© The Western Star

Western Star Article regarding the “Corner Brook Needs a New Skatepark” fundraiser.

Corner Brook Needs a New Skatepark

By Cliff Wells
Star Staff Writer

CORNER BROOK – A T-shirt says “Corner Brook Needs A new Skatepark.” It’s a simple message on an old medium. A pair of Corner Brook friends hope it’s effective.

The idea came to Kevin Joseph in March and he waited for the right time to execute it with his friend and collaborator Jeremy Osmond.

The shirts feature the phrase and a silhouette of a skateboarder doing a “blunt slide” on the side of a set of steps.

The idea of selling the shirts is to raise awareness of the need for a new skate park and to raise funds for the Community Youth Network’s skateboard park committee which has been lobbing city hall to build a concrete skate park.

When the city’s recreation master plan was brought to the public, the concept of a youth park on the site of the old city hall was put forward as an idea.

The vision described was for the skate park to be a feature of that facility.

“If you’re using it just to corral teenagers, it’s not going to work,” Joseph said.

“A skate park on that site, great. A youth park on that site, I’m not sure what it means.

“I don’t know what a youth park would look like.”

The city has been good about making sure the skate park that exists is cleaned up when there’s glass around and the ramps are repaired when they need it, but he’d like to hear more about what’s happening.

Right now the campaign for the park is quiet, so he figures it’s a good time to stir up some awareness.

The awareness campaign also includes a couple of short advertisement-type videos, digital wallpapers and a few other downloads.

“We really put a lot of work into it, except for print, but we’re talking about some other fundraising events where we might get some of the photos and some of the ads we’ve got mocked up on line in a poster format for purchase and stuff,” he said. “It’s a pretty big push on from us here at Sideways Board Shop and J. Osmond Design — Jeremy Osmond.

“We’re pretty pumped. We’ve had a pretty good response.”

© The Western Star