The Boys & Girls Clubs of Garden Grove on their way in to the park.
For each of the past six years Sole Technology owner Pierre André Senizergues has made holiday wishes come true for 500 kids from Southern California’s Boys & Girls Clubs and Big Brothers Big Sisters organizations (seven in total) by inviting them to the etnies Skateboard Park in Lake Forest for a holiday party. At the party each of them will get a free pair of new shoes in a box, wrapped as a present.
When we arrived in the parking lot behind the etnies building two bus loads of kids from Boys & Girls Clubs of Garden Grove were lining up to walk down to the park. They were buzzing with energy, each kid smiling like they were being tickled. It was kind of crazy.
From the upper lot the skatepark looked more like a carnival. A huge bouncy bounce covered the lawn just outside the park. Inside the fence some kids were getting their pictures taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus while others waited at the table to pick up their pair of shoes. Many dropped to the ground after getting their present and ripped into the packages to get their new shoes on as soon as possible. Others carried them out still wrapped perfectly for Christmas.
Ryan Sheckler was there handing out shoes and helping kids get their Tech Decks set up properly. We were just kind of stunned by the whole thing. It’s hard to be jaded when you’re surrounded by so many happy people. etnies employees seemed just as happy giving the shoes away as the kids did in receiving them.
We kept trying to figure out what the angle was. Why would Pierre do all this? Was it to clean out excess inventory? Was it a play for publicity? The media was there in force. But none of that made much sense.
The reason is simple according to Pierre (pictured above): “Christmas is the perfect time to give back to kids especially,” he said. “Now when some of the parents are in this financial crisis more than ever we have to help the parents. When things are tough we have to be here to help the parents and help the kids.”
He believes it’s good to give back and so he does it.
The kids queue.
That’s a few free shoes. . .
Christmas presents in stacks. Someone had to wrap all of these. . .
The etnies holiday handoff.
Some of the kids were too small to carry their own shoes back to the bus.
Ryan Sheckler setting up an X Games Tech Deck set for a kid who wanted to play with it “right now.”
