I'm on record as a Rob Dyrdek fan. We're about the same age, and I've been following him in the magazines since he first went pro, back when it was still my far-fetched dream to follow the same path. I interviewed him when Rob & Big first came out on MTV, and I happen to think his Skate Plaza Foundation is one of the coolest ideas in skateboarding circa 2009. I don't even begrudge him going out and getting his hustle on to help make it all happen, any more than I'd begrudge Tony Hawk any of his commercial success which, let's face it, has helped get hundreds of free, public, concrete, kick-ass skateparks built all over the damned place. Still, it's probably worth raising an eyebrow about the Carl's Jr.-branded Lafayette Safe Spot Skate Spot in LA, a Skate Plaza Foundation project where you can actually do manuals and whatnot on a big old slab of concrete Carl's Jr. logo.

All of which is to say:

Check out this article from The New York Times' Media & Advertising section today: Carl's Jr. Goes After the Young, and Hungry, Skateboarding Fan, which goes deeper into the deal and the company's motivations, and includes tidbits like this one:

The restaurant sold out of 3.5 million Rob Dyrdek cups in a little more than a month. “There’s a lot of bang for the buck in this stuff,” Mr. Puzder said. “It’s not as expensive as running an ad to do something with Rob — we contribute to his skate park, and you get a lot of free media from that.”

The AdBusters reader in me wants to cringe at a statement like that, especially as I'm presently giving them free media for that as I type, but the dorky skate-kitsch collector in me wishes I'd gotten my hands on some of those silly cups.
What do you think? Are we doomed to a future of heavily branded skateparks, even in public spaces like Lafayette Park?

Photo above, Rob Dyrdek and CKE Restaurants chief Andrew F. Pudzer, via The New York Times.