The Long Walk Home

Tim Szot of Ironwood carries an Arbor made longboard as he walks up a street in Hurley, Wis. Thursday night. Szot recently took up the sport this summer to help keep him more active. (Photos by Joshua Kodis)

Local Skaters Take to the Streets at Night

Story by Joshua Kodis - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - In the darkness of the night two friends coast quietly down the empty city streets on longboards until local law enforcement sends them home walking.

Ironwood residents Tim Szot, 26, and Steve McKenzie, 20, are not criminals, they are longboarders. Similar in appearance to a skateboard, but a completely different sport many locals have never been exposed to before.

“I haven’t seen anyone else longboard,” McKenzie said, even though he has been riding for three years in the area. Just a few of his friends join him every now and then to ride down the streets of Hurley, Ironwood and Bessemer at night.

People who pass by often take interest in the two as they speed by on the over-sized skateboards.

“The normal reaction I usually get when I ride by people is that they just stare because they have no idea what it is,” Szot said.

The two try to meet at least once a week, late at night to take their boards to the streets. “I usually ride at night because the traffic is less and I don’t have to worry about people running me over as much,” Szot said. “My favorite thing about longboarding is how relaxing it can get, I just put on my headphones and just kind of chill and cruise the streets.”

Public roads are the only place to use longboards. Unlike skateboards, they’re made for speeding down hills and cruising longer distances rather than riding in a skate-park.

“It is a lot different than skateboarding,” Szot said. “Skateboarding is all about the tricks, longboarding is more about speed.”

Although less time is spent learning difficult tricks with serious consequences of skateboarding, longboarding is still not the safest sport to jump into. “You could fall off your board and hit your face on concrete,” McKenzie said.

Riding at speeds just as fast as a bicycle but with no brakes provides plenty of chance for injury.

“When you start going down some of the bigger hills, when you crash, you’re not going to be getting up right away,” Szot said. Keeping all the dangers in mind, the two always look for the safest conditions to ride. They’ll wait until no car is in sight and pick roads that have plenty of room to safely slow down after speeding down a hill.

By riding at night the skaters have most of the streets to themselves. Starting around 11:00 PM and staying out well into the early morning, as long as they aren’t sent home. Local law enforcement is the number one thing the two athletes try to avoid while riding, in past conflicts, being spotted by the police sends the two walking for the night.

“I think cops send me home because they’re afraid I’m about to break something or cause trouble,” McKenzie said.

Neither of the two have criminal records, nor do they ever plan on committing a crime when they go out for a ride.

“I just go out there and try to have fun,” Szot said.

McKenzie has now been sent home by law enforcement while riding in Bessemer and Hurley, where according to the city’s clerk, neither of the two towns have an ordinance to prevent skateboarding on public roads.

“I do not think it’s fair,” McKenzie said.

Bessemer has no ordinance regarding unlawful use of a skateboard, while according to Hurley’s ordinance section 10-2-4 states that it is only unlawful to skateboard on any sidewalk in a business district, any public parking ramp, parking lot or on private property, but doesn’t say that it is illegal to ride on public roads. In fact it says that operators of skateboards are required to yield to pedestrians and cannot be pulled by a moving vehicle.

All these rules were being followed by Szot and McKenzie when they were told to get off the streets by a Hurley police officer last Thursday night.

“I feel like I’m stripped of my right to have fun,” McKenzie said. “It’s no different than the dangers of riding a bike down the street.”

The two are not always treated this way by the police though. The same night they were sent home from Hurley, a different officer stopped to make sure everything was all right when Szot was resting at the bottom of a hill on the corner of Silver Street. Once the officer asked what they were doing and saw no concern, he drove off leaving the skaters to their enjoy their sport for the rest of the evening.

Later in the night, the two were riding down a even less busy road. Just before the start of a run, a different officer pulled up to collect names and ages before explaining that Hurley has a no-skating law and telling them to get off the streets.

During the long walk home, the skaters talk about when and where they are going to ride next.

“I started longboarding because I was pretty bored, and I wanted something to do to get me out of the house and keep me active,” Szot said, explaining that regardless of what police tell him, he’ll continue to ride.

“It’s not going to stop me from doing it,” McKenzie said. “I just might have to go to a different place to ride next time.”