If that sounds hyperbolic, rest assured it isn’t.
That reveal is a $15K skatepark sign paid for by the city to honor Comer and his legacy. This is effectively a renaming ceremony, and the city will have to remove the old sign from the park’s 2022 inauguration.
Initially called “The Boneyard,” the skatepark was renamed after a campaign that went viral when skateboarding star Tony “The Birdman” Hawk made a video appeal to the city in 2023. The City Council unanimously voted to change the name in honor of Comer, the first professional skateboarder from Garland, who died in 2019. But Comer wasn’t just your average athlete. After being struck by a car at the age of 4, resulting in the loss of a leg, he developed what is revered as a legendary skateboarding career with a prosthetic limb.
Elijah Moore Jr., a Garland resident, professional skateboarder and co-owner of NOW skateboards, played a big part in getting the skatepark built. He recalls appearing in a newspaper while building momentum for a Garland skatepark, though it was so long ago he can't remember the actual date. “I got a picture in the newspaper looking goofy standing before the council committee begging them for a skatepark.” That was in 2007.
Now 44, he remembers his first impressions of seeing Jon Comer skate. “I remember thinking he’s really good, but he’s also on some try-hard type energy because who puts stickers all over their leg? Then I realized he had a prosthetic leg. My mind was blown.”
Moore’s advocacy for the project ended when the city finally broke ground on the skatepark he dreamed of for over a decade. Regarding the name, he believes the city made the right move.
“I think the park being named after [Comer] is better than it being named The Boneyard,” he says. “With all due respect, I don’t know what The Boneyard means, and someone might come after me for this, but whatever. I do know what Jon Comer represented to the skateboarding community, so it makes more sense to me for it to be named after Comer.”
So where did The Boneyard name come from?
In an early 2022 meeting, former City Council member Rich Aubin and Assistant City Manager Andy Hesser proposed the name, forgoing a previously considered naming contest. To save time, the public was not consulted.
“We wanted to give it a kind of cool name that we thought would be attractive. Some park names are so stuffy,” Aubin says.
Aubin served three terms on the council and filled in as mayor pro tem in 2017 when former Mayor Douglas Athas resigned over what he felt was a bullying process in the council’s decision to move forward with initial plans for the skatepark without public approval. Aubin currently serves as District 5 plan commissioner.
“I think people were opposed to skater culture and what they thought it might bring,” he says of the disapproval. “People have a lot of prejudicial opinions against skaters and skate culture.”
Aubin seems to have fully embraced it, but maybe he’s out of touch. He doesn’t have a personal relationship with skating, so it’s understandable how he was blindsided by the radical idea that skaters seemed hellbent on a conventional homage to an inspirational community member.
Still, he did emerge as a sort of lone advocate for the park during its inception, finally pushing it through the 2019 capital improvement budget to be built in his district after it was rejected for a second time at the park’s previously proposed location.“Comer was infamously known as being proud of being from Garland.” – Victor Nelson, Jon Comer Memorial Skate Jam founder
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“The council member for District 2 very seriously opposed the skatepark going in at Central Park,” Aubin says. “I don't know how to describe it. She indicated displeasure. So I popped up and said I’ll take it in my district. It was the right thing to do.”
Initial funding for the Garland skatepark was approved in a 2004 bond election. The city finally broke ground in 2021.
“I wanted to make sure of a couple of things,” Aubin continues. “That we do what the voters tell us to do. So if the voters voted on building a skatepark during the bond election, then we need to build a skatepark. I think that’s a part of good governance. I felt that it was an important thing in the community. The idea of providing opportunities for these kids who want to skate for whatever reason, or if they can't participate in Little League or whatever, I think we need to support a diversity of interests. That's part of what a good city does.”
Yet, Aubin opposed a public hearing on the naming of the park. He also opposed renaming the park to honor Comer, citing Comer’s lack of interest in the goings-on of city management.
“Generally in Garland, we’ve named facilities after people who have been involved in Garland. I never heard anything that indicated that Jon had been involved,” he says. “I didn't feel particularly compelled to heed Tony Hawk's insistence, but everyone is different on that. You win some, you lose some.”
“He’s the naysayer!” says Victor Nelson, founder of World WCMX and the Jon Comer Memorial Skate Jam. “Not a naysayer because he got the park built, but he didn't want to change the name.”
Nelson is the author of the Change.org petition to alter the skatepark’s name that initially caught Hawk’s eye. Over the years, Nelson has learned how to ruffle a few feathers as a prominent figure in the Dallas skate scene as an events coordinator.
“Comer was infamously known as being proud of being from Garland,” Nelson says. “Not to mention, skateboarding is fucking hard with both of your legs, just doing that with a prosthetic was a really profound thing.
“Not a lot of cities can claim [Comer]. It’s special. It gives the city an identity that is unique and a testament to skateboarding.”
Nelson is founder of World WCMX, a wheelchair motocross and adaptive skateboarding league that allows disabled extreme athletes to compete and take ownership of their disability. According to him, none of that would be around if it wasn’t for Comer.
“Adaptive skateboarding is such a unique thing. You can’t put it in a box. Everyone in adaptive is going to be a little bit different. Maybe they have a prosthetic, maybe they're blind, maybe they don't have arms or they don't have legs, or maybe they have to use crutches so they can stand on the skateboard and pop it so they can participate and share in the experience of skateboarding with the community,” Nelson says.
“There’s a lot of different ways it can go, and Comer was the trailblazer for it all. If he hadn't skated, there are so many people in the world that would never have thought as children ‘Hey, this is something I can do!’ as well as find their path in life to be who they are now.”
Nelson co-founded the Jon Comer Memorial Skate Jam with the help of adaptive athlete and Comer protégé Oscar Loreto Jr. after Comer’s death. After its initial occurrence at Alliance Skatepark in Grand Prairie, the event was moved to California to make it easier on the event participants.
“We wanted as many adaptive athletes to be able to participate as possible, and that was easier to do in California,” Nelson says. “Now the plan is to bring it back to Texas and host it at the Jon Comer skatepark. We’ve come full circle.”
Jon Comer Skatepark is at Rick Oden Park, 1010 W. Miller Road, Garland.
