The same old lady here who lived on our main plaza used to try and run the skaters over with her car, but I've told that story several times before as well as when she would try and steal our bags. She never managed to hit anyone but kept taunting us about how 'that would have made for at least one less of us'. Some tough luck is, her daughter also happened to work at the bar right across the street of our secondary plaza deeper downtown, and her husband worked at the garage two blocks away from my parents' house, the parking lot of which I would skate all the time. Her mental picture of skateboarders must have been insane.
Nowadays I never get harassed as an adult (which definitely helps - I do see so many concerned citizens sometimes straight up run past me and go straight for the kids) because I just try and behave responsibly - those who don't fear engaging with oddball me seem to actually respect and like me. The mentalities are definitely progressing. Already knowing this I was completely taken aback a couple weeks ago visiting Bordeaux and occasionally getting kicked out of spots - every interaction wasn't just civil, it was Japan-levels of courteous which contrasts so much with what I always was used to years back, in and out of that city. Objectively Leo Valls' involvement in the local politics there has only been resulting in fantastic results - I'm not saying this because he's a friend or am trying to shill (I never hid my connections anyway). I always believed in both responsible initiatives in general and his specific local actions respectively, and yet still this one time I really was genuinely hit by the extent of the results - which really means two things, one being Bordeaux right now is a better skate destination than ever and the other being anyone disappointed with how their local scene is being treated seriously enough to try and arrange things really should go read up on some Ocean Howell, and look into what's been spontaneously crystallizing under the neologism or hashtag 'skaturbanism' [sic] around Europe for the past few years now.
Thankfully we're moving on from eras such as the one of that one classic bank spot in Paris (not the La Défense one, the smaller but similar-looking one - now gone - near Porte d'Italie with the barrier on top), where people used to kick you out by throwing full, capped two-liter water or piss bottles out of their balcony on the 15th floor (I might have heard a story about a microwave oven before too unless it's my brain confusing and romancing things). No warnings ever and so you had to spend the whole session half on your board and half looking up just in case, fucking wild.
Now we're still talking exceptional European poles and everywhere around the world, smaller cities are bound to be late to catch up, but we can get there, especially with skateboarding in the Olympics suddenly motivating every other region to unlock new budgets.