Love Park, Philadelphia

Love Park is a park in the center of the city of Philadelphia which for a time became a major hub for skateboarders beginning in the 1980's and continuing on to the early part of the 21^st century. The Philadelphia Love Park was first opened as a park in 1965, however, and is found above an underground parking garage. Today, skateboarding is no longer allowed in Love Park Philadelphia through a series of events which resulted in the banning of skateboarding in Love Park Philly.
Love Park first became an attractive place for skateboarders to practice their sport in the 1980s as skateboarding grew in popularity throughout the east coast after becoming big among surfers in California along the west coast. Philadelphia Love Park was covered by curved steps made of granite, a stone fountain in the center of the park and large granite surfaces which were perfect for skateboarding. Love Park Philadelphia started to gain an international reputation during the 1990s as many of the local users who had grown up skating Love Park Philly went on to secure multi-million dollar contracts as professional skateboarders. Stevie Williams, Josh Kalis, Ricky Ovola and Anthony Pappalardo are famous early skateboarders who did most of their early skating at Love Park.
Due to the attention, Philadelphia Love Park was chosen as the site of the 2001 and 2002 X-Games. More than 150 million people watched these games from all over the world, catapulting the sport of skateboarding to world-wide popularity. Eventually, many of those same skaters who excelled at skateboarding would also turn to the slopes, bringing those same moves to snowboarding and creating yet another competitive sports empire and a whole new class of young athletic stars.