Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on new skateboarding legislation.

Listen up, skateboarders: The State of North Carolina has spoken.

Starting Oct. 1, if a skateboarder heads out to a public skating park he or she has to put on a helmet, kneepads and elbow pads.

The new law, Senate Bill 774, passed during this year’s session of the North Carolina General Assembly. In addition to requiring new padding for Tar Heel State skaters, the new law aims to lower liability insurance costs.

The bill, submitted by Sen. Walter Dalton (D-Rutherford), portrays itself as a pro-skateboarding item. Its stated goal is “… to make land available to a governmental entity for skateboarding, inline skating or freestyle bicycling.

“It is recognized that governmental owners or lessees of property have failed to make property available for such activities because of the exposure to liability from lawsuits and the prohibitive cost of insurance, if insurance can be obtained for such activities.”

But many area skaters, mixed on the law’s actual intent, feel new regulations won’t aid public-park skating.

“(With) this law going back into effect, I’m afraid that participation is going to go down,” said Chris Smith, recreation coordinator at Greenfield Grind Skatepark at the City of Wilmington’s Greenfield Lake Park. “A lot of skaters aren’t just real happy with the law. Some feel that it’s their body; they can do what they want. Skateboarding is a hazardous activity and it comes with the territory.”

Pads often limit skaters’ mobility, and athletes new to kneepads often trip on them.

Smith, a graduate of UNCW and who now takes nursing classes on campus, also felt the law holds limited safety benefits.

“I’m in support of younger kids wearing helmets. We require helmets out here. (The surface is) concrete,” Smith said. “But as far as elbow and knee pads, they only protect you from minor scrapes and bruises. They don’t really protect you from major accidents such as breaking your ankle or something like that.”

Trey Womble, owner of N.C. Skates, a store less than a mile from Greenfield Lake Park, echoed Smith’s assessment.

Womble worried that the law will “kill off public parks” rather than creating new ones. Some forecast that many skaters simply will abandon parks. Others will pack up their boards and head to private facilities such as Vineyard Skate Park in Monkey Junction or Skatebarn in Hampstead.

“I think it’s pretty ridiculous,” Zac Nye, a sophomore, said. “I know they’re trying to protect people, but … they’re just going to go somewhere where they don’t have to wear pads.”