Having a Rolling Good Time

It’s Tuesday morning--not just any old Tuesday--but the Tuesday that 4-year-old Gabriel Speer of Hancock Park will glide like a big kid on his very own self-designed skateboard.

Gabriel is one of five kids who, for the last eight weeks, has been hanging out at one of the coolest art classes around--called Skateboard Art--found at Creative Space, a new spot for kids’ classes in Hollywood.

That’s where these Tony Hawk wannabes--ages 4 to 6--have designed their own graphics to transform the underside of their once whitewashed maple boards into works of art: a snow storm, a cat, a turtle, “tribe” markings and an alligator, to be exact.

“I like painting a lot,” said Bennett DiDonna, a classmate of Gabriel’s who just turned 7 and the designer of the silver and green alligator board. “I thought it would be fun to make my own skateboard. I like reptiles a lot.”

Each week of the class has been devoted to one step in the skateboard building and designing process, from reviewing other board designs for inspiration, to penciling in their illustrations on their boards to painting and varnishing them.

But, by far, the toughest class of all was applying grip tape to the boards. That’s the sandpaper-like material found on the top of the board that provides traction. Unfortunately, it’s a cruel joke that the paper manufactured for this purpose hangs about an inch too wide on one side.

Part of the cachet of making your own board is sawing that paper down to size with a metal file. The kids did so for nearly an hour with whatever might their preschool and kindergarten-sized muscles could muster--after all, cutting grip tape with scissors would not be cool.

“You’ve got to get the paper nice and smooth to the edge,” yelled out teacher Shari Cliver, 33, “so your board won’t look amateurish. Filing it gives your board a nice worn look.”

But now it’s Tuesday--the last class--and the day Gabriel and his classmates will finally equip the underside of their boards with trucks, bearings and wheels, try to flip the tail of their boards into a flying “ollie” and skate off into the California sunset, or at least a skate park.

“He got upset when I turned in the other direction away from Creative Space this morning,” said Gabriel’s father, Chris Speer, 41. “He just kept saying, ‘Isn’t today the day I finally get to ride my board?’ And I told him, ‘Yes, but you’ll have to go to school first.’”

“We thought it was a good idea to have an art class that boys could relate to,” Cliver said. And it’s worked.

“Skateboarding is what drew him in,” said Jessica Royer, mother of Bailey, 5. “Now he’s interested in the drawing and painting.”

Skateboard Art--for the preschool set to age 14-- is just one of the 50 or so classes offered at Creative Space’s lofty location at Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine. There’s something called “Fairy School,” in which kids assume a fairy identity, decide what magical powers they possess and write a group storybook about their make-believe experiences--a big hit with girls. There is swashbuckling class and even a music appreciation class introducing everything from the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Tevye’s “If I Were a Rich Man” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“This isn’t Gymboree,” said Cheryl Bayer-Brady, co-founder of the center and former senior vice president of comedy for Fox television. “No, this is something entirely different.” Bayer-Brady, 37, along with Gayle Baigelman, 42, formerly a partner of filmmaker Norman Jewison, dreamed up Creative Space last spring after sitting through one too many boring kids’ parties

The two knew each other only in passing from their children’s elementary school. “But then our eyes met across the way at a party,” said Baigelman. “We found each other as we looked past the stupid Cowboy Bill character doing western lasso tricks, and that was it.”

The two spent the rest of the party lamenting the lack of innovative children’s programs in Los Angeles. Soon after, they got in touch with another mom, Jennifer Barrett-Bernstein, a close friend of Bayer-Brady’s and the former creative director at Warner Home Video, and met for coffee to commiserate.

“We were looking for classes for our kids that just weren’t out there,” said Barrett-Bernstein, 40.

The three--each of whom had chosen to put off her career to spend more time with her young children--were also looking for ways to stay creative. An hour and a half and three iced mochas later, a partnership was formed.

Within three months, the trio created a business plan, brainstormed classes, used their Hollywood connections to find talent and finally opened Creative Space--using about $50,000 in credit cards--last October.

“We begged, borrowed and stole,” joked Baigelman. “We financed this thing like an independent movie.”

So far, so good. Classes are filling up with families from nearby Hancock Park, Hollywood and Los Feliz. “We even have moms calling us from Pacific Palisades,” said Bayer-Brady. But the sessions don’t come cheap; the eight-week classes range from $160 to more than $400 when parents join in.

Already the women are considering opening other locations in Los Angeles or franchising out in such places as Chicago, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco. But how to prevent Creative Space from becoming the very thing that, as parents, they disliked most? “This started with passion, heart and soul, and it will stay that way,” said Bayer-Brady. “How we can maintain the character of what we’ve become,” Baigelman added, “that will be the key to our success.”