Skateboarding on the Big Island

 In a remote area off of Highway 11, a few miles before Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, at an elevation of 4,000 feet, is the Volcano Skate Park. Tucked in beside the Cooper Community Center off of Wright Road and surrounded by lush ferns and `Ohia trees, the park is one of five on the Big Island. Built on a covered, fenced-in basketball court, it was created using recycled masonite from an old skate park in downtown Hilo.

Shawn Pila, a 25-year-old skater and surf photographer who graduated from both Kapiolani College on O`ahu, and Hawai`i Community College on the Big Island offers,

"Volcano [Skate Park] has a very nice layout with lots of transitions, flow and metal coping for grinding. Half of the park is still used as a basketball court as well as a street course with quarter pipes, kickers, rails, ramps, angles, stairs and fun boxes." Pila adds, "The park is open every day, weekdays and weekends, and there are even competitions up in Volcano every year. Sometimes you even have to do community service in order to enter."

Pila said that on a recent trip to Los Angeles with current HawCC professor Violet Murikami and other students, for a digital media convention, "The last day of the convention was the first day of the X Games just next door." Pila entered the amateur skate competition and won.

The Hilo Skateplaza Coalition is a group of skaters who are banding together to build a new skate park right here in Hilo town. Key members of this community are Dan Madsen, Jeremy Hale and Jacob Rouner. The men are hard at work to reach their goal of skate park construction, but they also need the community's support.

Madsen, who owns Oasis Skate Shop off of Kilauea Avenue, made a movie titled, "The Oasis Video," which was produced by skaters in Hilo. It highlights the great skills of skaters in the area, focusing on why a skate park in Hilo is necessary. Part of the message is that people in Hilo who like to skate need a place to do what they love without getting in trouble for it.

"If we have a major zone where we can skate, we don't have to be in the streets anymore," Rouner said.

According to Big Island Weekly, Clayton Honma, deputy director of Hawai`i County Parks and Recreation, offered, "We are the ones that support the movement for skate parks. People have been coming to us, and we have been positively receiving their input. We'd like to see this happen for the kids in our community." Honma also said that the county does not have the money to build skate parks, but can offer select sections of county land for the parks. They have identified one such piece of property that lies just behind the Kawamoto Olympic swimming pool and Wong's Stadium. The Hilo skate park property, however, cannot be designated until the group reaches a financial benchmark. Honma adds,

"A skate park generally costs between $200,000 and $300,000 to construct."

Madsen is so passionate about skating that his skate shop, in collaboration with Generator Distribution, is donating 100 boards toward the Hilo Skate Plaza Coalition's efforts to build a skatepark in Hilo. They are holding a contest to design a board for the coalition, which will be used to raise awareness and funding in the area. Madsen said he envisions a skate park for Hilo with fruit trees around the park and solar-powered lights. He said that he'd like the park to have a natural feel, and use recycled materials to construct the facility.