Chicano Park's Skateboard Memorial Murals: Extending the Sacred in Polluted Leisure

Abstract

This paper explores the transformation of murals at San Diego’s Chicano Park Skatepark into sites of spiritual struggle. We observe the extension of spiritual identification through skateboarding as a leisure pursuit that is woven with the symbols of Chicano identity. We frame our discussion through the material and symbolic paradigm of pol- luted leisure, since the park is both contaminated by heavy industry and othered through its ethnic composition. Embedded in this narra- tive is the struggle over a people encased in a polluted space, and framed alike pollution as unwanted, disposable, and unsightly. Amidst this example of a fraying society afflicted with both the slow violence of substance abuse and internal gentrification, a spiritual connection to skateboarding offers coherence. We conclude by showing how the spirituality of skateboarding works as a recasting of polluted leisure as both a resistant and hopeful act.

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Leisure Sciences
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Chicano Park’s Skateboard Memorial Murals:
Extending the Sacred in Polluted Leisure
Andrea Buchetti & Paul O’Connor
To cite this article: Andrea Buchetti & Paul O’Connor (22 Mar 2024): Chicano Park’s
Skateboard Memorial Murals: Extending the Sacred in Polluted Leisure, Leisure Sciences, DOI:
10.1080/01490400.2024.2325484
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2024.2325484
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with
license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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LEISURE SCIENCES
Chicano Park’s Skateboard Memorial Murals: Extending
the Sacred in Polluted Leisure
Andrea Buchettia and Paul O’Connorb
aHistory, Anthropology, Religions, Universita degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy; bThe
Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the transformation of murals at San Diego’s
Chicano Park Skatepark into sites of spiritual struggle. We observe the
extension of spiritual identification through skateboarding as a leisure
pursuit that is woven with the symbols of Chicano identity. We frame
our discussion through the material and symbolic paradigm of pol-
luted leisure, since the park is both contaminated by heavy industry
and othered through its ethnic composition. Embedded in this narra-
tive is the struggle over a people encased in a polluted space, and
framed alike pollution as unwanted, disposable, and unsightly. Amidst
this example of a fraying society afflicted with both the slow violence
of substance abuse and internal gentrification, a spiritual connection
to skateboarding offers coherence. We conclude by showing how the
spirituality of skateboarding works as a recasting of polluted leisure as
both a resistant and hopeful act.
Introduction
The vibrant murals of San Diego’s Chicano Park adorn the imposing concrete columns
of the Coronado Bridge. Visitors to this location will be struck by the mythic overture
of the space. Not only is the artwork profound, echoing Chicano political and spiritual
ancestry, but the monumental architecture is imposing. The concrete pillars echo the
prehistoric way stone has been used to ground and edify cultures and their rituals.
Yet their material nature resonates with the anthropogenic realities of our time.
Coronado Bridge is a monument to urban development, car, concrete, and pollution
(Charles, 2015).
Traveling southwest into the park from National Avenue and moving toward the
heavily industrialized harbor, you will come across a skatepark. Typically, graffiti covers
the spaces of many skateparks, but Chicano Park Skatepark has a unique set of four
murals that speak of skateboard history, Chicano culture, and indigenous religion.
Surrounding two of these murals are old skateboards with the words “RIP Raymond”
and “RIP Jesse” boldly printed on them and set amidst plants, photos, and candles.
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
CONTACT Paul O’Connor p.j.oconnor@exeter.ac.uk The Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy,
and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2024.2325484
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)
or with their consent.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 27 September
2023
Accepted 27 February
2024
KEYWORDS
leisure; Mexican
American; pollution;
sacred; skateboarding

2 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
In this article, we address a novel aspect of Chicano Park that is emblematic of the
broader polluted leisure context of the community. This niche focus is the skatepark
and the murals within. These murals signify potent symbolism of both skateboard and
Chicano culture and have become sites of memorial for some of the community’s
skateboarding youth who have died, and which we frame as untimely deaths of despair
(King et al., 2022). We address this issue to comprehend the way that skateboarding
comes to be significant as a tapestry for the identity and spirituality of skateboarders
in Chicano Park. Our discussion contrasts efforts to sacralize skateboarding (O’Connor,
2020) and attempts to retain a local identity in Chicano Park considering social and
environmental processes of degradation (Delgado & Swanson, 2019). We conceptualize
this dynamic through the concept of polluted leisure (Evers, 2019a, 2019b) that cap-
tures both the material and symbolic aspects of pollution. While our context is rife
with examples of material pollution, we lean into the symbolic element and extend
the polluted leisure thesis to address the social impact of gentrification, persistent
racism, gangs, drugs, and violence. We propose that Chicano Park’s skateboard memo-
rials signify a process of meaning making that operationalizes leisure in an attempt
to mitigate the manifold and divergent experiences of a fraying polluted society.
We proceed by first providing a review of the literature contextualizing the his-
torical development of Chicano Park and its skatepark. We thereby introduce our
theoretical frame of polluted leisure and address the forms of sacralization connected
to both the park and skateboarding as a leisure pursuit. Secondly, we outline our
ethnographic methodology and detail the fieldwork and procedure of the study.
Our focus then turns to the description and analysis of the murals in the skatepark
Figure 1. Aztec handplant by artist hiram C.V. Cisco. Author’s photo.

