Connor Love, a graduate student at UCSB, works the grind at Skater’s Point. 
Kids and a few adults enjoy the features of Skater’s Point along Cabrillo Boulevard. 
“On the count of three … .” Jack McNeil, right, encourages a man giving his name as BB Lightning to take the plunge off a ledge at Skater’s Point. 
Sable Daugherty eyes her next run at Skater’s Point. 
A skateboarder cruises the top of a bowl at Skater’s Point. 
Kids enjoy the features at Skater’s Point. 
Connor Love gets some air on his scooter at Skater’s Point.
[Noozhawk’s note: This is the latest in a series of articles on the myriad recreational activities along the Santa Barbara waterfront. Click here for the complete series index.]
Skater’s Point, a 14,600-square-foot skateboard park along Cabrillo Boulevard and a block east of State Street in Santa Barbara, is a popular spot for kids looking to learn and practice the ollies, grinds and slides on the park’s half-pipe, rails, hips, banks, fun boxes and other features.
The city's Parks and Recreation Department, which runs Skater’s Point, helps that happen with kids’ camps five mornings a week during the summer. Beyond summer, the city also provides a kids-only skate time from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays, featuring a free clinic and restricted to those age 12 or younger.
For those city-sponsored activities, “kids are required to have all the safety equipment,” said Rich Hanna, the city’s recreation manager. “It’s a good start or immersion into skating the right way.”
As with anything involving wheels, skateboarding attracts plenty of adults and older teens, too. While they might or might not wear helmets, many of them say they find it an enjoyable way to work out their recreation mojo.
For a Carpinteria native in his 40s who gave his name as BB Lightning, Skater’s Point offered a recent return to a skateboarding passion after a layoff of 21 years to raise a family.
“Kids, family, busy — I didn’t want to hurt myself. I had a lot of responsibility,” he said. “Now, I don’t have a family, I don’t have kids. I have a daughter, but she’s an adult now.”
On this day of his return, he managed to both mentor some kids on fundamentals while also getting some bemused mentoring from teens and young adults to help him overcome some first-day-back jitters.
“OK, on the count of three,” Jack McNeil, a young local, said to BB as they both stood on a ledge. But on three, just one of them descended.
“The muscle memory’s there,” BB said. “I’m old enough to know how not to get hurt. But still, you hesitate. And if you hesitate, you miss. This guy doesn’t hesitate.”
Aside from ribbing he got from the likes of McNeil, he enjoyed working with the kids present.
“I like to encourage these young guys,” he said. “They’re what get me out here. I don’t have a little guy doing it anymore.”
Sable Daugherty, 22, was also making a comeback.
“I took a few months off because I hurt my foot trying to do a pop-shove,” she said, referring to a 180-degree spin of the board. But on the this attempt, she “landed sideways.”
She’s a fairly new transplant to Santa Barbara from Washington state, and she said she loves the ocean breeze at Skater’s Point.
“I feel like a beginner again, because I’m kind of getting back into it” after the injury layoff, she said. “I have sort of a girl skate group; we all skate in the mornings usually.”
The injury rehab didn’t dull the desire to practice and persevere.
“I like the adrenaline rush, and then being in the moment with it,” she said.
Skater's Point is also open for inline skates and scooters, such as one of the latter getting a workout from Conner Love, a graduate student in oceanography at UCSB. Not a motorized scooter — basically a stem with handlebars stuck to a kind of skateboard.
“I started doing it a long, long time ago,” he said of the scooter. “It’s a nice mix between skateboarding and BMX (cycling). I’ve skated and biked, and I just like this more.”
It is similar to skateboarding, he said, “but you can also do a bar spin and tailwhip,” which are BMX moves.
“Some people are flipping over their head real crazy” on the scooters, he added. “I’m not one of those people.”
Skater’s Point was designed by Mike Taylor, Sammy Baptista and other local skateboard professionals and opened in 2000.
— Noozhawk correspondent Dennis Moran can be reached at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.