Three Days in June: The Story of the West LA Courthouse Liberation
I think we can all agree that having the West LA Courthouse anointed as a fully skateable spot last month was fucking awesome to the power of infinity. It is basically unprecedented; a game changing win for skateboarders worldwide, and huge props go to all involved—the West LA Neighborhood Council, Nike SB, who initially re-opened and remodeled the spot for Go Skateboarding Day, along with the West LA Community of Skateboarders and Stoner Skate Plaza Association who came out in droves to show support at the final hearings to make the whole thing permanent. Another giant nod goes to every skateboarder on the planet that respected the two-month limbo period in which we were asked not to skate it.
However, beneath the surface reports, high-fives, speeches and fanfare, anybody who now enjoys this legendary spot—again after all these years, or for the first time—should really hear the full story behind how this came about. In fairness to their hard work, I felt it should be stated clearly that none of this would have happened without the dedicated actions of two passionate skateboarders—Alec Beck and Aaron Snyder. It was never Nike SB’s plan (nor was it the city’s) to actually make the Courthouse a permanent spot. That was something that these two made happen.
The following, in the words of Alec Beck, is the full story of the West LA Courthouse Liberation during three anxiety-drenched days in June along with his big plans for making this a precedent for sacred skate spots everywhere. Thank these two gentlemen whenever you see them. In my book, this is about as good as it gets. And apparently, Pier 7 might just be next.
Intro and Interview: Mackenzie Eisenhour
So let’s go through the whole story. When did you guys get involved in this?
Thursday (GSD -2 days) Basically, Go Skateboarding Day was June 21st, which was a Saturday. On the Thursday night before GSD, (Aaron) Snyder started texting me. He was pissed. Understandably so. He texted me a whole bunch. He had just found out that Nike was going to bring back the Courthouse ledges for one night only.
Was that true though? I mean this wasn’t just a rumor?
Yeah. They had a crew on the way to re-knob the spot at 5:30pm on that Saturday of Go Skate Day.
Wow. That’s insane.
Right? So Snyder was bummed. He was really pissed about it. He thought that it made skateboarders look like second-class citizens.
Yeah. His brother showed me the texts he wrote and it was pretty well written—arguing that skateboarders were once again playing second fiddle to homeless people and junkies. He was going off.
Exactly. In my personal opinion, I could see where he was coming from, it’s not that I don’t care, but to me, if somebody wants to help us skate something cool, no matter how long we get to skate it for—like you could open up a handrail somewhere for half an hour I’d be psyched—I was just looking at it that way. But I know Snyder and a ton of other people have had a real personal involvement with the Courthouse for a long time. So I understood why he was pissed and he made a bunch of good points.
So how did this translate into actually getting it liberated?
So basically, as this was going on I was also knee deep in trying to rally people and get support against this sound wall they want to build at Stoner. (—Ed note: Stoner Skate Plaza was supposed to have a massive non-transparent wall built around the skate portion which Alec and the West LA Skate Org. have successfully fought against up to present. Alec was also the person responsible for the creation of Stoner plaza.)
So you already had your hands full.
Yeah. I was knee deep in that and at first I just didn’t feel like I could deal with Snyder and the Courthouse. But he kept on texting and explained that he was just venting too. He wasn’t really asking me to do anything. So finally I started thinking like, “Well, actually, maybe there is something worth looking into here. Let’s get back on it tomorrow.” This was still all Thursday night.
Friday morning (GSD -1 day)
The next morning I called Jay Handle, the Chair of the West LA Neighborhood Council—he was the one who had originally hired me to get Stoner built. I called him up and was like, “Hey, I heard there’s this Nike thing going on at the Courthouse, this might sound crazy but what do you think our chances would be of keeping the Courthouse as an open skate spot?” It was really just one of those where you figure, “I’ll just call and see what they say.” He came back and said, “I thinks it’s a good idea. Definitely a long shot, but I see the value in it.” He loves skateboarding. He gets it. At that point I asked him, “What do you need?” He said, “Well, we probably need an agreement from the skateboarders. Some type of show of solidarity and an agreement to take care of the space. On top of that we would need some type of maintenance money. ” So I was like, “Okay, how much would you need?” He said, “Probably $10,000 a year for the next five years.” I told him I would call him back.
I went from my house straight to the Courthouse. I was just going to see if there was anybody there I could talk to. As I park my truck these two guys are walking out—walking to pretty nice cars and they look like they might be involved. So I ask them, “Hey, are you guys involved with what’s going on here?”