LEISURE SCIENCES 3
(see Figure 1), drawing on the symbolism and hybridity of the imagery used. We
extend our analysis by focusing on the ways two of the murals have become make-
shift altars and demonstrate how these memorials (or memmurials) speak to the
broader social dynamics of the community and the hopeful pursuit of leisure
within it.
Literature review: the mythic and polluted origins of Chicano Park
To foreground our broader discussion the following literature review is thematically
oriented around the park and its historical development. Due to space, this is selective
as we seek to address key theoretical motifs of contemporary spirituality, deaths of
despair, and skateboarding literature while contextualizing the heritage of Chicano
Park. The historic context of Chicano Park helps us understand how it has emerged
as a resistant space of leisure. Here, our contribution it to respond to Mair’s (2002)
notion of civil leisure, suggesting that even non-activist-related forms of play such as
skateboarding can take on a political form that addresses “the hegemonic tendencies
toward consumerization and commodification” (Mair, 2002, p. 215) of space. Her
framing of civil leisure is part of an ongoing conceptualization of oblique forms of
leisure such as “serious” (Stebbins, 2001) “deviant” (Rojek, 1995) and “polluted” (Evers,
2019a, 2019b). We observe pollution as a social issue that is combined with the recast-
ing of ethnic and spiritual symbolism through leisure. This is an example and extension
of Mair’s civil leisure, where the spiritual combines with resistant forms of leisure.
Importantly, this is a story of leisure that is rich in symbolism. We present the striving
for communal leisure that has been mythologized in murals, and also in the ritualized
annual celebration of the origin of the park. Our review of the literature develops the
frame of material and social pollution which informs our epistemological position on
current debate in leisure studies and, on the other hand, the history of Chicano Park
as a prominent and iconic space of civic resistance through leisure.
A longstanding Mexican American (Chicana/o1) community have resided in Barrio
Logan, where Chicano Park is situated. This historically tight knit community is located
only 17 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and inhabits the southwest of San Diego
which has become increasingly industrialized, polluted, and urban since the 1950s
(Rosen & Fisher, 2001). A shipyard, heavy industry, and the construction of the impos-
ing Coronado bridge in 1967 uprooted families and transformed Barrio Logan’s ecology.
It was this slow violence of compounded racism, industrialization, and eminent
domain that led to the occupation of the site under the Coronado bridge on April
22, 1970. Over 250 people took over the space and brought tools to begin constructing
their very own park. It was, to the community, a rightful inheritance that they had
long been denied and they were spurred to action by news that government construc-
tion workers were about to turn the site into a highway patrol base (Rosen & Fisher,
2001; Sandoval, 2018). This was an afront to the community, denying them a leisure
space through a racial policy of urbanization typical of the era (Avila, 2014). Today,
after the victory, Chicano Park is protected both as a listed space on the Californian
Register of Historic Places since 1997 (Rosen & Fisher, 2001), on the National Register
of Historic Places since 2013, and also as a National Historic Landmark since 2016
(Figure 2).

4 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
What is provocative about the Chicano Park story is the hopeful encounter of leisure
it provides. It corresponds with Mair’s (2002) discussion on the civil, “using leisure to
claim public spaces for the generation of political discussions, and taking personal
risks to do so” (p. 217). The very intent of the occupation of the site was to establish
a park, a space for leisure. However, this hopeful frame can obscure the more con-
cerning examples of disregard and destruction that the people of Barrio Logan have
to contend with. Working with the wider scope of ‘personal risks’ we propose that
closer scrutiny of both the present and historic context of Chicano Park, can be framed
as polluted leisure (Evers, 2019a, Evers, 2019b). Firstly, Barrio Logan is a materially
toxic location such that the area has been ranked amongst the most polluted spaces
in the state of California (Delgado & Swanson, 2019). The human scale of these pol-
lutants can be felt in anecdotes of asthma, cancer, and obstructed walks to school in
the face of congested streets of heavy industrial trucks (ibid). It is however no coin-
cidence that the Chicano community has this environmental burden. Conceptually
polluted leisure addresses both the material and symbolic presentations of pollution,
of which marginal populations are a distinct example. Therefore, and secondly, the
ethnic composition of Barrio Logan can be understood amidst the social framing of
pollution as ‘other’, as those and that which does not belong (Douglas, 1969).
Evers (2019a) presents a similar dynamic in addressing Japanese surfers who have
returned to Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. He identifies
that the choice to construct the Nuclear Power Plant in the region was connected to
the way in which Fukushima was regarded as an internal colony, a place of ‘otherness’
and a socially polluted space apposite to accommodate a radioactive hazard. This is
also evident in the history of Barrio Logan where naval industry, highway fumes and
Figure 2. Murals at Chicano Park at National avenue. Author’s photo.

LEISURE SCIENCES 5
imposing urban infrastructure mark the neighborhood’s borders. The historic attempt
to construct a highway patrol base amidst the community is another case in point.
Thus, the story of Chicano Park is one of resistant leisure amidst the context of
material and social ‘otherness’. This ‘otherness’ rejected its labeling as “waste” by
urbanization policies (Avila, 2014) and constructed its own leisure space in the shadow
of the infrastructure and pollution brought by these same policies.
The discussion on polluted leisure also includes the identification of particular forms
of resistance. Evers (2019a) refers to Lora-Wainwright’s (2017) “resigned activism” as
ways individuals in China’s toxic villages adopt accommodating actions to mitigate
pollution (p. 8). These might include buying bottled water or closing windows at night
to avoid air pollution. In his Fukushima case study Evers (2019b) notes that some
surfers purchase Geiger counters to make these ‘resigned activist’ accommodations. In
a contrasting example Borden’s (2001) work on skateboarding identifies that skate-
boarders use space in a resistant manner, albeit that this political act is ultimately
hedonistic.
Issues of resistance and activism are at the heart of the Chicano Park story and
the pursuit of leisure in this space. This is made overt and vibrant in the artistic zeal
that followed the occupation of the site and is the focus of much academic debate on
the area (Cucher, 2019; Falser, 2007). The empty space under the highway bridge is
arguably at odds with the imagining of a park as an open and salubrious space of
leisure. However, the people of Barrio Logan have worked with the polluted space to
recast it as both beautiful and meaningful. The space now houses the largest number
of public murals anywhere in the U.S. (Sandoval, 2018). The very content of these
murals speaks to Chicano and indigenous heritage and have become both political
and spiritual repositories. One mural artist describes Chicano Park as “a sacred place”
that brings people together through a fusion of culture, history, and shared identity
(Sandoval, 2018, p. 310). The political and memorial legacy fixed on the surfaces of
Chicano Park is often said to be “sacred” reverberating the concept of sacred and
contested space coined to other relevant places in the history of California’s ethnic
urbanism (Estrada, 2008).
To situate such identifications in a broader literature, it is helpful to recognize that
a host of religious transformations have unfolded in the global north since WWII.
Greater individualism has seen a turn away from proscribed social roles and greater
prominence of the subjective self. Heelas etal. (2005) see a move away from traditional
religions and a search toward spiritual activities resonating personal meaning and
individual choice. Their findings in the UK are complemented by transformations in
American society in which the sacred has become more secular, and the secular has
taken on sacred forms (Ostwalt, 2012). A more pronounced example of such dynamics
is offered by Crockford (2021) in an ethnography of new age beliefs in Sedona, Arizona.
Her work captures a pick-n-mix-pop-culture spirituality that draws on the energy of
the natural environment, digital simulation, UFOs, and conspiracy theories. She iden-
tifies that part of these transformations are emblematic of the ‘spiritual but not religious’
zeitgeist, but also part of more complex changes in the American dream and economic
transformation. In work on skateboarders O’Connor (2020) notes trends in sacralizing
skateboarding, drawing on niche sub-cultural vernaculars to retain and extend meaning
in their leisure in the face of transformation and sportification. In such a milieu, many

