Safety Meeting – Recap, Minutes and Plans

This emergency safety meeting went down last night. If you were there, thank you. If you couldn’t make it, please update yourself, because it is time that we took ownership over our community and started making moves so we can do this for the rest of our long and healthy lives. 

The meeting began with Les Robertson explaining that we are criminals. Skateboarding has been banned in north vancouver, and it continues despite the ban on skateboarding. Contributions from many people in the community were made. A few things were made exceptionally clear, they are outlined bellow.

– If you see someone blowing it, take their axel nuts. Axel nuts are cheap, easy to replace, and the lack of one will prevent any skateboarding about to go down. 

– We are at the same place we were with longboarding last year, accept more kids are getting hurt. If we do not lobby and get active, people will bait out spots because of ignorance, and we will loose our sport. Cyclists have been lobbying in vancouver for over 20 years, and thats why cycling is green and longboarding is extreme in th eyes of the public, this needs to change.

– Regular safety meetings are going to begin being held in vancouver, rain or shine. These will be run by the community and resources, space and promotion will be provided by the local industry. We need to work together on this. 

– A mailing list of local people concerned about the future of longboarding has been created. If you would like to be a part of this mailing list and would like to help, please email info@flatspotlongboards.com with “SAFETY MEETING VOLUNTEER” in the subject heading of the email.

Huge thanks to input from the stoop, its on the ground spaces like that which are going to be pivotal in this.

If you would like to read up on the minutes from the meeting, you can FIND THEM HERE. There are some very good points made.

Bellow are links to some literature that is already out there concerning these issues.

-Landyachtz Longboards – Get Safe with Blake Startup

-Skate Safe Manifesto By Mischa Chandler

-BE AFRAID- New Sactions Threatens the Future of Longboarding in B.C. (this article is a year old, we gotta hurry)
-BE EDUCATED, DONT GET SPUN BY JOURNALISTS- Cycling Is The Top Sport For Head Injuries (but with all those concussions they still lobby better than we do)