Skateboarders Celebrate Their Day in Lake Forest

In Rancho Santa Margarita, some big kids who were locals—including one celebrating his 27th birthday—took to the skatepark for some informal fun. 

In Lake Forest, a lot of young teens—including some from San Diego County—were part of the more formal and organized "Go Skateboarding Day." 

Across the nation, and across the world, skateboarders celebrated the passion of surfing the concrete ocean.

Locally, nowhere was there a bigger celebration than Etnies Skatepark in Lake Forest, which was highlighted by games and giveaways at one of the finest skate venues in the land.

Under the direction of microphone-wielding recreation coordinator Nick Gates, kids won awards for their skateboarding, for getting plastered with Etnies stickers, for winning a footrace from one end of the park to the other, for picking up the most trash when it was over. Lake Forest's Kyle Cumming, 13, arrived with a chipped up and beaten skateboard but left with a new one; he was deemed to have the worst skateboard in the park, but not anymore. 

In Rancho Santa Margarita's Cañada Vista Park, Jeremy Block of Coto de Caza celebrated his 27th birthday with friends and strangers as a handful of older skateboarders enjoyed a less frenetic pace. The youngest of the lot was Jack Schaefer, 16, of RSM, and Kyle Goward, 20, of Mission Viejo was somewhere in the middle.

This was the 10th annual "Go Skateboarding Day," which was created by the International Association of Skateboard Companies based in Rancho Santa Margarita.