history of Madrone skatepark Weekend Warriors Zak Meyer and the Madrone Family Skatepark Zak Meyer was one of Rochester's first heroes of skating. I was fortunate enough to meet Zak later in his life when he was a father. We not only shared a common bond in skating and critical living but also a bond in fatherhood. We were both family men who saw the hope for our own children not in how many things we could buy them but rather in how strong our community could be. We both saw family as something beyond the precious mini-van and being a homeowner. We saw our family-value in the community. The Madrone Family Skatepark was built in memory of this friend, father and hero: The family man, Zak Meyer, who was also a native of Rochester Minnesota but fortunately had escaped the banal-oppressive mentality and the good-old-boy greed ethics that seemed to have strangulated the value and common sense out of living. I know this criticism of Rochester may seem harsh, but it is also one reason why small, enterprising and community dedicated businesses like Board to Death Sports and the Madrone Family Park will always have a difficult time succeeding. Rochester is a town- like many other midwestern towns, which has substituted social interaction with pure consumerism: Where people live their lives in prescribed activities bound up in hypocrisy. Zak Meyer seemed to have been a 'rebel' to many because of his appearance: Long hair, scruffy beard and dozens of earrings, nose-rings and face rings. His arms and body were covered with tattoos as well. He was a visual anti-thesis to homogenized and sterile vision of the Fathers of Rochester, but Zak was Rochester. Zak was the embodiment of hope for a town that has no character. Zak died in a motorcycle accident in the summer of 2003 and his daughter, Atreya Madrone survives him. Madrone is a new clan of a Spirit of Hope. Atreya was given the family name Madrone by her mother, Becky Wolf and father, Zak Meyer. Madrone is kind of coniferous pine in the mountains in Spain as well but it is not just a thing. It is the hope- the rebirth of a Spirit into a crazy world. The Spirit Madrone found life and Zak and Becky were there to deliver them, Atreya and Madrone, into an insane but perfect world. There are a handful of Madrone children in the world now and it would take me sometime to locate their names, but the Madrone Family Skatepark is a dedication to the hope that Zak Meyer lived and the future that his daughter, Atreya brings to the world. The Skatepark may close but the hope of Madrone will live on in the seeds that have been planted in Atreya and the other handful of children that now bear this name.