In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic last month, officials filled a Venice Beach skate park with sand in order to prevent citizens from utilizing it. Earlier this week, local skateboarders, fed up with not being able to use the park, decided to take matters into their own hands and used shovels to clear the park of the sand .
They seemingly succeeded in removing all of the sand from the Los Angeles-area park, according to an Instagram post from Shacked Magazine.
Professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez wasn't surprised at all that locals eventually decided to take back their skate park.
"As a skater I was like, damn, that's aggressive," he told The Undefeated on May 1. "That's like a little stronger than what they needed to do. How long is it going to take them before they dig it out? And so it just felt like it was an aggressive message. But as a human, I'm like, we're going through a pandemic, I mean, we've got to do what we got to do."
The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Park said the sand was put there to act as a "deterrent" to make sure large groups wouldn't gather at the space and an employee told The Undefeated, "once the orders are lifted and the skate parks are reopened, the sand will be removed."
Skateboarders have since began using the park on a daily basis. It's unclear if the city will take action and potentially fill the skate park with sand once again.
