A Skateboard Legend's Half-Pipe Dreams

By Ian Wilhelm

On a crisp, sunny morning here, a dozen or so teenagers in baggy jeans do their best to defy gravity. At a newly built skateboard park, they zip through the gray-white hills and valleys with abandon, the soft rolling sound of their rubber wheels punctuated by the occasional crash of a failed ollie or other aerial trick.

Despite the sunshine and good times, a shaggy blond-haired skater kicks up his board and makes an ugly face. "Are you here to fix the park?" he asks a visitor. "That