
Skatepark filled with 37 tons of sand after skaters ignore No Trespassing signs - spking
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-san-clemente-skatepark-37-tons-sand-social-distancing/
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g_sch
All over the world, I see people trying to stop people from being outdoors,
regardless of the health and safety implications. In the UK, police are
issuing citations to people in parks. NYC has set up a tip line to report
"social distancing violations" and is closing some parks.

I don't understand it. I understand the imperative for social distancing, of
course. But it seems like enforcement has been targeted at relatively low-risk
activities (hanging out in large, public outdoor spaces) and not at all at the
high-risk ones (e.g. where I live in Brooklyn, half the laundromats have
closed and the remaining half are constantly crowded).

I can't help but think that part of this impulse comes from a certain sour-
grapes mentality that sees people trying to enjoy themselves during a trying
time and wants to take it away from them. A real public health intervention
would ensure that all necessary activities - getting groceries, doing laundry,
going to work - are just as safe as going to the park.

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rland
My main method of exercise (surfing) was cut off due to rules & fines.
Honestly after 2 months of this I feel like I am withering away.

I feel like if I get sick, the disease is going to take me out.

And yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. Nobody who surfs ever wants any other
person within 10ft of them. That's _highly_ discouraged under even normal
circumstances.

~~~
onion2k
Surfers don't go near each other in the water, but they do meet on the shore,
ride to the beach together, get other people grouping together on the beach
watching them, etc. Not to mention if the authorities allow one activity
people will believe _their_ chosen activity should be allowed too, regardless
of numbers.

If you can't forego something for a few months to save, potentially, thousands
of lives then you are _incredibly_ selfish.

~~~
tomlagier
Sorry, I don't buy it. None of the things you listed are a) required to surf
or b) unique to surfing. Those activities are certainly violations of social
distancing, so _cite them_. Surfing can absolutely be done while respecting
social distancing.

This is like saying "people like to watch movies together, they like to drive
to each others' houses to watch movies, therefore movies are banned". The
pathological behaviors are only related to the banned activity in the loosest
possible way.

EDIT: The fact that we're bikeshedding over whether a couple of surfers are
less than 6 feet apart while there are wholesale parties, religious
congregations, and non-essential businesses operating at normal capacity is
mindblowing to me. How many outbreaks have been traced back to any sort of
outdoor activity?

EDIT2: Also, 100% cite people that are in violation of distancing, and if an
area has above a certain rate of violations over a time period, close it.
Just... gather the data first.

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cam_l
I think the point of these hamfisted rules, intentionally or not, is to push
responsibility for the spread of the virus onto the public and provide
scapegoats to point to when it continues to spread. Or else people would start
to blame lack of government preparation and action.

Where I live we have had more citations issued in the past two weeks than new
virus cases, about three times more. At a certain point, it is not even the
gov being heavy handed - unclear rules just take the shackles off petty
authoritarian cops.

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2bitencryption
I'm honestly so surprised to see stuff like this -- from a logistics
standpoint.

It's so easy -- free even! -- to just not do anything.

But someone said, "We have to stop these skaters." And brainstormed ideas. And
came up with "sand". And figured out how to acquire that much sand, and how to
truck a literal ton of sand to the park.

I'm not disagreeing with what they did. I'm just surprised that someone
considered the cost/benefit to be worth it. Even more surprising if this was a
government action instead of a private skatepark owner -- surely this must be
a private skatepark. How many committees would it take to figure out this
whole sand thing?

~~~
bredren
Also worth noting the video says that a non-profit manages the skate park, but
the city dumped sand on it without informing them of the plan.

~~~
Shivetya
going to be interesting to see if they ever reopen it or write it off because
of the costs involved.

to be frank, this really borders on someone being an asshole, there are less
destructive ways to eliminate use.

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grawprog
Anyone who still thinks this is about 'protecting' people from themselves is
just deluding themselves. When there's footage of children being harassed and
arrested by cops for selling lemonade in public or old folks being dragged off
trains by groups of cops for not wearing a mask and talk from governments of
allowing law enforcement to enter people's homes on suspicion of 'being sick'
there's something seriously fucked up going on.

I don't give a shit how many people get sick from covid-19 at this point, I'm
not going to accept living in some fucked up dictatorship because people are
scared of dying.

