Nature abhors a vacuum. As foreclosures in central California multiply a new creature has moved in. Arriving with pumps they clean out the pools of homes that have been left empty and turn them into skateparks.

This is not so bad as one would think. In the past the problem with empty homes in the region were pools that became stagnant and allowed disease carrying mosquito’s to run rampant. Now with municipal cutbacks in California due to the budget deficit the city should work out a deal.

Perhaps this modest proposal could help. Instead of sending out a city crew to drain the pool the city would send out a bunch of skaters. They would clear out the pool and then be allowed to skate on it for the next day. Instead of running the risk of trespassing charges being filed against the skaters, they could be providing a service. The homeowner, or bank, would not have to worry about paying a ticket, they instead would take the risk of any damage to the pool.

A win-win in my book.

In these boom times for skaters, Mr. Peacock travels with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buckets, shovels and a push broom, risking trespassing charges in the pursuit of emptying forlorn pools and turning them into de facto skate parks.

“We can just hit them back to back,” said Mr. Peacock, who preferred to give his skateboarding name because of the illegality of his activities.

Skaters are coming to places like Fresno from as far as Germany and Australia. Mr. Peacock said his floor and couch were covered by sleeping bags of visiting skateboarders each weekend.

Some skateboarders use realty tracking sites like realquest.com and realtor.com to find foreclosed houses with pools, while others trawl through satellite images from Google Earth. On the Web site skateandannoy.com, where skaters trade tips about how to find and drain abandoned pools, one poster wrote about the current economic malaise. “God bless Greenspan,” the post read, “patron saint of pool skatin’.” via NYTimes.com.

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