Not about a wedding

There is a great story about the LOVE park in Philadelphia. Some of you may know, some not. This is not about the couples who are going there to take their pre-wedding or even wedding day photos, but about skateboarding. Since there was a great story written in Wikipedia about it, I am not going to repeat the same story and I will just copy it all here, also with some info about the history of the park

Love Park (official name: JFK Plaza) is a plaza located in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The park is nicknamed Love Park for Robert Indiana's Love sculpture which overlooks the plaza.

Love Park is the brainchild of former Philadelphia City Planner Edmund Bacon and architect Vincent G. Kling. The park is across from City Hall and was designed as a terminus for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The park was built in 1965 and covers an underground parking garage. The main features of the plaza are curved granite steps and a single spout fountain which was added in 1969.  The park was dedicated in 1967 as John F. Kennedy Plaza after President John F. Kennedy.

A "Love" sculpture, designed by Robert Indiana, was first placed in the plaza in 1976 as part of the United States' Bicentennial celebration. It was removed in 1978, but the sculpture was missed and the chairman of Philadelphia Art Commission, F. Eugene Dixon, Jr., bought the sculpture and permanently placed it in the plaza, in 1978.

The skateboarding culture that LOVE Park's unique design spawned has been a focal point of Philadelphia's international reputation for over a decade however, despite its international fame and ability to attract youthful energy and interest in the City, it has been illegal to skateboard in LOVE Park since 1995. In 2001, amendments were added to increase fines and scope of the existing ban; enforcement of the skateboarding ban was stepped up significantly thereafter. Finally, in the summer of 2002, an attempt was made to render LOVE "unskateable": a facelift that blocked access to the most popular skateboarding areas within the plaza was executed and a uniformed police officer was placed on a nearly 24-hour guard.

LOVE's international reputation as an ideal skateboarding locale has been strengthened by the successes of some its most famous users. Internationally known professional skateboarders like (Philadelphia native) Ricky Oyola, Josh Kalis, Stevie Williams, and Anthony Pappalardo made their names in the multibillion-dollar skateboarding industry by being identified with their frequent use of LOVE's famous ledges and stair sets. Additionally, the status of LOVE Park in international skateboarding culture led to Philadelphia being chosen to host the 2001 and 2002 X-games, viewed by 150 million people in over 18 countries and attracting nearly a half million spectators during the two year stay.

But LOVE has been more than the proving ground for professionals or a source of international media interest in Philadelphia, according to Rick Valenzuela, author of City Paper article, "A Eulogy for a Fallen Landmark":

"...LOVE hosted dozens who were content merely to skate there. These were the [skaters] who composed LOVE's core of regulars—kids who rode the El (the Market-Frankford subway) from the Northeast and Frankford, skated downhill on Market Street from West Philly, through the neighborhoods of South Philly, Center City residents who moved specifically to skate nearby LOVE. It's these folks whose daylong sessions generated the murmur that would eventually spread throughout the East Coast and to the [skateboarding] industry."