6 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
people are identifying with a spirituality that is personally meaningful to their biog-
raphies, and is also optional, flexible, somewhat mirroring the neoliberal context of
both individual choice, and flexible versatility. This spirituality frequently intersects
with forms of leisure, some of which relate to pop-culture pastimes, movies, music,
UFOs, and dance (Clark & Clanton, 2012; Crockford, 2021; Harmon & Dox, 2016;
Kraus, 2009). While others connect at the interstices of sport and lifestyle, surfing,
skateboarding, and street basketball (Anderson, 2013; Shoemaker, 2023a, 2023b;
Woodbine, 2016).
Evocations of the spiritual in Chicano Park correspond with these changes and draw
on the popular, the local, the ethnic, and the ancient to generate a sense of the spir-
itual. It is clear from the extant literature that, within Mexican-descendant communities
in the Southwest, a generalized sense of sacredness has developed at the intersection
of political struggles, collective memories and contested uses of urban space (Carrasco,
2019; Massey et al., 1990). It is a syncretic and modern sacredness, which is at the
same time a tool to (re)appropriate pre-Hispanic indigenous traditions (Galinier &
Molinié, 2013; Olivas Hernandez, 2018), to keep alive the link with Mexican Catholicism
(López Pulido, 2003), or to express collective feelings of secular spirituality and unity.
A sacredness performed and communicated often through various specific uses of
leisure time (Olivas Hernandez, 2018). However, the hopeful mythology of both the
Chicano Park story and the painted murals belies a confluence of polluted tensions
that extend throughout Barrio Logan and are manifest in the community skatepark.
Here we encounter some of the threats that have plagued the entire area in recent
decades: generational divides, racism, gentrification, and the hydra of gangs, drugs,
and violence (Delgado & Stefanic, 2013; Sandoval, 2018).
The topic of the skatepark within Chicano Park acts as a provocative case study to
make further connections to spirituality, despair, and pollution. Long before the skate-
park was constructed, skateboarders have congregated in the area, skating the ledges
and claiming a space for themselves. It was not until 2015 that an actual skatepark
was built at this spot providing a legitimate place for skateboarders. Writing in 2001,
Rosen and Fisher note the developing heritage debate surrounding the park and its
murals, and also the growing disenfranchisement of the barrio’s youth. They imply
that an increasing incidence of graffiti and tagging has threatened the artwork, sig-
naling that these murals and their rich heritage offer little to the maladies of Chicano
Park’s twenty first century youth. Compounding this issue is a growth of homelessness,
drug use and gang violence in the area, which speak to not just local issues but
national transformations too.
Our research resonates with the paradigm of ‘deaths of despair’, a term first used
by Case and Deaton (2017) to capture the increase in mortality connected to substance
abuse and self-harm in twenty first century America. Such deaths are a health and
social issue and tied to socioeconomic dislocations (Case & Deaton, 2021). Analysis
has shown that such deaths are not simply a supply issue, whereby access to prescrip-
tion drugs and firearms are a primary risk factor. Deaths of despair are also a demand
issue in which social and economic conditions are central. Particularly economic
stagnation and deprivation are of key relevance to this concept, and are part of a
dynamic that result in the poorest tax brackets of American society living 10–15 years
less than the richest (King et al., 2022). While complex and multifaceted, growing

LEISURE SCIENCES 7
economic disparity, industrial transformation, and social change all appear to be part
of the broader circumstances that contribute to deaths of despair.
In more recent years Barrio Logan has undergone a very specific and conceptually
challenging form of gentrification, one in which the artistic flavor of Chicano Park
has been leveraged commercially by a part of the local Chicano community. These
transformations have raised property prices and created unprecedented conflicts within
the local Chicano community, such as those between the need for primary services
and the increase in rents due to the stereotypical ethnic esthetics of the same
service-providing infrastructures (Delgado, 2017). This type of social transformation
has been sometimes termed gentefication (Delgado & Swanson, 2019)—a play on the
Spanish la gente [the people]—to denote gentrification from within, by a Mexican
American “creative class” (Florida, 2002). This portmanteau neologism of community
change, read through the micro-context of the local skatepark, is again evocative of
the mixed, interstitial topic we explore.
Paradoxically, as Chicano Park has received ever wider cultural and civic recognition
and has been awarded more financial support, greening, and environmental protection,
so too has it seen some of its most radical social transformation. This resonates starkly
with the material and social frame of pollution, as Barrio Logan has become more
salubrious it too has become whiter. For example, between 2000 and 2010 the Hispanic
population of Barrio Logan dropped from 86% to 72% and the white population grew
from 6% to 16% (Delgado & Swanson, 2019). The new residents bring with them new
concerns. Drawn to the artistic heritage of the site, but sometimes critical of the noise
of cultural performances in Chicano Park (Kühne etal., 2022). The fact that the artistic
and cultural locus for gentefication orbit Chicano Park, amplifies the relevance of our
polluted leisure frame. In this sense whiteness is a paradoxical pollutant, bringing
wealth, environmental benefits, but also transforming the culture and heritage of Barrio
Logan. However, as King et al. (2022) underline, it is not that despair is ethnically
demarcated, only that it is economically distinct. The whitening of Barrio Logan can
thus also be read as a signal of the growing inequality between the wealthiest and
poorest, especially as evidence suggests the poorest Chicano people are also moving
out of Barrio Logan (Delgado & Swanson, 2019).
The skatepark is an exemplar of these new dynamics. The boom in skatepark con-
struction over the last 20 years resonates with the broader commercial and governmental
incorporation of skateboarding as a force for good (Lombard, 2010). In the work of
Howell (2008), skateparks are neoliberal playgrounds which connect to how skate-
boarders are co-opted as the shock troops of gentrification (Howell, 2005). Drawing
on Florida (2002), Howell (2005) argues that skateboarders are another creative class,
frequently used to sweep out unwanted populations, then once they are cleansed, the
skateboarders are swept aside themselves. This argument demonstrates skateboarding
as a polluted leisure, where skateboarders work as mediators to polluted ‘others’ (home-
less, drug dealers, sex workers, gang members) and are regarded themselves as pollution.
This is a dynamic demonstrated by Glenney (2023) in terms of material pollution who
recognizes that scores of skateparks throughout the United States are constructed on
top of Brownfield sites. Notably, amplifying the polluted leisure connection, Barrio
Logan is listed as a Brownfield site, and also has a Superfund site nearby the Chicano
Park skatepark (Environmental Protection Agency, 2017).

