“My first legal skate here!”

So said one happy skateboarder shortly after the Crane Park skatepark — the most popular hang-out in St. Helena for weeks — officially opened to the public Sept. 25.

Skaters had been trying out the park at night, but the St. Helena City Council didn’t formally christen the park until that Friday morning. Minutes after school got out, the park was packed with careful young children, daredevil teens and seasoned adult skaters.

To a skating newbie, the park looks like an imaginatively molded slab of concrete. But to skaters it’s pure heaven.

“This is probably one of the better northern California parks,” said Angelo Lugo, who was a pro skater in the 1990s and now lives near Lake Berryessa.

He stumbled across the unfinished park when he brought his sons to the Crane Park playground. “We used to skate the glory hole at Berryessa, but now there’s this.”

What makes the park so special? Lugo pointed to features like “clean transitions” in the bowls and finely crafted “coping,” the black bars at the edges of the bowls that skaters use to grind their boards and use to catch air.

The park is also full of little details that show it was designed and built by real skaters, said Brian Nash of St. Helena — in this case, the Seattle-based firm Grindline. “A lot of parks are built by people who don’t understand skating,” he said.

Nash was one of many skaters who test-drove the park at night while it was still under construction — at least until he and his son made the St. Helena police log.

“At that point I figured we’d better wait until the official opening,” he said.

The park has already appeared on YouTube and the Web site for the popular skating magazine Thrasher. It’s definitely good enough to be a draw for skating enthusiasts from well outside the Napa Valley, skaters agreed.

Lugo’s and Nash’s enthusiasm shows that skateboarding isn’t just for kids, as St. Helena Parks and Recreation Director Kathy Carrick has noted.

Carrick said, “I’ve been getting e-mails from CEOs of companies who send me pictures of themselves flying up in the air over the rims of these pools, saying, ‘You know, it’s not just kids waiting for this. I’m 40 years old. When are you opening the park?’”

The rule requiring skaters to wear helmets, knee pads and elbow pads has its detractors. Some law-abiding skaters even had to scrounge up elbow pads from others.

Angwin’s David Yorgensen, a winemaker, borrowed little Zoey Pratt’s Barbie elbow pads, while Pratt borrowed her sister’s Dora the Explorer gear. Fortunately her sister was taking a nap, so she didn’t mind.

Alec Faulkner said the most amazing thing about the park “is that it finally got built.” It’s on city-owned property, but it was funded and planned by private citizens who’ve been trying for years to give kids a safe place to skate.

The nonprofit St. Helena Skatepark Inc. was the third community group to try to build a skatepark. With $925,000 raised to date and the park open, it is by far the most successful.

Up to $25,000 more is needed for lighting, said organizer Cindy Smith. Landscaping is also on tap.

Between the skatepark and the refurbished teen center, also funded mostly by donations, local kids have two more places to hang out.

“Things are happening and as usual, it takes private citizens to get things done,” said Carrick. “It’s the St. Helena way.”쇓