New Skate Park Draws a Crowd

SALISBURY – Eric Cotton took time off from his job at a restaurant in Portsmouth. NH, last Friday to be among the first to test out the banks, bowl and half rails of the new concrete skate park at Partridge Brook Park.
The “ripper” from Sweden, who lives in Dover, NH, was “stoked” by the new park and planned to return the next day to “shred” with several rollerblading friends.
The long-awaited skate park has been open for a little more than a week, attracting the usual teenage boarders, but also a pair of young fathers, who babysat their son or daughter on Friday afternoon rolling over the concrete expanse, child in arms.
“Those are modern fathers,” Cotton said.
The skate park at the northern end of the expansive Partridge Brook Park is not easy to get to, which the boarders said they like. Being hidden with no easy car access keeps away the “kooks,” people who don’t understand the culture of skateboarding.
“The people who come here really want to be here,” Cotton said.
To get to the skate park, walk, bike or skateboard along the Eastern Marsh Trail just north of the Salisbury Elementary School on the eastern side of the trail.
If you come by car, park in designated spaces at the school, walk to the trail behind the school property and head north about a mile to the skate park.
Other skateboard parks in Amesbury near the high school, Ipswich’s Switch Rideable Artwork on Linebrook Road in Bialek Park and in Newburyport behind the Nock Middle School have easy access.
The new skate park, which features a bowl, banks, rails and extensions, has been on the radar of skateboarders throughout the North Shore.
Maybe as a sign of approval by the skateboarders, one of the concrete banks has already been tagged with graffiti with the initials DSS and SSS and a drawing of what looks like Minnie Mouse.
The $850,000 skate park was funded mostly by grants, including one from the Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities and another from the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Built by Artisan Skateparks of Kitty Hawk, NC, the park combined its expertise in building and designing skateparks with extensive input from local skateboarders to the town’s Park and Recreation Commission and Planning Department.