8 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
Completed in 2016 the skatepark was funded in part by a $1million state grant
that also contributed toward improved landscaping, a handball court, two playgrounds,
and an adult fitness center (Delgado & Swanson, 2019). Additional funds of $10,000
for the skatepark came from ‘The Skatepark Project’ founded by professional skate-
boarder Tony Hawk (The Skatepark Project, 2023). The architecture of the park speaks
to the context in which it is embedded with one of the obstacles taking the shape of
a car, perhaps a nod to Chicano lowriding culture and the highway above
(Chappell, 2012).
The rest of our project draws upon this framework to address the ways in which
a set of murals in Chicano Park Skatepark extend a spiritual engagement with polluted
leisure. This thematic tour of the literature and accompanying theory identifies a leisure
space with a resistant history. A park imagined in spiritual terms, yet also a contested
site various framed through the notion of polluted leisure. While heavy industry and
racism are part of the legacy of Chicano Park, an increasingly marginalized youth
navigate a fraught economic environment which overlap with gangs, substance abuse,
and deaths of despair. Our article proceeds to frame the relevance of Chicano Park’s
skatepark murals as an extension of the sacred.
Methodology
As researchers we adopt an interpretive qualitative methodology. Our epistemological
assumptions in this research align with those manifested in the conceptualization of
Polluted Leisure (Evers, 2019a, 2019b). We are invested in a symbolic interpretivist
analysis of our data, addressing how the skatepark functions as part of the broader
leisure space of Chicano Park, its heritage, and history. By following this general
approach, we went about addressing each of the central themes of the article in
dialogue with our informants: we participated in the maintenance of altars for deceased
fellow skaters (and learned their stories), listened to how the story of the increasing
pollution of Chicano Park is told by local skaters (then comparing it with specialized
documents) and what various grassroots strategies are in place to resist it (measured
in relation to public policy as much as to the more formal activism of those who
manage the park). As our literature review identified, the physical and social pollution
of Chicano Park are always overlapping just as in the context of surfing in Fukushima
(Evers, 2019b) and skateboarding as urban leisure (Glenney 2023; O’Connor et al.,
2022). In the more symbolic frame of our epistemology, pollution works as a social
sorting mechanism that we see in the work of Douglas (1969, 1992). Her thesis
demonstrates that dirt, pollution, or risk can be thought of as a flexible concept
enacted when an item, person, or idea is seen to be “not belonging”, or “out of place”.
Bound to this symbolism, and relevant to our discussion on ‘spiritual but not religious’
above, is the recognition that the sacred is an empty conceptual category as advocated
in the work of Durkheim (1965). Anything can become socially and symbolically
encoded as sacred, and a vast array of work has demonstrated how leisure “may take
on a ritualistic, even sacred, quality” (Scott & Harmon, 2016, p. 3. See also Platt
et al., 2021).
Our design works with the nascent field of skateboard ethnography which extends
from researchers engaging in the cultural world and practice of skateboarding as part

LEISURE SCIENCES 9
of their research. This is evident in the work of O’Connor (2020), Glenney (2023),
Sayers (2023) and the rolling ethnography of McDuie-Ra (2021a, 2023a). Just as the
“wet” ethnography of Evers (2019a, 2019b) works with the act of surfing and the fluid
context of his field sites, the “rolling ethnography”, “below the knee” view (Vivoni,
2013) and “sideways” stance (Friedel, 2015) of skateboarders informs their work. Thus,
not only did we explore Chicano Park, interview residents, observe the daily milieu
as ethnographers typically do; we also skateboarded in this environment and took ‘on
board’ the feel of, and connection to, the space.
This approach resonates with a great deal of research in the socio-anthropology of
sport where scholars and informants construct an environment of ethnographic inti-
macy by sharing the same physical activities, whether as experts (Borenstein, 2021)
or trainees (Nardini, 2022). Among the pillars of Chicano Skatepark, we therefore
adopted a “cross-eyed gaze” (Palumbo, 2018) at once internal and external to the
studied group. Riding on the board, being seen as belonging to the same global
“imagined community” of skateboarders (McDuie-Ra, 2021b, p. 131), opened access
to sharing moments of leisure time with Chicano Park skateboarders without, however,
obscuring the estrangement we felt with respect to the context and ethno-political
tensions that run through the skatepark. Author 1 became a recognizable and trusted
figure in the Chicano Skatepark environment due to his prolonged participation as a
skater and mastery of both Spanish and English. Just as credibility was fostered by
Harmon and Dox (2016) by repeated attendance at concerts, credibility in a ‘rolling’
skateboard ethnography is developed by participating in skateboard culture. During
local skate sessions, he was introduced by privileged actors to an ever widening and
plural circle of frequenters, sharing not only time but also food, drink, and sponta-
neous stories born of curiosity about mutual cultural distance and the shared passion
for skateboarding. This can be understood in a broader context in which skateboarding
is not only a rather unique object of research, but also opens up innovative method-
ological perspectives, always played out on the threshold between the simultaneous
familiarity of practices and cultural estrangement between researcher and observed
actors. Author 2 visited Chicano Skatepark once and instead devoted himself more
thoroughly to combining theoretical frameworks in dialogue with the ethnographic
data collected by Author 1.
The findings of this paper are part of a longer ethnography on skateboarding culture
at the San Diego-Tijuana border lasting fourteen months. For the empirical investiga-
tion we adopted a combination of “viewing strategies” and “listening strategies”
(Pavanello, 2010, p.111). In the first case, we turned to the visual representations
enveloping the skatepark space by analyzing its iconography. We then assayed our
preliminary reflections in semi-structured interviews with two of the three artists of
the murals. Our analysis concentrates only on the murals by these artists. Our method
thus employs a “member checking” component in our analysis of their work (Caretta,
2016). In all exchanges, directing attention to the visual manifestations of the space
was a prerequisite for opening a common ground of dialogue between researchers and
informants and from there expanding the discussion to more cross-cutting themes
such as ethnicity, violence, and spirituality. This fits into ongoing debates in Leisure
Studies about the validity of visual methodologies “to produce knowledge in innovative
ways […] whereby researchers, participants, and communities gain access to knowledge