People die all the time. I don't care, get over it. That's what life is, you
live and then you die. Everyone living right now will die some day. Period.
Living your life like a prisoner because some authority tells you you need to
be scared of this is unacceptable to me and.in all honesty I would rather be
dead then live in a world like that.

~~~
mistersquid
> Living your life like a prisoner because some authority tells you you need
> to be scared of this is unacceptable to me and.in all honesty I would rather
> be dead then live in a world like that.

Stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines are meant to be temporary
until

1) treatments for Covid-19 are available

2) a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is available

3) and/or immunity is widespread.

Your rhetorical posture makes sense if you live in a dictatorship and are
confined from now on. However, if you live, say, in the US (which I do), such
posturing and impatience seem counterproductive.

~~~
finnthehuman
>Stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines are meant to be
temporary until

It's funny how quickly the goalposts moved from "flattening the curve" to
"vaccine or widespread immunity." Unless we move back to a "let everyone get
sick at the fastest rate that doesn't overwhelm the hospital system" then I'm
stuck inside based on lies, by a government that likes flexing it's muscle
more than providing the liberty they're ostensibly be principled upon.

~~~
mistersquid
> It's funny how quickly the goalposts moved from "flattening the curve" to
> "vaccine or widespread immunity."

There has been no "goalposts moved".

Flattening the curve has been and continues to be effective to maintain
hospital capacity. Period.

Social distancing and shelter-at-home prevent viral contagion. Eliminating
social distancing and easing shelter-at-home restrictions may spike the
infection rate, which would undo efforts to flatten the curve. Hospital
capacity would diminish or possibly disappear.

Your objection about "goalposts moved" makes no sense in light of the basic
logic that flattening the curve is ongoing until the virus can be nullified.

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gfs
It's funny to see a skate park so close to home. I play softball in a men's
league across the way from it. This seems like a lazy solution that will be
very hard to clean up after the fact though.

~~~
dgrin91
Can you tell if there is actually 37 tons of sand there? 37 tons seems like...
well.. a ton of sand for lack of a better phrase. In the video it seems like
there was only few inches over a moderately sized park. It doesn't seem like
its really 37 tons. Maybe though it just doesn't show the whole park, or I'm
just bad at estimating.

~~~
bredren
Sand weighs ~100 lbs per cubic ft.

37 tons = 74000 lbs or 740 cubic ft

3 inches of depth gets you 4 sq ft of coverage

740*4 gets you 2960 sq. feet.

The city says the park is 14,000 sq feet. [1]

In the video you can see they avoided spreading it in a lot of areas because
they didn't have nearly enough!

Conclusion: Sand is heavy

[1] [https://www.san-
clemente.org/Home/Components/FacilityDirecto...](https://www.san-
clemente.org/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/43/2701)

~~~
candu
To put that in context: 1 cubic foot of flour is 37 lbs; of sugar, 50 lbs; of
water, 62 lbs.

If you've ever tried to pick up a sack / large bucket of any of these things,
it's like that but even denser. Compound that by the usual "volume varies as
the cube of a side" thing, and this gets really heavy fast.

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ipnon
Skateboarding is de facto illegal. You can't stop kids from skating without
making it physically impossible because they are already dismissing the law
and its enforcement. Notice the sand has already been cleared in enough areas
to start skating again.

~~~
a1369209993
To be scrupulously fair, while laws against (or de facto against)
_skateboarding_ aren't legitimate, this seems to be more about enforcing
quarantine for coronavirus, so as long the people doing this clean it up when
the quarantine ends, I don't think this particlularly unreasonable.

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tapland
I look out over our skate park, and its buzzing since spring is arriving
(Sweden, largest skate park).

37 tons is about one truckload? It will be mostly brushed away quickly when
quarantine ends. Wish they did the same here, but the skate park is the least
of our social distancing problems.

~~~
lostlogin
> 37 tons is about one truckload

Sand is 1.5-2 ton per cubic meter, it depends on how wet it is.

A decent truck can be loaded with about 10 cubic meters and it’s trailer a
little more 10-15 cubic meters. Based off a DIY project, so someone may know
better.

~~~
bluGill
With sand axel weight is the limit not cubic volume.

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chrisco255
This is the insanity of overreaction. Let's shut down all outdoor activities
and force people to huddle in tightly enclosed spaces. Sounds like a great
health policy! So draconian and unnecessary.

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cproctor
Florida's beaches are one step ahead of this.

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J5892
Did they build skate parks on them because people kept going to the beach?

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DeonPenny
Sour grapes are the worse thing about this situation.

