PHILADELPHIA - Lurking off in the shadows of 15th Street and JFK Boulevard is Love Park.

Gone were the marble slates, benches and clear paths so suitable for skateboarding. Instead wooden benches and flower pots dotted the landscape when the park reopened in July.

On Saturday, the X Games held the skateboard street competition at City Hall across the street from Love Park.

Competitors and fans alike voiced their displeasure about the demise of Love Park.

Prior to the competition, professional skaterboarder Ricky Oyola, from Philadelphia, handed out t-shirts to fans with a cartoon of Mayor John Street as a donkey on the front and the slogan "Street gets no Love" on the back. Oyola encouraged the fans to put the shirts on immediately.

"We’re just waiting for them to hook us up with a place to go skating," Oyola said. "I’m always going to skate in the middle of the street no matter what, but we still need some place for the average regular kid to practice."

Oyola’s fellow competitor Dayne Brummet just learned about the Love Park situation Friday night when he arrived in Philadelphia.

Brummet said the spontaneity of skateboarding is being lost.

"I definitely feel for those guys," Brummet said. "It’s always a struggle. Every city it’s a struggle to get to skate. They’re trying to structure it all and you can’t have that much structure. It turns people off."

Although skateboarding in the park was always illegal, police and city officials tolerated it.

Among the estimated 8,600 fans who packed City Hall several held signs or wore t-shirts expressing their anger at Mayor Street.

"They just don’t get it," Chase Gelberg, 14, of Springfield said. "We’re off the streets and then they take that from us."

Gelberg’s friend Robbie Travasant, 15 of Philadelphia added: "skateboard parks are it. This is a street sport and we should be there. I’ll never go to one of those parks."

The controversy continues.

.