Through the 8+ years developing the Bethlehem Skateplaza the most memorable moments for me were the times masses of people came together to show their support for a project that would only directly benefit the few- the skateboarders.
From getting over 5,000+ signatures and petitions to show the City of Bethlehem in the beginning, to the 100+ people that came to City Hall with only a few hours of notice to protest against Councilman Leason’s plan to pull our funding and now the support we’ve been getting to try and help us win a $250,000 grant from Pepsi.
Thanks to the dedication of our local voting base of skaters and skater-supporters we’ve been able to stay in the Top 10 of the Pepsi Refresh Project. We slipped back in rank over but the re-enforcements are coming in due to some support from some very notable skateboarding sources.
The first and foremost, The Berrics team and this guy:
The Berrics Field Ops: Part 2
After this debuted on The Berrics our ranking on The Pepsi Refresh Project jumped up from 11th to 9th in a matter of hours and the comments below skyrocketed with support from all over the world. Skaters from Germany, Japan, Australia, Sweden, the West Coast, Mid West, Down South, NY, NJ, DC, Western PA and every place in between posted up they’re voting- all because they saw our cause on The Berrics. That’s pull.
To be honest, I didn’t even realize there were comments until Jared Smith pointed it out to me on Facebook.
Oh what? Kerry Getz was in there?
And the list goes on. . .
If you don’t understand the purpose of Twitter, here’s one. Someone who uses Twitter has people that “following” them. If you’re not up on our “Twit-speak,” it means that everytime some, say- Steve Berra writes something, his 24,599 followers see it. Luckily for us- Berra, Eric Koston and Kerry Getz and websites like Focus Magazine, FuelTV, Red Bull Skateboarding, NY Skateboarding, TWS Skate, ESPN Skate and on and on have been “Re-Tweeting” the information about voting for the skateplaza daily.
Koston coming thru in the clutch.
Always down to rep his original stomping grounds- Kerry Getz has our back.
So maybe you can care less about Twitter. Well, plenty of websites and blogs have been trying to do their part to get us daily votes by re-posting information we’ve been sending out to keep the rest of the world updated on our project. Lots of the skate magazines you read are helping, lots of independent bloggers and even some non-skate specific sites are on our side.
The Skateboard Mag- Issue 73
The Skateboard Mag website coverage
Focus Skate Mag website coverage.
High Snobiety- a streetwear, music & art website. Post courtesy of Todd Shimabuku, owner of In4mation clothing.
L-R-G website coverage.
The Kuato homies from Long Island are doing what they can.
Local activist, Laini Abraham covered the skateplaza in her Bethlehem Pocket Guide and her website.
The list of supporters can go on forever when you factor in the countless re-posts on Facebook over the Pepsi Refresh link, the 2,000+ people who have confirmed they are committed to voting for the skateplaza (Let’s not focus on the 7,000+ that are not because they didn’t read the post correctly), who knows where the 500+ flyers that have gone out are hanging- maybe your job, school or business. Every teacher in the Bethlehem Area School District was sent a memo to remind their students to support the Bethlehem Skateplaza as well.
This is been a clear display of solidarity and the value skateboarders place on helping their fellow skateboarder. We are clearly UNIFIED.
7 MORE DAYS TO VOTE.
7 PLACES TO MOVE UP.
Let’s take this or go down swinging.
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