‘Skatey McSkateface’ Chosen As Name For English City’s New Skateboard Park
A new English skate park will henceforth be known as “Skatey McSkateface” after town officials asked the general public to come up with a name and got exactly what they asked for, The Independent reports.
Officials in Southend-on-Sea, a seaside community of about 180,000 people, wanted the skateboarders in their town to have a safe place where they could perform ollies and 360’s in relative safety. To that end, they budgeted £250,000 (about $318,000) towards the building of a new skate park. And then, they let the Internet come up with the name.
As is often the case when the Internet is asked to do something, the Internet came through — just not in the way that town officials had likely hoped. They asked the public to come up with some possible names, and then put it to a vote. Among the options were mundane names like “Warrior Skate Park” and “Central Skate Park.”
But the winner, by far, getting more votes than the second- and third-place finishers combined, was “Skatey McSkateface.”
Town officials likely knew what they were getting into when they decided to crowdsource the naming rights to the park. Councillor Kevin Robinson — who is far from being a stodgy and dour stereotypical British politician — says that he and his colleagues knew full well that they might wind up with something weird when they asked the public to come up with a name.
“This facility was always going to be something we and the public could have some fun with,” Robinson said.
In Southend-on-Sea to watch a production of my play ‘Curtain Up!’ Don’t think much of the set. pic.twitter.com/wmLqopAq4F
— Adam Croft (@adamcroft) June 21, 2019
In fact, the British official stated that it was the general public who asked for the skate park. He said the general public paid for it and the general public will use it. He also said it was only right and fair that the public should be allowed to name the park. Even if that name is… unusual.
If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because something very similar has happened before, and in England, no less. As Smithsonian reports, back in 2016 the British Antarctic Survey crowdsourced the name of a multi-million-dollar climate research vessel, and the name the internet came up with was “Boaty McBoatface.”
However, the scientific society was far less willing to take a joke than Southend-on-Sea officials, and they named the vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough. Although to be fair, they did bestow the name “Boaty McBoatface” on a drone submarine that has been dispatched from the vessel.