10 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
and expressions that might have not otherwise been accessible due to the inevitable
strictures of traditional methods” (Pernecky & Rakić, 2019, p. 180). During the par-
ticipant observation period, Author 1 also focused on the daily liturgies of skatepark
patrons with respect to the murals and their altars: preventing their surfaces from
being skateboarded on, sharing votive offerings, collective care of the altars, and
bottom-up processes of mutual education to respect the “sacredness” of the place.
These observed practices, driven by a shared sense of spirituality of place, were then
discussed and rehearsed in interviews with the selected actors.
In the second case, we instead targeted local skaters. Between September 2022 and
July 2023, the first author went weekly to Chicano Park to identify a niche group of
skateboarders with regular attendance at the skatepark. These skateboarders connected
him to the key informants, or community gatekeepers with specific knowledge of the
context. These individuals became a “reasoned choice” sample (Gobo, 2001, p.77), as
we focused on six privileged informants (two muralists, a local artist, two organizers
of the annual “Chicano Skatepark Day,” and a skateboarder) recognized by peers as
holders of particular knowledge or status.
Interviews were conducted in a mixture of English and Spanish, with an average
duration of two hours each. These were performed in accordance with La Sapienza
University’s statement of ethical clearance conforming to the guidelines dictated by
the University’s Ethics Committee. All interviews, except for one, took place at Chicano
Skatepark or in its vicinity. Some interviews began at the murals and continued with
tours of the park while others following the reversed path. The theme of spirituality
was not directly introduced in the questions, but rather observed whether it emerged
from the participants’ stories. The interview conducted outside Chicano Park was used
to test whether the esthetic-social environment of the park influenced a spiritual nar-
rative. In all cases, this theme emerged independently after the first questions.
Participation and informed consent were sought for all participants. Given their public
position, the muralists requested and consented for names to be published while we
used a pseudonym to protect the identity of another informant.
Results and discussion part I: the murals
Throughout the rest of this paper, we tie our analysis in connection to three of the
four murals at the skatepark and supporting interviews. This process enables us to
unravel the layered issues of identification that permeate the social milieu of the space.
Moving Northeast through Chicano Park Skatepark, the four skateboard murals are
distinct, rendered on the pillars supporting the Coronado Bridge. Moving from left
to right the first image is a vivid painting of a skateboarding skeleton with an indig-
enous headdress (Figure 3).
Mural 1
The form of the skeleton is distinct to skateboarders as its composition mirrors that
of an iconic logo from the skateboard brand Powell Peralta and their multiethnic group
of skateboarders the ‘Bones Brigade’. The mural is the work of Cris Corona, a skater-artist

LEISURE SCIENCES 11
who has been active for more than 25 years. He explained that in his works “all the
symbols I paint represent something sacred, something ancient and often indigenous”2.
Corona’s biography is the closest one can imagine to a “transborder life”, that is, a life
marked by “constantly changing and shifting identities, outlooks, positions, and selves
to cope with the double helix and the quest for achievement in a transborder reality”
(Velez-Ibañez, 2020, p. 247). Born in San Ysidro, the southernmost part of the San
Diego area tangential to the border, Cris has spent his whole life living back and forth
between Tijuana and California amidst his dispersed maternal family and the pursuit
of job opportunities. Cris speaks of Chicano Park as something that “belongs to the
Chicano culture and it’s like a school in a way… a sacred school that is there for
everyone, every day… and whenever I passed by there, skating, driving, walking, I
always felt protected”. The sense of safety that Cris finds under the Coronado Bridge
is the same one he assumed through skateboarding and the niche popular culture of
the scene in the 1980s. He first learned about Chicano professional skateboarders from
his cousin, and began to identify with skateboarding icons Mark Gonzales, Tommy
Guerrero, and Steve Caballero.
It’s thanks to them that I could identify myself so strongly since I was 13 years old […]
when I realized that these two stars of the Bones Brigade, Tommy Guerrero and Steve
Figure 3. Cris Corona’s mural. Author’s photo.

12 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
Caballero were Mexicans, or Chicanos, or Latinos. It gave me more of a cool perspective,
I started to think that if it was possible to be pro [professional skateboarder], for me too,
I felt that there was an opportunity…
Responding to the call made by the Chicano Park Steering Committee for murals
in the newly built skatepark, Cris proposed a graphic combination between two of
the most important symbols in his biography. As a transborder middle-aged skater he
could take on both the pedagogical character of Chicano art, and the spirituality that
skateboarding is able to convey. He describes some of the elements included.
In the background a Mayan symbol, a Hunab-Ku that in any case represents the beginning
of life […] I went to school in Mexico for a while and it is something that was engraved
in my mind. [e Bones Brigade logo] I got it from one of the rst images I saw as a kid,
one of the rst Bones Brigade stickers I had, and it inspired me to represent this time in
my life, this reminiscence and the strength it gave me as a Chicano skateboarder. […] I’ve
always felt that I’m not part of a religion, but I do feel that there is a positive energy and
great energy, and I especially feel it about skateboarding, it’s something that brings me so
much happiness, and makes so many people smile, it’s a vibe that is not religion but
spiritual!
Cris shows us how Chicano Skatepark is a catártico [cathartic] site for catalyzing
overlapping themes that speak to Chicano identity experience. He recasts the notion
of polluted leisure in a hopeful frame, demonstrating how the polluted ‘other’ as
transborder, nomadic, and hybrid (“I go to Tijuana and people treat me differently,
and I go to Ocean Beach and the same, they treat me weird, because they see my
eyes, my skin, the way I talk”) is able to construct a bricolage of elevated meaning
and identification. His account shows skateboarding as a leisure practice profoundly
marked by ethnic factors, the creative use that can be made of its mass culture rep-
ertoires, and finally the sense of spirituality that arises at the intersection of these
apparently disconnected planes.
The biographical thickness that the Bones Brigade logo holds for Corona is made
collectively significant precisely by its combination with the native headdress and the
Mayan background to echo the plural identity of many of the users of Chicano Park.
The combination of such a variety of themes gives voice to the sense of collective
spirituality Cris always found in skateboarding praxis. But, again, such a spirituality,
at the crossroad between biographic and cultural narratives, gains meaning when linked
with a pedagogy from below where a mural is able—“tal vez sin palabras” [perhaps
without words]—to inspire new generations about the skateboarding potential in
bridging people and the importance of collective memory, its celebration of life after
death and the power of skateboarding-communitarianism in facing the threat of barrio
violence. As Cris states, “if it wasn’t for skateboarding, I would have been a cholo
[gangster], like my cousin, I came close many times”.
Mural 2
The second mural (Figure 4) is painted by Ricardo Islas, a 52-year-old artist and
former skater from Calexico and is explicitly fitting of Chicano Park mural tradition

