world attended the workshop, with students hailing from Europe, Central America, and China. Moyers says Americans were in the minority at the session, although Knox Countians comprised the single largest contingent of those in attendance. Other local participants included: Susan Brown (Rural Metro); Chris Kinney (city finance director); John Werner (county finance director); Bill Lyons (city development director); David Hill (Metropolitan Planning Commission); Alvin Nance (Knoxville Community Development Corp.); Gloria Ray (Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corp.); Margie Nichols (city communications and government relations director); and Cynthia Finch (county director of community service). Watch out for them all, now.
June 24, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 26
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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