Join the Scotty Lapp Foundation for a high-energy night of food, music, and fun to ring in the New Year. Revelers ages 21 and older are invited to be energized by live music, lasers, lights, and a balloon drop at the Olympic Valley Event Center. Partygoers are encouraged to dress up in attire representative of their favorite music genre and get down on the dance floor. Bar proceeds and a high-dollar raffle will benefit the Scotty Lapp Foundation’s efforts to fund a skate park built in honor of Scotty Lapp, who died this past February in a tragic ski accident at just 16 years old.
Tickets for the New Year’s Eve Palisades Tahoe #SkateForScotty Fundraising Concert are $129 per person and can be purchased online at eventbrite.com. Doors open Saturday, Dec. 31 at 9 p.m. with last call at 1:30 a.m. Local DJ Alex T will get the night going with high-energy rock & roll band APPLE Z taking the stage at 10 p.m. APPLE Z is a unique, award-winning group that has earned a reputation for its nonstop energy, world-class musicianship, and creative mashups that consistently pack dance floors. The group routinely travels to destination events across the nation and beyond.
The Scotty Lapp Foundation was created from a dream — Scotty’s dream — to have a safe place to practice his beloved pastime of skateboarding, according to foundation members.
Press releases and the foundation’s website together tell a moving story about kids who want to make a safe place for practicing their sport. While skiing became her son’s greatest passion, in the off season the teenager loved nothing more than to grab his skateboard and head out with his friends, Amy Lapp, Scotty’s mom, said. A student at North Tahoe High School in Tahoe City, Scotty and others would gather to skate but didn’t have a place to go. They would roam around town until they were asked to move on.
Although Scotty really wanted to practice his sport, he wasn’t a rulebreaker, his mom said, so he planned to start a petition to build a skate park. His dream was to have a place for people of all ages to practice, have fun, and just be themselves. But his sudden death at Alpine earlier this year kept his dream from coming to fruition.
Hours after his death, Scotty’s family decided to continue on with his plan, and got to work on the goal of building a skate park for the people of the community. With its first project, Skate for Scotty, the Scotty Lapp Foundation’s mission is to find a location that can accommodate a 20,000-square-foot park that is inclusive, accessible, community-minded, attractive, and a safe space for all, according to foundation members. The foundation has the support of Placer County, the Tahoe City Public Utility District, and The Skatepark Project (formerly the Tony Hawk Foundation) to find a location and build the park. It is currently raising funds to cover the cost of construction, which could exceed $1 million. More than $250,000 has already been collected.
This past fall, Skate for Scotty constructed a temporary 4,000-square-foot pop-up skate park in Tahoe City, located behind EVO, the former location of Blue Agave.
“We are hard at work fundraising and collaborating with Placer County and the North Lake Tahoe community to find a permanent home for the Scotty Lapp Memorial Skatepark, but in the meantime, having partners like EVO step up to offer a temporary location and insurance to open a pop up skatepark has been incredible,” said Amy Lapp, who is also co-founder of the foundation, in a press release this fall. The pop-up park offered a variety of features for people to get creative on, including a mini pipe, hip, flatbank, two quarter pipes, 5-stair with a hubby, tabletop, flat down bar, step up gap, 3-stair, grind ledge, and China gap ramps.
“Our intention is to give people of all ages and backgrounds a local, legal, safe place to gather and connect to their common love of skateboarding,” Lapp said.
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