Skateboards Find a Home at School in Cypress

Mark Mugica’s skateboard is more than fun. It’s more than a lifestyle. It’s his wheels.

Skateboarding is the 15-year-old’s main form of transportation to school, he said. But it makes for a bulky companion during the day as he lugs it from class to class at Cypress High School.

Luckily for Mark, he has a principal who believes in the right to commute by board. And luckily for them both, a man who lives in the same city as his school has invented an answer.

This week, Cypress High School will be the first school in the country to install skateboard racks, devices for locking the boards down that are similar to the ubiquitous metal stands for bicycles.

In buying the racks, Principal Norm Fried is aware that he is legitimizing skateboarding as a form of transportation for students, and acknowledging an entire segment of youth culture that often is branded with negative stereotypes.

“People who have cars have parking spots,” he said. “People who have bikes have bike racks. I don’t care about what anybody says about . . . skateboarder culture, I think the skaters should have a place to put their skateboards.”

And Mark is grateful.

“When my parents go to work, this is how I get to school,” said the Buena Park resident. “It takes me 20 minutes instead of 30. Until now, it’s like I’ve been punished for doing it. [It’s] pretty cool, the school thinks it’s OK.”

The racks are the brainchild of Tom Sipe, a Cypress man who said he saw a niche two years ago at a Cypress City Council meeting, when officials wondered what to do about potential dangers of skateboarding, and about skateboards at schools. “So I had an idea and built it,” he said. His patent application is pending.

The rack is made of metal boxes and redwood. Students lock two of their skateboard wheels--one of their “trucks”--into a metal box. The skateboard hangs perpendicular to the ground.

Twenty of the racks are scheduled to be installed Tuesday or Wednesday, and school officials plan to charge students about $10 a year to use them, about what a student with a car pays for a parking spot. In coming months and early next year, school officials plan to install 40 more.

Fried said the racks are primarily a safety measure; without a place to put them, students keep their boards at their desks, where others can trip over them. The racks, which can be used with combination or key locks, also will help stop thefts of boards. The cost: $750 for a rack that holds 10 boards.

Many cities have banned skateboarding from streets and sidewalks, and schools often prohibit students from using the boards on campus. Safety for both skateboarder and pedestrian is one issue; another is the perception that youngsters with boards might constitute a troublesome element.

But lately skateboarding has been recognized by residents and officials as legitimate recreation, if not a form of transportation. Huntington Beach built a skateboard park in 1993 and these days many cities, including Cypress, are thinking about building them.

“The number of skateboarders out there is starting to change attitudes, and skateboarding is seeing a resurgence,” said Judith Stepan-Norris, chairwoman of the department of sociology at UC Irvine.

American Sports Data Inc. counted 8.2 million skateboarders of all ages in 1997.

Students at Cypress High said they are relieved by Fried’s decision to buy the racks.

“Teachers are afraid people are going to trip on them, and I have to carry it around all day. It’ll be great be able to put it someplace,” said freshman Don Hartle, 15.

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Rack ‘n’ Roll

This week, Cypress High becomes what’s believed to be the first school in the country to install lockable skateboard racks. How they work:

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Wheels locked inside rack, keeping board in place

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Source: Rack-It Skateboard Racks