Skating | College Boardom

The ongoing battle to save the Historic Bro Bowl continues, even after the Bowl recently made the National Register of Historic Landmarks. The effort to save the bowl has been in recent news and media almost every day for the past couple weeks as the city is at risk of losing federal money if they don’t begin to build soon, but we are still far from a compromise it seems. Although many thought making this national list would secure the bowl from any renovations or destruction, this is not the case, as Tampa City Officials and the Senior African American community are pushing the original renovation blueprints of Perry Harvey Sr. Park, which includes removing the bowl to create a downtown entrance to the park. There have been numerous public city council meetings, of which some i have attended myself, to try and come to an agreement between the skater advocates of the bowl; primarily Caucasian, and the supporters of the black historic Central Avenue citizens. This has caused the battle to become racial and intensify the council meetings. The main reason a compromise has been unable to occur is due to the fact that the old black inhabitants of central avenue are so passionate about this memorial because their community was stripped away and demolished during the building of the highway nearby, and when riots occurred during segregation. Therefore they want to construct a full memorial walk through of the entire park to honor this community, but the brow bowl even though only occupying 2% of park land, seems to be in way of building. The argument which I brought about at one of the meetings was if they know how if feels to have their history and culture ripped away, then why do that to the skating community as well and strip away our history with it. What many don’t realize is the Bro bowl has been around since the 70’s, is one of the three original skate bowls left in the entire nation! Its been in numerous movies, documentaries, skate demos and even video games. This bowl is a historic and cultural place just like central ave was to the african american community and it has been a sanctuary for many peoples entires lives, which is why we are so passionate about it, like the people of central ave are about honoring their history. Also, many black central ave advoactes don’t realize that intact the black children of their communities are the skaters who go to the bowl the most and skate it the best, so why take that away from their own. Now plans were constructed to transport the bowl at first, but the concrete is to old to move and it just wouldn’t be the same. Although, they did finance to build a new bigger skate park in another area of the park, which would be nice, HOWEVER this would still cause the Original Bro Bowl to be destroyed and the history and culture would go down with it. My last argument is, if the bowl is left as it is, then they city could take the $600,000 they funded for the new skate park, and apply that to bettering the honorary memorial for the history of central ave people. I personally, as a member of the UT Surf/Skate Club, have gotten recognition from the school newspaper, by publishing an article about how our club is attempting to help the efforts in saving the bowl, by spreading the word through a petition, and going to the city meetings. There is website, a Facebook page and a twitter account all specifically focused on the bro bowl and saving it from the new Perry Harvey Sr. park renovations. Most importantly I also personally spoke with the head Duty State Preservationist Officer, Timothy Parsons, about this matter and hopefully he will take into considertion what I said and apply it to the supporting side of saving the bowl. Now many say it will take to much time and money to redesign the original blueprints of the park, to preserve the bowl, but the bowl is national historic place, which must stand for somthing. I beileve the most simple and ultimate compromise is to just BUILD AROUND THE BRO BOWL, and both the skating community and African American community of the old Central Ave can enjoy the land and the park in harmony.