LEISURE SCIENCES 13
(Sandoval, 2018). It fuses both Barrio Logan imagery in the form of Coronado Bridge
and the diverse ancestry of Chicano, Latino communities in the United States. These
elements are given a contemporary lilt in combination with skateboarding which has
become part of the Californian mythic narrative (Borden, 2019; Butz, 2012; Kennedy,
2016; O’Connor, 2020; Peralta, 2001; Yochim, 2010). The evocative image draws directly
from the Yoeme (Yaqui or Hiaki) deer dance ritual and contrasts this ancient folk
religious practice with the contemporary scene of Chicano Skatepark. Delgado Shorter
(2007) states that “the deer-dancer image speaks to issues of cultural continuity, tribal
sovereignty, and ritual sacrifice” (p. 282) for many communities of Yeomem heritage
in both Northern Mexico and Southern California. It is therefore significant to inter-
rogate the value and symbolism of this mural and its connection to polluted leisure
that is both a historic and concurrent element of Chicano Park mural culture.
I started using symbols from the Yaqui imagery mainly because my family is from Sonora
and it’s a Yaqui territory, so I kinda found myself in the past years creating several pieces
using the Yaqui and sometimes interpretated dierently […] I think it’s even odder when
you’ve been displaced, as a culture. We used to say ‘we didn’t cross the border, the border
crossed us’: I mean it was Mexico, not California, and now we co-live daily with the bor-
der, that’s why we are so stuck in searching for roots.3
The “Pascola” masks used in the background of the image relate to the author’s
extensive research into Yaqui culture. However, the most effective reference to
pre-Hispanic indigeneity in the mural is strictly semantic, almost textual in nature.
Figure 4. Ricardo Islas’ rst mural alongside memorial oerings. Author’s photo.

14 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
The whole meaning of the mural is played out in the translation, and cultural gap,
between the English “to grind” and the Spanish moler. Moler literally means “to grind,”
“to crush,” “to pulverize,” and is a term of great cultural depth in all traditional
Mesoamerican societies, whose livelihoods revolve around the corn plant (Lupo, 2009)
and the products derived from its grinding. Fuzing this symbolism with the important
act of ‘grinding’ in skateboarding (literally grinding the axles of the board along con-
crete and metal surfaces) the artist layers both ancient and contemporary culture. But
Ricardo elaborates further that this grinding is also evocative of the long grind of the
people of Barrio Logan to push against discrimination, to find their own voice, and
campaign for their own space. The frame of polluted leisure now becomes overt once
more. The concrete of the imposing bridge being ground as a metaphor to the abrasive
and fraught struggles for community recognition, justice, and leisure space.
Accentuating the prominence of this mural is the fact that it has become a popular
memorial site for a deceased skateboarder. The skatepark becomes a significant ritual
space for young people to mourn the loss of a friend. In Woodbine’s (2016) account
of street basketball amongst Black men in some of Boston’s most deprived communities,
the sport is shown to work as a medium through which a collective memory of
deceased friends and relatives can be performed. In Woodbine’s ethnography, basketball
provides hope and healing in a context of gang violence and substance abuse that lead
many to deaths of despair.
Contrasting with Woodbine’s (2016) work, O’Connor (2020) demonstrates how
skateboarding connects with religious expression in multiple ways, from myth, ico-
nography and pilgrimage, to invented religion and skateboard cults. In a similar way
the Deer Dancer mural connects and extends the arguments of both Woodbine and
O’Connor, demonstrating skateboarding as a spiritual resource within the community,
but also highlighting how this is hybrid and fused with political, ethnic, and religious
tradition. These facets can all be combined in the polluted leisure frame. The mural
as a memorial site in Chicano Park, and the Boston basketball court as a site of
remembrance speak of the ways ethnic enclaves in the U.S. are socially inscribed as
ghettos. They can be framed as ‘internal colonies’, repositories of the ‘other’, marginal
spaces housing wasted lives (Bauman, 2004); deemed polluted. In this context drugs
and their associations are pollution, and for some a tragic and hopeless form of leisure
amidst despairing and fraying social circumstances.
Mural 3
The third mural (Figure 5), also by Islas, extends some of the religious themes addressed
in the first one, but the cultural practice is reoriented to more recent times. It depicts
legendary skateboarder Tony Alva as captured by the photographer Craig Stecyk. This
reproduced and adapted image speaks to the mythic origins of rebellious skateboard
culture from the 1970s. It is significant that Alva’s biography is bound to a prominent
chapter in skateboarding history and its polluted leisure antecedents. The Dog Town
crew of which Alva was a part have been mythologized (O’Connor, 2020) as spurring
the modern rebellious subcultural character of skateboarding. This crew sought empty
backyard swimming pools in Los Angeles to skateboard and progress their craft beyond

LEISURE SCIENCES 15
the streets and into the skies. These swimming pools which provided tight curved
transitions pregnant with possibility for skateboarders, were only empty and available
because of a prolonged drought in California during 1976–77. Importantly this drought,
forged with the paradoxical urban development of a water poor California throughout
the twentieth century, demonstrates that skateboarding is born of polluted leisure.
Indeed, these droughts brought closer the issue of climate degradation to the Californian
dream at the end of the last century.
The mural that echoes this context derives from an earlier painting by Ricardo,
which the Chicano Park Steering Committee asked him to convert into a mural. The
reference to one of the most famous celebrities in the skateboarding pantheon, as in
the case of Corona, stems from a biographical connection that is collectivized through
a combination with themes or symbols that recall Mexico and its traditions.
It was based on me growing up when I rst start to see, you know, the Z-Boys and I
always thought Tony Alva is always been one that really gave the attitude you see skaters
Figure 5. Ricardo Islas’ second mural alongside memorial oerings. Author’s photo.

