Scoot...

We gave Ewan a 'bunnyhop scooter' as he calls it. Basically it's a step up from his toy story scooter that he's had for a couple of years. I jokingly say that when he's at the skatepark with me, he needs to stand on the other side so I'm not associated with him. It is a joke and completely untrue but it's an allusion to a part of skateboarding culture that I'm not all that impressed with.

There's a faction of skateboarders that want to ban scooters from public skateparks on premise of them getting in the way and damage to the structure of the parks. There's been talk of introducing a ban at the to be built Loanhead and Inverness skateparks and people really are getting het up about it.

There is a wee bit of a problem with skateparks getting overrun with scooterers but I don't feel the problem is the actual scooterers. They add a very substantial user base to help encourage councils to pay for and provide skateparks which I'd say offer one of the larger participation takeups of any sport in this country somewhere to use their wheeled device of choice.

There's always been other wheeled sports outside of skateboarding inhabiting our concrete landscape but I think the only problem is of parents dropping scooter kids off at skateparks and treating it like a playpark and not actively supervising. That is when accident happen when kids are less aware of what's going on in what can be a rather dangerous environment.