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The following excerpts are taken from the Open Meadow Advocate. Photo: Mike Goetz/The Skateboard Archives.
This young man is trying to bring his community skateboarding. Chris Nukala is a senior at Open Meadow CRUE, a project based alternative school, and Nukala must complete a senior project prior to graduation. “I just wanted to do a senior project I could feel good about while helping low income skaters in North Portland and promote skateboarding as a positive and possibly a life saving activity” says Nukala. After talking with Nukala I understood his mission. He stated “My project started as myself wanting to raise money for five complete skateboards to give to low income kids in north Portland. Only days into finding contributors I had plenty of product so I figured if I can do more for my community, why wouldn’t I? So I changed my mission statement to help every local skater in St. Johns whether or not it’s as big as a complete board or as small as grip tape or hardware. “There are skate parks all over the world now. They are definitely not hard to find, so I found myself wondering why you would do this at Pier Park instead of a more crowded skate park like Glenhaven Park or the Department of Skateboarding. I would imagine you could possibly get through to more kids there?” Chris exaggerating heavily, responded, “Isn’t Glenhaven crowded enough? I have lived in North Portland my whole life so I know the dangerous activities that kids could get involved with such as gangs, drug abuse and theft. I have also seen how skateboarding has veered my once troubled friends back on the right track and kept them out of trouble. Drugs and gangs flooding the streets of North Portland along with failed, troubled or drug addicted parents deprives our community’s youth of a fair chance, and I feel skateboarding could give these kids a positive way to stay active and out of trouble.” Would you like to shoot a shout out? “I would like to thank Merde Skateboards, Bacon Skate, Justin and Mike at Jivaro, Randy and Grover at Cold War Skateboards and of course, Howard at Cal Skates in Portland. All you guys are great!” Giving Back to the Community -A summary of Chris Nukala’s senior project. A conversation between Chris and his English teacher Lauren
Hats off to Nukes for doing something positive for his fellow skater.