16 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
have, he’s kinda that one that really made a skater having attitude and then his father is
Mexican, so I said ok yeah, we should have him there.
At the time of writing Alva is in his mid-sixties, alive and well, and thus the skeletal
representation speaks to the theme of the other skatepark murals and remains evocative
of Mexican Día de Muertos tradition and iconography:
It’s kinda funny that we all have this skeleton imaginary because at the same time it’s like
a skate topic theme […] it’s something at the edge of skating, punk and Chicano culture.
In a similar way to the Yoeme Deer Dance, the legacy of Tony Alva hopping fences
to search for drained swimming pools to skate (Kusz, 2007; Peralta, 2001; Yochim,
2010) functions as its own skillful act of hunt and daring, the kind of “attitude” Ricardo
refers to in our interview, at the crossroad between Californian skateboarding and
‘punk lifestyle’.
The skull becomes emblematic of these dynamics and the broader sociological
context of risk taking in skateboarding. Indeed, skateboarding can be framed as vol-
untary risk taking in the paradigm of Lyng’s (2005) “edgework”, but it can be also
traced to a larger context of pollution and catastrophe outlined by Beck (2013). The
skull, symbolizing danger, death and toxicity, resonates with risk taking. At a micro
level risk might be balancing on a board, but in zooming outward we might see a
social context of navigating street crime and violence. The gap between the risk asso-
ciated with skateboarding and the social risk surrounding certain skateboarding spaces
is made evident by the fact that this mural was also chosen as an altar for another
young skateboarder, Jesse, who passed away from fentanyl consumption.
Results and discussion part II: spirituality, death and memory against the
fraying of society
Our analysis now focuses on the way in which the two central murals painted by Islas
have become ad-hoc sites of remembrance, commemorating local skateboarders. At
the base of each mural there is a collection of candles, broken skateboard decks,
weathered framed photos, flowers, and a menagerie of objects left in offering (Figure6).
These are essentially altars that local skaters have improvised to commemorate two
companions—Jesse and Raymond—both of whom passed away in close succession
from substance-related causes. Jesse passed away at the young age of 19 after taking
a dose of narcotics laced with fentanyl: a relatively new substance that has led to an
alarming number of fatalities in the U.S. Raymond died by suicide, similarly a key
national concern, the incidence of which has increased 24% since the turn of the
century (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016). Both young men were
well known residents of the neighborhood and active members of the Skatepark com-
munity. Observing how these murals have become sites of memorial knits together
and combines a host of themes of spirituality in leisure. Most overtly the basketball
memorials noted by Woodbine (2016), and the varied ways skateboarders mark losses
in their community (Atencio et al. 2018; Johnston, 2016; O’Connor, 2020). In such
examples, it is leisure facilities, basketball courts and skateparks that become sacralized
and ritual spaces.

LEISURE SCIENCES 17
Here we introduce our own neologism to capture the hybridization unfolding on
the concrete between formalized representations of local ethnic identity and a leisure
driven sense of spirituality from below. The painted plinths become mem-murials, as
the murals themselves are co-opted as a site of the memorial by the skateboarding
community. These memmurials thus stand as a spontaneous fusion of leisure, place,
and the sacred. Alike Woodbine’s (2016) basketball courts, skateparks are often used
as sites of mourning and remembrance by skateboarders. Examples abound, but here
we offer four succinct instances. In the work of Johnston (2016) remembrance graffiti
tags (e.g. RIP) are amongst the most common traces left at skateparks by users.
O’Connor (2020) refers to a deceased skateboarder in Hong Kong whose wife scattered
his ashes at the local skatepark. In the work of Atencio etal. (2018) reference is made
to a makeshift memorial at a San Francisco skatepark, and world-wide skateparks have
received monikers in honor of lost friends from the community. Most recently, and
attracting international press, a Sacramento skatepark was named in honor of Tyree
Nichols who died after being beaten by police officers (Carter, 2023).
Despite its risk-taking image, skateboarding is very seldom life threatening. The
tragedy of so many makeshift memorials in skateparks around the world is that they
speak of risk and threat beyond that space. Such threats include cars, gangs, drugs,
violence, and disease. In this way Chicano Skatepark is alike any other skatepark,
however the form of these memorials, tied to the culture and legacy of Chicano Park
mural culture comes to be distinct. These memmurials follow a script of spiritual
remembrance directly inspired by Mexican American material culture, reoriented to
address a distinct issue in the fraying of the Barrio Logan’s community.
In the deaths of both Jesse and Raymond, drugs played a role, but the prominence
of drugs extends to other dynamics that Fernando, a 27-year-old skateboarder, was
Figure 6. Memorial for Jesse at Tony Alva mural. Author’s photo.

18 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
able to articulate. His insights about Chicano Skatepark extend from the fact that he
is a widely respected “local” of the space as evidenced by several tattoos, and a prom-
inent one bearing the initials C.S.P (Chicano Skatepark). Fernando has also lived in
Chicano Skatepark for long alternating periods of his life, hit like so many young
people by the housing crisis and soaring gentrified rental prices in San Diego (Mae
etal., 2023). While cleaning one of the altars he explained that gang codes and logics
prevailed in the area even before the skatepark was built, even amidst the skateboard-
ers. However, it was actually the construction of the skatepark that “one hundred
percent, created the whole community”. Whereas: “at the beginning, when we started
skating there, we all hang out on a certain pilar, sabes, los pilares… then came another
clicka [gang], and they started gathering on another pillar, and so on…”.4
Fernando is certain that the community of skateboarders and fellow sodalists (almost
all Mexican American) are going through a time of crisis, that the atmosphere has
changed, and there is now a sense of “oscuridad” [darkness] in the skatepark, to the
extent that “the foos started again to behave so clicky”. In Fernando’s account we see
the relevance of the ‘death of despair’ research. This manifests in the intersection of
skateboarding and its association with risk and the margins in an increasingly ambig-
uous and troubling social context. Part of this is attributed to the proliferation of
powder narcotics even after Jesse’s death: “That was the season of pure fucking dust,
and everyone was getting in, they were trying to buy, it was changing the environment,
people’s minds”. Also, the pressure of gentrification has become reflected in the skate-
park. The arrival of municipal teams for urban decorum (“Like when the green pants
arrived, those from the program, they painted over the graffiti ‘R.I.P. Jesse’. Well, I
put it in my [Instagram] story and my buddy ‘el Jojo’ said ‘I’ll be back in about two
hours’, and we’ll do it again”) and the general commodification around the attractive
Chicano esthetic are reflected in the resentment with which Fernando tells us about
his point of view:
I don’t know if you saw all the Chicano movement and all the stu… all the fucking art,
it’s part of the gentrication, and now Logan is one of the last places they try to sell, like
before with North Park […] ey think they’re doing something, but the people who do
farm market etc., those foos are on the opposite team! ere’s no culture, it’s business […]
back in the days it was a movement, it was about the struggle, the revolution, but now it’s
all about Instagram… you know…. it’s Chicano but a whitewashed Chicano
For Fernando the frame of pollution also pivots toward those who he sees as out-
siders, superficially engaged in the exotica of Chicano Park and not the culture. His
caustic appraisal of the contemporary scene draws upon, not drugs and gangs in this
instance, but the pernicious impact of social media and gentrification. Such insights
add depth and context to the way leisure can be understood as polluted. In this
example the polluted leisure is the contamination of the Chicano Park movement by
vapid pecuniary interests. This ethnographic case, besides critiquing the approach that
“treated leisure as a nonpoliticized sphere of being” (Rojek, 2001, p. 119), opens a
comparative window into possible forms—spanning individuality and institutionaliza-
tion—in which leisure activities (like skateboarding or volunteering by Chicano Park’s
muralists and activists) can serve as arenas for political, social, or spiritual expressions
concerning space and community. This example returns us to the civic leisure of Mair’s

