There’s a weird moral panic about what gear you ride. Just last month in Lower Township, a bunch of residents came to a city council meeting asking for e-bikes to be banned. In Villas, lots of folks whizz by – going the wrong way, towards traffic – on e-bikes and four-wheelers. The easy solution, residents say, is to ban them! Bring the hammer down!
Lucky for the level-headed, deputy police chief Don Vanaman came in with the realness: “A lot of people are using them for their primary transportation now,” he said. Thanks, Vanaman. The solution is education, he said: make sure everybody follows the rules of the road.
Banning means of transport for “safety reasons” is common around here. In the Wildwoods, God help you if you wanna skate to your Morey’s Piers job on the beautiful, silky-smooth bike path. City council banned both e-bikes and skateboards in one fell swoop a few years ago without any meaningful input from the public.
Off the boardwalk, nearby roads are hostile with roaring engines and giant SUVs. If we can’t cruise on the boardwalk, we’re just going to hit the streets, where people get even more ticked at us. But any driver paying attention can avoid skaters, who almost always stick to the right of the road anyway. And hey, we’re paying attention too! We don’t want to get hit!
At least you’re allowed to skate on the roads in Wildwood! In Ocean City, the situation is tragic. Try not to let your blood pressure rise when you read a snippet from City Code 4-22.1: “No person shall be permitted to operate or use roller skates or skateboards at any time upon any street or alley located within the City.”
Okay, so we can’t skate on the beautiful slice of infrastructure, the boardwalk, during biking hours. But we also can’t skate literally anywhere else? That’s absurd!
Why make the distinction between bike, rollerblade, and skateboard? Just today, one of my co-workers said that it’s stupid to use a skateboard as a means of transportation and that if you can’t do a trick, you’re bogus. He used the word bogus. Maybe I’m just mad ’cause a teenager yelled “POSER” at me the other day. Okay kid, get back to your homework!
Oh- and that co-worker doesn’t even skate.
Many barriers to skating have been erected because skating is seen as something “extreme” or perhaps deviant. Skating, even 30 years removed from the ‘X-treme’ sports boom of the 90s, is still associated with gelled-up mohawks and delinquency. But stereotypes aren’t a solid footing for government legislation. Reading the code in Ocean City, it’s hard not to think it’s based on old stereotypes, or an assumption that any skateboard-related accident is the fault of the skater and not the car.
There’s a broader skepticism of folks who get around without an automobile. I see it all the time: my friend, high up in her SUV, barks at bikers in Cape May. My co-workers get annoyed at Rio Grande walkers… As if the guy on the bike is the danger factor, not the man in the 7,000-pound Suburban.
But skating, biking, rollerblading, that stuff is for everybody. Driving a car is the most dangerous thing you do every single day. It’s easy to go numb to it, but no matter what you drive, you’re operating a screeching metal beast powered by explosions.
If driving a car can be for everybody, so can skateboards. E-bikes are for everybody. Rollerskates are for everybody. Mark Ruggiano, the owner of Method Skate in Sea Isle City, gets it. He makes an Instagram post every time a young skater buys their first board, congratulating them on their new ride. That’s real stuff right there. Why can’t those kids learn to skate, learn to get around our beautiful towns on four polyurethane wheels? Unban skateboards now!
Shore Musings is Collin Hall’s column about life on the shore: the good and the bad. Contact Collin at chall@cmcherald.com or by phone at 609-886-8600 ext. 156
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