Dave Nelson

What is your background with skating? How did this passion develop?

Well, I used to skateboard for a living. That’s kind of what created Secret Penguin (which is the place I work now). When I was traveling, I was doing design work for different skateboarding companies and pros I was traveling with, and that led into this business. I’ve been skateboarding since second grade, and I fell in love with it. I enjoyed the camaraderie of all the different skateboarders; it was a melting pot of all kinds of people that seemingly on the surface, wouldn’t normally hang out, but everyone gathered around skateboarding.

Why are skateparks and spaces like this potential upcoming development in Omaha important to the community? 

So, we worked for five years to get Roberts Skatepark made (the first public skatepark here in Omaha). In the 1990s, skateboarders got picked on a lot. My friends and I got picked on. Our school would let skateboarders out of class five minutes early to avoid violence and fights in the hallway. I had guns pulled on me multiple times just because I was a skateboarder. I had a gun shoved into my mouth, and I saw a lot of friends deal with depression and drug abuse. I lost some good friends that took their own lives, and it was something where there was this tipping point that something needed to change. 

We felt like we weren’t welcome. We would skateboard on private property, it made sense, but we didn’t have a place to go. We’d go skateboard at a friend’s house, and be in the street and have the cops called on us. We couldn’t even skateboard outside our own houses. Personally, seeing friends truly deal with not feeling accepted or that they had a community that supported them, we thought that if we could get a park created—and we were in no position to create our own private park—that triggered the idea that maybe we could get a public park. We started meeting every Thursday to figure out how to get parks created, and we did that for five years, and then finally, we got the skatepark at Roberts Park.

It was such a big deal, especially thinking about the friends who had such a hard time—now, all of us, we felt a sense of relief and pride in our own city. It really opened up a lot of our eyes to what was possible when you get involved and work together. We used to see city officials and police as people we had to combat, but after working together so much, we learned that these people were so great. We had seen this bad side of people, and I think they saw the bad in us, but once we learned what could be from working together, it was so beautiful. 

So for us, personally, my friends and I, we had a place to go, and we saw that we could be a positive influence in the community. Before, we were misfits and outcasts, and we were told by multiple people: we would “never amount to anything.” Actually, a city council person compared us to cockroaches. They were like, “you kick them out of one place, and they scatter.” I was 15 years old.

But we rose above that. What was also cool was that little kids—like tiny little kids and older people who would skate in the 1970s—they would bring their boards out and roll around. And even today, I see those same people up who are up in their 50’s, and little kids on their boards. I bring my own kids there. It’s such a beautiful thing to see all these different people come together and skateboard at this place. There are tennis courts everywhere, and you can find any place to play tennis—and nothing’s wrong with tennis—but people don’t play tennis like they skateboard.

There is so much good that comes from any sort of activity center that allows people to gather as a community and do what they love and what they’re passionate about. Skateboarding teaches people resilience. You’re constantly falling and getting back up. You’re constantly trying to figure out what just happened and try it again in a different way. At Secret Penguin, we built our whole hiring process around this mentality. The first person we hired, we knew that if he handled day-to-day business like he skateboarded, he’d be great. He’s been here, maybe six or seven years, and he’s an incredible worker. It’s this really cool thing.

Like a lot of sports, it teaches us. With skateboarding it’s unique. You have all sorts of people around you, but not necessarily a coach, and you have to become independent but also respectful of the other people around you. 

It’s about having a safe place where we can all go and do it. It’s about caring about the community and making sure it’s a good place.

What is at the heart of the Omaha Skatepark Council?

I think a lot of us are long-time skateboarders (there’s a couple pro skateboarders, as well), people who are prominent in the skateboard industry, world-renowned riders, etc. There are a lot of interesting people, from longtime skate rats to accomplished skateboarders, in this group. They all care about skateboarding, have seen it do so many incredible things for them and others. They’ve seen the impact it’s had on their lives and other people’s lives. It’s all about creating a place where people young and old can all come and gather—especially downtown, which is the heart of skateboarding. It’s about having a safe place where we can all go and do it. It’s about caring about the community and making sure it’s a good place.

What can the average Omaha citizen do to help or get involved with the skate park—or even get on board with it?  

I don’t know yet. You know Toms.com, with the shoes? You can sign up and send a post card. Maybe we should do that. Like, send a post card to someone at the city. Let’s say that if they go to the website (omahaskatepark.com), they can send a form or a letter to the city to reiterate the importance of it.

How will Omaha be changed by the skate park and the renovation of Gene Leahy?

Skateboarding was—for a while, the fastest growing sport or activity in America, but personally, for me, if there’s a skate park, I’ll always bring my board with me on vacation or on a business trip. We spend the day there, so we go to surrounding restaurants and shops. I think it’ll attract a lot of various people. With skateboarding, there’s no average skateboarder—it’s anyone. There are stereotypes of course, but there’s a whole melting pot of people. For the community itself—even with access to things like bike paths—people who live in Eastern Omaha/Western Council Bluffs, for them to have this safe place to skateboard is really cool. Seeing when skate parks go up, crime reduces in that area. A good example is Burnside in Portland, Oregon. This is a place where crime was really bad and the area has changed a ton because a skate park went up.

 This kind of thing activates the park, for sure. Typically, you have little kids and their families come in the early mornings, and then in the afternoons, school kids will come, and in the evenings older people show up. It’s this cool progression that happens through the whole day. We work with a lot of clients who run different districts, and one hard thing is getting people to get to an area at all times of the day. A skate park really helps with that.

And if there are lights, that helps too. That helps with reducing crime, but in so many aspects, too. The Bay in Lincoln is open late now because it’s a place for kids to go instead of alternative options for kids to make mistakes or get in trouble. It also just gives a place for people to do something positive.  

What is one action from someone else that changed your life and led you to this point?

Going through all those pain points early on was one thing. I lacked a lot of hope at that time. My parents were very encouraging to my friends and I about what could be. We could get a skate park, we could get what we wanted if we worked together. I didn’t quite believe it, like, we’d make progress and then a city official would call us cockroaches. But it got to the point that, finally, when we made traction with city officials, and we got that park made, that was such a defining moment. All that hopelessness that I felt had gone away, and I saw what my parents were talking about all this time, what could be, and it completely opened my eyes. There will always be people saying that things are impossible and whatever, but you shouldn’t listen to them, you should hang on to what could be.

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