I had to chuckle at this:
...you really can drive to the skatepark and it’s like a gym
...you primarily have skateboarders who come from homes where their parents would drive them to a sporting environment.
From this interview with Ben Koppl, my favorite skater which unsurprisingly seems to be an interesting person. He's talking about the changing demographics of skateboarding.
I feel strongly that treating skateboarding more like a regular sport is a great thing (it's the reason why I'm even considering it at 46!), and I'm 100% a parent that drives his kids to the skatepark, but I love his point about skateboarding starting as a mode of transportation, and a way for kids that have nothing else to do or want to avoid their neighbourhood to have a tool to do that while pushing their creativity...
The full interview is interesting, I enjoyed his non-negative take on kids perferring short instagram clips vs video parts (which I've often seen mourned about in BMX circles), and the early youtube days.