By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer
MARGATE – The thump of skateboard wheels hitting the ramp, decks crashing on wooden planks and trucks grinding along a wrought-iron rail might be a little unnerving to the neighbors on the otherwise quiet Winchester Avenue, but to buddies Mike Fantazzia, Dane Romantino and Brandon Dilks, it is just about the best thing going.
Neighbor Randi Gottlieb said the skateboarders are a safety concern.
“You guys are really good at your sport, and we are just worried that you are going to get hurt, get hit by a car,” Gottlieb told the boys. “This is extremely dangerous. All of the neighbors are talking, and they are worried that you guys are going to get hurt, and no one wants to see anything happen to you.
“Why don’t you go and skate someplace safe like the Union Avenue School?” Gottlieb asked the boys.
Fantazzia, 14, an eighth-grade student at the Eugene A. Tighe Middle School, said he went to the meetings for input on a skate park in Margate and was really disappointed that it never came to be.
“They talked about it at City Hall. They wanted to build it in some different places. They talked about the playground near the police station, but that spot is not a good place for a skate park,” said Fantazzia.
When pressed as to why it would not be a good location, the youth said that on second thought it might not be so bad. He and his friends do not like to go to the skate parks in Galloway Township or Brigantine because they are crowded and skaters have to wear protective pads and helmets.
So the skaters have been practicing their tricks in front of the house of Romantino, whose parents bought him a skateboard ramp for his 11th birthday. All of the skaters in the neighborhood were there to try it out. Kim Romantino did not mind that the boys were skating on the street in front of their house.
“They really have no place else to go and skate, so they can skate here. I make sure they bring in every piece of equipment when they are done each day,” she said.
The boys began hauling the pieces to the back yard, but not before doing “just one more trick,” and they kept giving the ramp their best shot.
The talk of a skate park is not quite dead in Margate, though discussions have stalled. But the middle-schoolers are still hoping to see that skate park come to pass someday.
TOP
