Pop's Gets Its Kids Back
Volunteers Turn Philadelphia Playground Into Skatepark
By DAN GERINGER
Philadelphia Daily News
Driven by frustration over the open-air drug dealing at abandoned Pop's Playground in Kensington, Laura Semmelroth walked into the EXIT Philadelphia Skateshop two years ago and asked owner Steve Miller, a total stranger, to build a skateboard park at Pop's.
Semmelroth remembers that Miller stared at her "like I was a crazy person."
She was wrong. Miller was staring at her like she was the cure for his own frustration over not being able to build a skate park at a rundown playground in his own Fishtown neighborhood.
This synchronicity between two stymied souls begat Pop's Skate Space, which opened last summer on Hazzard Street near Trenton Avenue - testimony to the do-it-yourself power of ordinary Philadelphians with extraordinary moxie.
