I just noticed that the City Council has amended the ordinance banning skateboarding to include the new city hall. They’ve posted photos of the damage that prompted the amendment. Some of it does look pretty bad, particularly the bottom center photo where people have clearly been doing grinds and leaving behind a fair amount of paint.

As the press release mentions, this highlights the need for a skatepark in Austin and skaters will soon get their wish. Our local park, Mabel Davis, is finally undergoing remediation for the contaminated landfill on which it sits. If memory serves, the park has been closed for four years since the discovery of pesticide and broken car battery cases in different parts of the park. The history and details of the situation are too long for me to go into here, but the cleanup will result in the loss of much of the tree cover in the park, making it an ideal candidate for a long-planned city-sponsored skate park. I think it’s a really cool addition to the neighborhood and expect that my six-year-old is going to have a great time with it once it opens next fall.