San Francisco, CA Public Conduct: Skateboarding Rules (2026)

17 applies to any person riding a skateboard, with no exception written into its text for adults or experienced riders, but only inside one kind of place: a facility owned or operated by the City and County that is designed and maintained for the purpose of recreational skateboard use, which the section labels a skateboard facility. Both halves of that definition do work. A plaza or staircase that skaters favor is not a skateboard facility unless the City designed and maintains it for recreational skateboarding, and a skate spot the City and County neither owns nor operates falls outside the section entirely.

Inside a covered facility, the required equipment is a helmet, elbow pads, and knee pads, listed together, so a helmet alone does not satisfy the section. 17 also puts an obligation on the City's side of the ledger: the Recreation and Park Department must post signs at each skateboard facility affording reasonable notice of the section's requirements, so a rider learns the rule at the site itself rather than from reading the Park Code. The requirement was added by Ordinance 123-00 in 2000, and it does not reach street or sidewalk skateboarding elsewhere in San Francisco.