Skating a Snow Storm

Today it snowed. The snow made me happy. I feel like I've got something to show for the freezing temperatures I sit through each week. Snow's clean and it reminds me of being young and running around making snowballs.

The picture below shows the black steel cabin that I sit in throughout the day, at least when I'm not skating. I need to get power to that little hut. I can then do all sorts of things like use a computer, listen to music, use a light, but most importantly I can turn on our heater!

We had a film crew at the park today, too. They are making a film about life in Manchester called 'The Manchester Way' or 'Life'. It's basically made up of different peoples stories about Manchester. Each story starts and finishes with a different person getting on and off a Stagecoach bus. The final story is about a guy from Hulme (completely fictional, of course) who grew up on an estate, got into skating and changed his life around. That's why they needed the park. All but one of the skaters are on the Projekts skate team; Jake, Lewis, Mark and Chris. The other skater is Nick Stansfield.



I was talking to a member of the film crew who told me that the film was funded by Manchester City Council Partnership. He also told me something very interesting, that the art work that this company had done for the film was too good and needed changing in case the public accused MCC of spending tax payers money on unneccesary promotional material. By making it look cheap, the council avoid any unwanted publicity, yet the price of the design probably increases by making it look cheap because they have to pay both companies for their design efforts. Ridiculous! This crew member also told me that the council tried to get them to make one of the stories include a family with a white mum and asian dad with a one black kid and one chinese kid. They refused, of course. People would have been watching the film trying to figure out what the heck had been going on with that family rather than enjoying the film.













The other thing about the film is that it's promotional film about Manchester's progresion; the way it's changing and opening up new facilities for the people living there. Ironically, our skatepark is not progressing and is in dire need of growth. We have been left for well over a year with no power, no lights, and not enough room for the skaters who need to use it. If, instead of spending thousands of pounds on promotional videos, the city council actually used the money to improve the facilities of places like ours, then the generqtion of the future might not be so disolusioned and may in fact feel like the authorities are there to help. I dought that will ever happen.