LEISURE SCIENCES 19
(2002) research, bonding a place of recreation to social and political work. Fernando’s
stewardship is oriented toward the preservation of the resistant ethnic history of the
park. However, his care also represents a spiritual response and extension of the cir-
cumstances of polluted leisure.
Consistent with some recent anthropological currents that reflect on the practices
of conviviality and collaboration as hallmarks of modern societies (Caillé, 2013; Hart,
2013), we believe it is important not to calcify on superficial conflicts but to instead
delve into the plans of coexistence that are given between skaters and the broader
context of Chicano Park, as different tactics of coping with common threats of social
disintegration and deaths of despair.
Fernando acknowledges that the park’s pillars are perceived, and protected, as a
sacred space by local skaters. “It’s a sacred place actually, you know… first of all its
history, second of all, if you’re really a Chicano local, you just understand […] And
when you start forgetting, it’s like people forgetting themselves, and that’s true for the
local skaters as well”. Whether it is the reminder of indigenous sacredness, the cele-
bration of historical figures in the skateboarding pantheon, or the remembrance of
the young skaters and Barrio residents who disappeared due to drugs (or at the inter-
section of the three), it is precisely the spiritual struggle against oblivion that makes
the space a dense “place of memory” (Nora & Ageron, 1997). In this sense, as men-
tioned at the beginning of the paragraph, the two pillars as surfaces and the altar as
technique, are not accidental but represent the synthesis of an attempt at coexistence
between identity urgencies, perceptions of social risk and creative responses, respec-
tively organized and spontaneous. Regarding the altars, Fernando states:
It’s Chicano style, that’s Chicano one hundred percent […] You can see it also elsewhere
but although it’s Chicano style, because of the care, the candles you know. And that’s why
I’m proud of that, I am the proudest I think because this is something I have in my heart,
I will never disrespect it and if I am here, I won’t let it be disrespected.
The sacredness with which the park is imbued, is confirmed by the narratives of
our informants. Both Cris and Fernando express this component. Yet more overtly,
the communal transformation of the murals into memmurials is a testament to the
potent layering of place, identity, spirituality, and leisure in this context. Here it is
apropos to connect to the wider discussion on spirituality in leisure pursuits that
manifests in music, dance, and sport (Anderson 2013; Harmon & Dox, 2016; Kraus,
2009). However, our discussion is augmented in the capacity that we observe an ethnic
script, particular to Mesoamerican cultures. This script stands out and becomes the
common arena with which to shape particular conceptions of sacredness that affect
different leisure fields to cope with issues of death and loss. Forms of sacredness and
spirituality that, according to Chicano Park’s legacy, are always imbued with political,
ethnic, and/or social meaning.
Conclusion
Our article focuses on an annex of Chicano Park, the murals painted on the pillars
of the skatepark and their two altars. We observe a troubling social context, and
an example of polluted leisure in which skateboarding is a vehicle extending

20 P. O’CONNOR AND A. BUCHETTI
spirituality, as a means of expression and representation, to a marginal community
in Chicano Park. The fusion of Chicano cultural motifs, iconic skateboard heritage,
and memorials to dead friends works as a microcosm to the broader transformations
of Barrio Logan. The skatepark replicates an ongoing narrative in the territory
where everyday leisure is infused with concerns of cosmic magnitude. Identity,
history, belonging, life and death are the passions that prompted the creation of
Chicano Park, and they are the same dynamics at play in the murals and memorials
in the skatepark. These memmurials, we have argued, are materializations of a
polluted leisure, adopted as concrete and spiritual responses to the socio-ecological
fraying of the area.
The case of the altars is thus exemplary when observing how a marginalized com-
munity within the park endeavors to carve out an experimental space for sharing their
own memory and raising awareness, without demonizing, of the various threats of
fraying that loom over the Barrio. Here skateboarding recasts an understanding of
polluted leisure that works as a form of resistance. Barrio Logan is subject to both
material and symbolic pollution. The heavy industry and the highway represent physical
pollution. The social fraying of institutional racism, drugs, and gentrification highlight
other forms of symbolic social pollution. By amplifying spiritual elements in skate-
boarding the polluted leisure paradigm takes on an alternative form where deep
emotional and cosmic symbolism provide a locus of communal meaning and expression.
This differs from the idea of resigned activism that Lora-Wainwright’s (2017) and
Evers (2019a) refer to in new behaviors that accommodate the norms of pollution.
The spiritual encounter with skateboarding in Chicano Park Skatepark is an example
of hope (Zournazi, 2003).
We conclude by emphasizing the importance of observing how the pollution that
envelops Chicano Park and impacts its communities is confronted by resorting to
the most effective and expressive weapon that the park has managed to shape in
its more than 50-year history: a sacralized memory. The institutional murals of
Chicano Skatepark, constitute a canvas on which to experiment with new forms of
community spirituality. The altars, not coincidentally, choose to develop on this
canvas by proposing an unprecedented assemblage of styles, techniques, forms, and
content that add a specific voice to the common afflatus of struggle against the
socio-ecological pollution of place. Skateboarding as leisure, the sense of a shared
threat and the field of spirituality, thus become one way in which different com-
munities, not without conflict, find themselves negotiating their presence in a
contested and resistant place.
Notes
1. e rst traces of the use of the term “Chicano” date back to the late 1950s. Everyone agrees
on its re-appropriative use by Mexican-descendant communities in the Southwest, transform-
ing it from a derogatory term to a political, ethnic, and identity category that claims pride in
its Mexican roots (see Cuellar, 2002).
2. Interview, Imperial Beach (San Diego), 07/03/2023.
3. Interview, City Heights (San Diego), 04/04/2023.
4. Interview, Pacic Beach (San Diego), 07/15/2023.

LEISURE SCIENCES 21
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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