This has been my first interaction with the slap populous in maybe a decade and it comes with a heavy heart. I received news yesterday that the court yard at Chaffey High School in Ontario, California had been or was in the process of being demolished. If you aren’t familiar I would describe it as the love park of the west coast and a plaza before plazas were a thing, dating back to the height of the spot in the mid to late 90’s.
By the time I had first stepped foot there it had seen its run and legend had it that a bmx kid had been stabbed by a skateboarder and came back to sledge hammer the part of the court yard that had been heavily skated. Massive chunks of the blocks had been clearly taken out by something far beyond skateboarding. This was when I was thirteen. There was something mystical about Chaffey. The history and the timelessness had me come back for 8 summers of abuse. I can say without a doubt that my rotating cast of a skate crew wasn’t as psyched as I was to spend a hot summer day in that run down courtyard but when you skated past the center ledge and could pinpoint where Guy grinded on the block, or where Kareem had kick flipped over a trash can upright, you knew that you were in a bubble and for that session all time and history was seamless.
I have many fond memories of Chaffey, most just hanging with my friends who I don’t really get to see or speak to regularly. I feel like a piece of those memories left with the demolition of the courtyard. I sure as hell didn’t get many tricks or clips there. It was hard enough to skate and I think it’s a reason why I came back summer after summer. It helped create a mental toughness that shaped my adolescence and help create the person I am today.
RIP Chaffey. Thanks for the good times. Thanks for the bad times. Thanks to anyone who stepped foot on hallowed ground. We lost a good one.
Topic: RIP Chaffey High (Read 1991 times)