From yesterday's Tennessean

The interesting part of this problem is that skateboarders constantly complain that they need a skatepark to make them stop street skating. They think that the government owes them “some place to practice their sport” and use their feeling of entitlement to justify their vandalism of public property (waxing steps, destroying rails, etc.).

When someone else claims their own entitlement (graffiti taggers need a place to practice their art form too, man) the skateboarders whine like Grandma’s at the Kroger’s.

I hope it is a long, cold winter.

Long Range: Skate park too valuable to be taken for granted

Sometime on the evening of Jan. 12, vandals broke into the Franklin Skate Plaza and spray-painted obscenities on its kidney-shaped bowl. The two-year-old facility has been "tagged" three times, including once with lipstick.

Seriously now, enough is enough.

The truth of the matter is that if the skate park ends up being taken away or remade into something else, the only people who can be blamed are the ones who continually feel the need to express their artistic side inside of the bowl.

I totally understand that there are tons of good kids who go to the park and use it as it was intended. It's unfortunate the acts of a few cause consequences that must be dealt with by the masses.

Fortunately for those who use the park there are people like Lisa Clayton, Franklin's parks director, who understand that despite the repeated attacks on the venue, it is still something that is very needed by the city.

Aside from that, at $400,000, this isn't something the city can just demolish and go in a different direction with.

But what does need to happen is for those who use the park to take pride in it. Too often people get too comfortable with things. They feel like they are owed, that things that are privileges are rights when in actuality they aren't.

Sometimes, once something loses its newness one forgets what life was like before that new object was there.

Amnesia by complacency, I like to call it.

For those who don't know, there are public ordinances that rule against skateboarding publicly in the city of Franklin. Yet, because there are people who actually care about what's going on with the youth of today, the facility was built.

I covered the skate park's grand opening. What stood out the most that day was the number of adults out enjoying the skate park, too. They spoke about how they longed for a place like this. Apparently they tried for ages to get a similar facility but came away defeated. But on that day, they felt victorious.

Maybe some of those skaters should go back there and retell their stories. Obviously some kids need to hear about what it's like not being fortunate enough to have a place to skate — because at this rate, the next generation may not have the luxury either.

Contact Jonathan Long at 771-5429 or jolong@tennessean.com.