They kind of looked at each other, “Depends who’s asking.” I started laughing and introduced myself—told them my involvement with Stoner and things like that. They were really nice and said, “Congratulations. We’ve heard about that” and we just kind of chatted for a second. Finally I just came out with it, like, “I just got off the phone with the Neighborhood Council, I want to see if we can find a way to keep this thing open.”
They turned out to be Jason Cohn, who is the Action Sports Brand Director for Nike West, and Travis Trick who is the Marketing Specialist for Action Sports at Nike. They said, “It’s funny, we were just talking about the same thing but it’s scheduled to be closed and re-knobbed tomorrow evening.” I told them that the City Council would be willing to look into it if they were willing to donate $50,000 over the next five years. They looked at each other and just said, “Done.”
Jesus. That’s amazing.
At that point they said that it was obviously still a tentative “Yes” but “We think this is a great idea and we’d like to support it.” We chatted a little bit more, they left and I called Jay (Handle) back and told him the news. He was blown away.
You had just talked to him. Like; “Fifty grand?”… An hour later, “Got it.”
Yeah (Laughs.) Definitely right place, right time. A lot of serendipitous timing. So I let Jay know and he said, “Great, I’ll start talking to some of the people involved and see what we can do.” We talked some more a little bit later in the day but the point was that it would take some time. I thought to myself, “Well, we don’t really have much time. We have until tomorrow at 5:30.” I told the Nike guys I would see them the next day.
Which brings us to Saturday (GSD 2014).
Exactly, so by Saturday the Courthouse was ready to go. Nike had spent X amount of money and gone in and resurfaced all the ledges, de-knobbed the stage, built the hubbas, rail, and stairs, bondo’d the cracks, painted it blue, all ready to go for just for that one day—GSD.
I saw it Friday night and they had put a ton of work into it.
Yeah. I think they had taken out something like a hundred trash bags full of debris and garbage. So I saw everyone there the next day. We started out at Stoner. We had something like 2,000 people at Stoner, it was amazing. P-Rod made his arrival like Cher or something skating up to the park, he gave his speech, rolled around a bit, and then we skated through the streets to the Courthouse. I had never done any of those Wild in the Streets type things and it was just so electric. It felt like you were in like whitewater rapids or something (Laughs.) All moving together. Great vibes.
So you get to Courthouse.
Yeah. So we got to Courthouse. The whole thing went down. It was really fun. Really smooth. They did a good job. And then it got to be about 4:30 p.m. and I was kind of stressing by then waiting to hear back from Jay. Like I said, Nike had made their agreement with the Courthouse to put the knobs back on at 5:30. That was just the extent of the agreement, nothing on Nike. And while I understand the arguments against it, I still think that even if it was only for that one day—a lot of kids that never got to skate there would still have had an amazing opportunity. That said, one day was rad but having it stay open forever was obviously even better.
4:30 GSD:
So it’s 4:30, the clock is ticking and I haven’t heard back from Jay, the City Councilman. So I just decide to just make the call. I just decide I’m going to make this call and deal with the fallout. At the time it wasn’t really thought through or anything, but I just told them like, “Look, just call them off. Call off the knob crew.”
It sounds like a movie thriller, “Call them off! Stand down knob crew!”
(Laughs.) Yeah. That’s basically what it felt like. I was really stressed out. In my mind, if we didn’t stop the knobs then, it was never going to happen. I told the Nike guys that we would explain to the city on Monday why they had to break the agreement and hadn’t re-knobbed it. In the meantime, I told them, just call off the crew.
So amazing.
So they called the crew and told them to cancel the re-knobbing. But then it dawned on me; everybody has seen this—these pristine new ledges and beautiful open spot. What the fuck are we going to do to keep people from skating this for however many months it takes us to get an agreement worked out? I talked to the Nike guys for a minute and to them it was kind of in my hands now. I understood that they were already nervous about not putting the knobs back on and didn’t want to be responsible any further then that. So it dawned on me that the only way we could make this happen now, would be if we made an effort from the skate community side to try and convince people not to skate it yet.
Pretty ironic. After finally liberating the spot you now have to be the one that makes sure nobody skates it.
(Laughs.) Yeah. It was pretty interesting to be on the other side of that. So I went home that night and drafted a little paper sign saying like, “Wait, don’t blow it.” That went on social media, Koston, P-Rod, and a bunch of other people re-posted it and then I also went and physically knobbed the ledges basically with the paper signs. Saying essentially, “If you grind through this paper, you are blowing it for everybody.”
