Bicycle BMX advocate calls for inclusive skatepark

NEBRASKA CITY – While the NoWear BMX stunt team thrilled the crowd at Steinhart Park Sunday, youth advocate Karl Hinkley called on Nebraska City officials to end the ban on scooters and bicycles at the city’s skate park.

Hinkley, who founded the nonprofit NoWear in 2011 , established the NoWear refuge compound near Unadilla in 2022 with a testimony of how the sport uplifts lives.

 

 

Hinkley: “So please remember skateboarding, scootering, biking none of it’s cooler than each other. It’s about developing, making friendships, making bonds and making a community so that you can be there for each other.”

He said he would like Nebraska City to be on the forefront of a movement to allow bicycles at skateparks.

 

The Tony Hawk Foundation recommends allowing BMX riders in skateparks to increase usage and include more youth.

Hinkley: “It’s not for insurance reasons. It’s not for any other reason than it’s discrimination and let’s get it stopped because every kid deserves to have a place to go and to make friends and to have family members that can one day save their lives, because it saved mine.”

Stunt rider Jaramiah Droescher said he met some BMX riders as a teenager and discovered a way to develop positive friendships.

 

Droescher: “It seems like  more happy feelings when your friends accomplish something riding bikes. It seems like everybody is more happy for you than when there was a group a skaters around us and it’s pretty much like ‘if you’re not doing it perfect, you’re not cool enough, you don’t fit in.’ There’s no judging. It’s more carefree and fun.”

 

He said skateboards with their metal trucks do more damage to a skatepark than bicycles with plastic pegs and rubber tires. Hinkley said the costs are minimal compared to the benefits.

Hinkley: “If we are able to save a kid’s life or give them a friendship or a community or a bond, guess what?  It’s less tax dollars we spend incarcerating a kid. Let’s invest in our youth. And not just a certain group, but all of them.”

He said park etiquette can be established so that the park flows properly to be safe for all users.