- After that, MoCo's Department of General Services hosts the follow-up to last week's sneak peek of the new Silver Spring Library (above) tomorrow. You can check out final drawings of the soon-to-be-built complex at Wayne and Fenton, which will include County offices, an art gallery, and a future Purple Line stop in addition to a new library. That meeting will be at 1pm Saturday in the current library, 8901 Colesville Road.
- And Tonight, everyone's favorite youth media collective, the Gandhi Brigade, premieres their latest documentaries. Crossing Borders is a series of four short films produced alongside kids in El Salvador while on a ten-day trip there last summer. The screening is from 6:30pm to 8:30pm in the Cafritz Arts Building at Georgia Avenue and King Street on Montgomery College's Takoma Park-Silver Spring campus.
- After that, the Art n Soul open mike for teens returns to Moorenko's Ice Cream for its second month. Writers and musicians (in middle and high school) are invited to come out and perform starting at 7:30pm, with a sign-up beginning at 7. If you don't know, Moorenko's is located at Georgia Avenue and East-West Highway, next to Mayorga Coffee.
- Speaking of The Kids, commenter Skateboard Mom went to Wednesday night's meeting about the proposed skate spot in Woodside Park and had this to say:
". . . 30 skateboarders (most of them teens) showed up to speak up for the need for a legitimate skating facility in Silver Spring. They were so polite and so well-behaved, that at the end Mike Riley, Department of Parks Deputy Director, complimented them on that, and said their behavior was much better than a lot of the behavior he's seen when that room has been filled with adults."
2 comments:
I've been skating with and getting to know these kids for a year, and I have a lot of admiration and respect for them. But even I was amazed by seeing 30 of them show up for this meeting, and be totally quiet and calm the whole time. What this shows is how serious they are about their desire for a legal place to skate, and how tired they are of getting kicked out and marginalized in Silver Spring.
As one of the skaters was leaving, an officer with the Park Police, Lauren McNeill, thanked him personally for speaking so eloquently about how skating changed his life, and how it took him away from a lot of negative influences he was surrounded by.
This was a powerful display of advocacy by teens and for teens, and through it, they proved how wrong a lot of the stereotypes about skateboarders are.
In spite of the efforts of so many skateboarders to peacefully advocate for a legal place to skate, I was just informed that an influential community organization is going to be asking for construction on the Woodside skate spot to be delayed.
The reasons given? Concern about the playground equipment, and security at the park. I didn't hear any expression of concern for our skateboarding teens.
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