Check out this great video promoting skate parks!

OUR MISSION

Founded in 2003, the Rob Dyrdek Foundation seeks to create healthy communities by promoting and providing the inherent benefits of skateboarding to all facets of society.  The Foundation assists municipalities and non-profits with the design, development, and construction of legal Skate Plazas as well as assists with the creation of community and educational programs that promote and encourage the sport of skateboarding.

OUR VISION

Our hope is to encourage construction of legal street skating areas, be that through large urban skate plazas or single skate spots.

Our goal is to reach:
Local Communities, including governments, park and recreations departments and local urban renewal and community improvement committees.

Major corporations and organizations sharing our support of legal street skateboarding who wish to give back to their communities through funding, land donation or other means of support.

A MESSAGE FROM ROB

A skate plaza is far from an original concept. It’s been talked about in theory for almost ten years. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve heard that someone was going to recreate Love Park or Embarcadero. Yet it’s never happened. If they had duplicated either of these skateboard landmarks ten years ago, they would still be the best places in the United States to skate. There is a bureaucracy within skateboarding that hasn’t allowed it to occur.

The skate plaza is very personal to me, because I know all skateboarders suffer the same pain that I suffer each day trying to street skate. There is not one place in the entire United States where I could go legally skate real street. Each day there are fewer and fewer places to street skate, period. Skateboarding is being choked by people that simply don’t understand it. Skateboarders are sick of getting tickets and watching every good skate spot get skate-proofed or destroyed. The future of skateboarding relies on having places to do it.

There is a simple solution. Build real street parks. Recreational skateparks, which include street courses, mini-ramps, and bowls, will always be a part of skateboarding, but they will never play a part in keeping skaters off the streets of their communities. Not to mention that most of these recreational parks are built by people who don’t know anything about any type of skateboarding. If 80% of skateboarding is real street, then 80% of the places built for skateboarders should duplicate real street. Like it or not, the standards for modern skateboarding have been developed in urban architecture.

A skate plaza in every community is not only my dream, but also the dream of everyone who skates street, from the most advanced pro to the youngest novice. The skate plaza is essential to the future of skateboarding.

To learn more about the Rob Dyrdek Foundation, click here:

http://robdyrdekfoundation.org/