Mount Pleasant Magazine 6.4

hen SK8 CharleSton — the

Charleston County Park & Recreation

Commission’s sprawling new skate park – opens

later this year, Mount Pleasant resident Shannon

Smith will be there, along with husband Mark

and their children, Audrey Indigo 13, and

Johnny Otis, 7.

When Shannon helped launch the movement to create the Lowcountry’s

first full-sized skate park, Johnny was years from being born, and Audrey was

just an infant. And a first-class park similar to those routinely found in Florida

and on the West Coast was merely the dream of a handful of Charleston

skating enthusiasts. Their story of persistence, problem-solving and alliance-

building provides an inspiring example for the would-be movers and shakers

among us – whatever our hobbies or passions.

“Politics and money,” Smith said, explaining the major obstacles that

stood between aspirations of a Lowcountry skate park and the park’s actual

construction.

To start with, the general public doesn’t always view skaters in a positive

light, and this created a sticky political problem.

“People see kids hanging out and get the idea that skaters are deviants,” said

Brian Shipper, who owns Odyssey Board Shop and for two years fought town

planners to open a private skate park of his own in Mount Pleasant – without

success. “They don’t get how for many kids in the city – kids everywhere –

skating keeps them out of trouble. It gives them something to work toward. It’s

a tough sport.”

So where did people skate?

“Random places,” said skater and Parrot Surf Shop employee Alex Mulhern,

Mount Pleasant residents Shannon Smith and Tom O’Roarke were among those wielding

spades on groundbreaking day.