Two Months later:
Two months passed, and in those two months nobody skated Courthouse. Nobody. It was amazing. I’m kind of a Pollyanna optimist most of the time, but I know my hunger for skateboarding. If there’s a spot that I want to skate, nothing can stop me. So I really didn’t know if the signs would work and people would get it. But everyone respected it. I was seriously surprised and stoked. There wasn’t a single grind mark. The cop who works the desk at the Courthouse said he would see skaters constantly roll up, read the signs and leave. How rad is that? We had an opportunity to prove that we deserved this spot.
And we proved it.
We did prove it. We finally had a rally meeting with City Council after all that time and the motion was to pursue the possibility of this project. Not even to do it. But just to pursue it, and that passed 12-1. One member thought it was turning into Nike branding because of the color of the ledges. That was just over five weeks ago. Four or five meetings later, we talked to Nike; they appropriated the funds for the “minimal maintenance fee,” and then all of the sudden I get this call from them telling me they are ready to do the grand opening. They wanted it to coincide with the Street League event that weekend. So July 25 we had the grand opening. Geoff McFetridge did that really cool mural on the stage the night before. At one point we were up in the Neighborhood Council office with the whole Nike crew, and Koston gave this moving speech about how much the Courthouse meant to him.
It’s such a rad story from all sides. From the ground up, all of skateboarding kind of agreed on something and actually accomplished it. Grass roots community organizers working with a massive company like Nike and the local government for just like a win/win/win. Everybody working in good faith for skateboarding.
Exactly. It was awesome. So that was basically my involvement. I got to act as the bridge between the parties.
So is the Courthouse basically set now for that five-year window?
It’s still a work in progress. We still have to prove that we deserve it. There’s not a set probationary period but we really need to make it look like we know what the fuck we are doing. We need to be good tenants.
I saw that you posted the new rules, encouraging skaters to sort of police themselves and to be courteous, etc…
Yeah. I wouldn’t necessarily call them rules. Maybe just some guidelines. Whatever word makes people feel okay with it. It’s really just common sense. But maybe it’s not common sense to the little kid who doesn’t know any better. So we’re asking the older guys to let people know if they're blowing it. The adults need to remember to be an example to the little kids.
This is sort of a first too right? In the sense that it’s not a skatepark or skate plaza, it’s a public plaza where skateboarders and pedestrians are legally sharing space.
Absolutely.
If this works, can it open the door to say Love Park, Pulaski, Embarcadero, Brooklyn Banks, or wherever.
Yeah. Absolutely.
It’s like skateboarding taking back their crown jewels.
Exactly. We have poured more time, energy, and love into these spaces across the county and across the world than anybody else. I think that we bring value to these spots. Not only in our appreciation for the architecture but also in the creativity, fun, and camaraderie we bring to them too. We also now have the opportunity, because it’s a shared space, to really show people first hand what skateboarding is. Not what they see us depicted as on television or in films or whatever but what we really do on the streets. So it’s on us to show them skateboarding in a good light. They get to see what we do, in their house. Skateboarding has been through its iterations of being really looked down upon, to sort of now being tolerated. As far as street skating is concerned that’s kind of where we are right now.
I think too, like vert skating was elevated and presented to the general public in the ‘80s, then maybe X-Games was elevated and packaged for them in the ‘90s and ‘00s, but we’ve never really been elevated on the streets. In our natural habitat.
Exactly. So that’s a huge aspect of it. I also want to try to set up one night a month where food trucks and local merchants come in and we play a skate video on the stage or in back. Skate until it’s dark and then watch a classic skate video on the stage. The City Council is into it and I got Touch Vinyl, they want to start helping out skaters and are a local DJ record store.
That sounds amazing. What is your organization called officially?
The West LA Community of Skateboarders but we are also the Stoner Skate Plaza Association, which is our official name and that’s who we came as to voice our opinion about the Courthouse.
Can you give me the story of Stoner Plaza getting built in a nutshell? How did you originally get involved with any of this?
Basically, a friend of mine, Huck Gibson was getting a ticket at the Courthouse. Jay Handel, the Neighborhood Council Chair saw him getting it. This was probably back in 2008-2009. The next day we were both back at Courthouse and Jay came up to us, having seen Huck get the ticket the day before and asked like, “What are you guys doing? Why are you back here?” And we sort of told him, “I don’t know. This is where we skate.” So Jay and I started talking and he asked me that day "How do we get skaters to stop coming to the Courthouse?” And I told him, “The only way you can do it is to build something better near by.” So he asked, “What do you mean by better?” So I told him the first three things on my list were no fence, no pads, and use colored concrete. He told us to go design it and get back to him.
