SAN DIEGO — For the skateboarders at Robb Field Skate Park in Ocean Beach, the financial crisis gripping the state's second-largest city has meant freedom.
Freedom not to pay $5 to zoom up and down the concrete swells. Freedom not to wear helmets at the risk of cracking their heads. Freedom to smoke while they skate, drink beer, bring dogs, ride minibikes amid the skateboards and scrawl graffiti -- all of which was noted last week by a visitor.
Starting Jan. 2, San Diego decided it could no longer afford to assign Park and Recreation Department employees to supervise the city's five skate parks.
Instead, signs were posted listing seven rules -- rules the skateboarders are breaking without remorse.
"Helmets are bummers," said helmet-less Elliot Hathaway, 22, an employee of a metal-fabricating business.
When he heard that the skate park not only was free but minus supervision, John Wright, 25, a waiter at a Gaslamp District restaurant, rode his bike five miles from his apartment in Pacific Beach.
"I know these rules are for our own good, but rules are just against the whole spirit of skateboarding," he said. "Plus, the whole idea of paying to skateboard is wrong."
They probably don't realize it, but the skateboarders fit firmly within the local political zeitgeist, which holds that government services should be free or low-cost, even at the risk of public safety.
This, after all, is the city where chronic underfunding of the Fire Department was seen as contributing to the destruction of hundreds of homes in the 2003 Cedar fire. The Police Department has fewer officers per capita than almost every big-city department in the country.
But it is also the city that is firmly anti-taxation and where, for example, single-family homes do not pay separately for garbage collection, thanks to a law passed in 1919.
Now the nation's economic free fall may force the City Council, including newly elected members, to decide whether San Diego should change its fiscal ways or substantially slash services.
In November, Mayor Jerry Sanders tried shock therapy. Warning of a $43-million operating deficit, he proposed closing seven branch libraries and nine recreation centers, trimming the fire-rescue crews at 12 stations and reducing the fire and police academy classes, which would mean even fewer officers and firefighters as retirements thin the ranks.
