(Photos by Aryn Sanderson)
Aryn Sanderson
asanderson@mustangdaily.net
It’s nearing 11 p.m. at a parking garage in downtown San Luis Obispo, and not a car is in sight. Business administration junior TJ Perrin stands at the structure’s exit, phone in hand. It’s on speakerphone, and he can just make out the rumblings of the controlled chaos happening on the parking garage’s top floor.
Suddenly and clearly, words ring out of Perrin’s iPhone.
“On your mark.”
“Get set.”
His finger hovers over the timer’s start button.
“Go.”
He hits the stopwatch.
The screech of skateboard wheels on cement soon becomes deafening. After flying down the parking garage’s five floors in a mere 35 seconds, biological sciences sophomore Hugo Alvarez rounded the turn out to the exit, passed Perrin’s finish line and nabbed first place at Central Coast Freeride’s parking garage circuit race.
Central Coast Freeride (CCF) is a community-based longboarding club that Perrin established his freshman year. CCF aims to link up those who longboard — a style of skateboarding that focuses on downhill runs and freeriding — with those who support the scene.
The club is “for skaters, people who are passionate about longboarding, not just dudes who own a skateboard,” Perrin said.
“Central Coast Freeride represents a form of communication between sponsors and skaters,” Perrin said. “We’re one way to access around 50 skaters on the Central Coast. Skateboarding’s typically a pretty disorganized sport, so something like this helps.”
Although Perrin and his friends tried to get the club established through Cal Poly, Associated Students, Inc. did not grant its approval.
“Skateboarding’s illegal in SLO, so there’s automatically a stigma there because pretty much every time you go skating, you’re doing something illegal,” Perrin said. “It’s tough for Cal Poly to endorse something like that because they’d have a lot of liability.”
Skateboarding is prohibited on Cal Poly’s campus and in downtown San Luis Obispo — the area between Santa Rosa Street to Carmel Street and from Mill Street to Pacific Street. And even outside downtown, skateboarding is technically only allowed on sidewalks in San Luis Obispo.
“It’s just a matter of taking the risk,” Perrin said.
He hosted the bracket-style parking garage races by alternating parking garages every Tuesday night for about two months.
“One time a cop came while we were doing the garage races and told us to leave, but he was super nice about it,” Perrin said. “He was like, ‘Yo, you can’t be doing this. I wouldn’t kick you out, but we got a call.’ I mean, we did it for months, racing each week, and we didn’t have any real problems.”
CCF isn’t looking for any real problems though, Alvarez, who won the parking garage race, said.
Actually, they’re hoping for just the opposite: smooth skating.
“There’s a stereotype for skateboarders that we’re evil or something and out to cause harm, which is not true. And, as for us, we consider ourselves longboarders, which is almost a different subsection of skateboarding,” Alvarez said. “It’s more about the love and the feel of it. We’re not jumping off stairs or grinding on things, we’re just expressing ourselves through our boards.”
Most of the time, the reception is positive. Community members have offered water, moved outside to watch the skaters and even offered up their homes’ restrooms for bathroom breaks.
The club wants to continue bettering the relationship between skateboarders and community members in San Luis Obispo with its “strict smile-and-wave policy,” member Liam Hedriana, an English junior, said.
“We’re trying to get a better rep among the community because we need these hills in order to keep skating and keep improving, and it’s no use trying to share it with grumpy neighbors,” Hedriana said. “Really, our first motive, especially when we start skating in a new neighborhood, is to try to be mindful of the neighbors, go and introduce ourselves, always smile-and-wave.”
Sometimes, though, CCF doesn’t get a warm welcome.
“There was one guy, he had a mustache, and he didn’t like us … at all,” Perrin said. “We just called him the Mustache Man, and we said, ‘If you’re skating, stay away from the hill with the Mustache Man. He doesn’t like us.’ He said he works a long day, and he doesn’t like hearing the sound of our wheels chattering against the ground.”
If neighbors like the Mustache Man aren’t receptive to longboarding in their area, CCF moves on.
“It was a cool hill and we were bummed, but we got over it,” Perrin said.
Perrin’s chill, live-and-let-live mindset is part of the skateboarding mentality, CCF sponsor Jonny Miller said.
Miller, owner of skateshop Toyland Boardhouse and the self-proclaimed “old guy on the crew” at 49 years old, says that skateboarding is a sport, and also a way of life.
“Skateboarding is a lifestyle; it’s all about being relaxed, being a free spirit and being an artist and individual on and off the board,” he said.
Although it’s about being an “individual,” Miller said, it’s important to create a community of skaters.
And that’s just what CCF provides.
“People hit me up all the time like, ‘Yo, I’m coming to San Luis, I found Central Coast Freeride, and this is sick. I definitely want to skate with you guys once I come here.’ And I’m like, ‘Hell yeah dude, that’s awesome,’” Perrin said. “Honestly, if you’re a longboarder, then you’re gonna think Central Coast Freeride is cool.”