So we did that about five or six times. There were probably 10 versions of it before the final draft. But the last three or four we did in conjunction with Colby Carter at California Skateparks after they won the bid. Colby, myself, and our little crew went around LA and put these boxes at every skate shop asking what people wanted in a skate plaza. Anyways, by the end our three main rules were still the same; no fences, no pads, and colored concrete. But that was it, it was basically myself and the guys from ZJ Boarding house. We came up with the concept, started designing it, and also helped them get money from the Quimby funds—Quimby funds are basically left over funds from Parks and Recreation in the City of LA—then we got to a point where they asked us who we wanted to make it and we told them we wanted California Skateparks. I wanted something that flowed like a skatepark but had all the elements of a street plaza. Anyways, the final design was pretty much what is there today. Colby Carter came in and added the aesthetic. He made the dish in his own backyard. He built it out of PVC pipe to get the geometry perfect. He took our ideas and he made them work. They have of course put in the second fence since it opened, and we have so far stopped the new sound wall from being built, but other than that its pretty much as we intended.
Tell me about your new organization.
Basically, I’m forming an organization for the liberation of skate spots. With the Courthouse, we have precedence now. We didn’t have that before. But now we can say, look, it worked at Courthouse, why not here? That’s my mission now. To continue going forward and liberating these spots. With the Courthouse, we had the perfect storm.
I had a meeting with Nike yesterday. And they are down for this and we need money for this. But Nike can’t do this by themselves. If they go out and start buying up skate spots they’re going to look bad on some level. It will look like they are trying to own everything. So I proposed to them that if they help me form this independent organization that they can get exclusive licensing for the first three out of six spots and we go from there. But I want to bring in Don Brown from IASC and everyone else. Bring in everyone that I can at the top tier to sit on the board of directors and then brands can buy in if they want to participate.
Part of it would also be about having some evaluation metrics for the usage of each spot. So say we go liberate Pier 7, which is my first target. Three out of the five architects that built Pier 7 are happy with that space being used by skateboarders. They see it as a living art installation for San Francisco. But we want to then have bar codes at each spot that you can scan with your phone to get the rules, upload footage, have a trick of the month contest, scavenger hunts, whatever. I think we also want to crowd source for each of the spots, create a site where you can donate to each individual spot. So let’s say maybe Love Park needs two million dollars to do all the repairs, individuals and companies can go on the site and donate towards that. Basically you can donate specifically to the spots you want to see liberated.
The app will also have a universal waiver in the spot apps so that if you sign in to any spot you automatically sign a waiver and we solve any liability issues. Then you can have local e-commerce coupons too with say the Pizza shop around the corner from EMB or wherever and anybody that logs in at the spot gets this discount for a slice or whatever. So that’s my next mission.
Jesus. That sounds unbelievable. Have you guys talked to the guys at South Bank at all? They seem to be fighting a similar fight.
No. But that’s a really good idea. If anybody over there wants to work with us for sure contact us.
Is there a name for this Liberation Army—the Skateboarders Liberation Army, PLO style? SLO?
It’s so funny you say that because Jason (Cohn, Nike SB) brought that up yesterday. The SLO—The Spot Liberation Organization. I like the sound of it. It might end up being that. I want it to appeal to the core of skateboarding but also appeal to the general public.
The whole Courthouse/Stoner back-and-forth is so good.
Yeah, Stoner basically came from them trying to get the skaters out of the Courthouse and alleviate the gang problem at Stoner Park. There was a big gang problem there. The gangs used to hang out behind the handball court wall there where the skate plaza is now. So basically they got the skaters out of Courthouse to get the gangs out of Stoner, and now they took the skaters back at Courthouse because it was so dilapidated they needed the skaters presence to clean it up (Laughs.)
So at the end of the day Snyder kind of got the ball rolling on this?
Yeah. Absolutely. He was the spark. Without him, none of this would have ever happened.
Huge props to you and huge props to Snyder.
Thanks.
If you are in LA, go skate the West LA Courthouse at Santa Monica Blvd. and Purdue Ave.
Please follow the suggested guidelines and be courteous to all pedestrians.
We would also like to send our deepest condolences to Alec, who lost his father only days before this article was published.
Rest in Peace, Andrew Tillman Beck.
Follow Alec Beck on Instagram: @alec_beck
Follow Aaron Snyder on Instagram:@aaronsnyder77
Follow Mackenzie on Instagram: @deadhippie
