One of the best facets of skateboarding over the last few years are the big steps it has taken both intentionally and organically toward inclusivity. More and more kids and adults from marginalized skate. There are lots more girl and women skateboarders and queer and trans pros who make their own videos, create their own scenes. Young kids and older and older adults. Skateboarders always championed themselves as a sanctuary for the outcasts but until relatively recently that meant if you were a straight-white male between 12 and 30. Now, we kind of mean it. And its great.
I first saw someone on a skateboard in the early 80s. I believe a few of them skated past my house while I was probably playing Star Wars in the front garden and they were on their way to the beach to check the surf. At least, that is how I like to remember it. But I immediately knew I wanted in, a terrifying of a prospect that that might be. At first I had no idea why, it just looked like the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen. I got my first board at age nine and it became a daily obsession by elven or twelve.
A few years later I started to unpack the appeal in my mind. You wanted a place to go but on your own terms. No start time, no end time, no uniform or organization, definitely no coaches, referees, trainers or authority figures. Yes, there were some unwritten codes and yes you had to earn your place. There was a language to learn and an esoteric culture to navigate but that was the draw as a troubled pre-teen.
It was a curious little world that I had to put a lot effort into finding, understanding and becoming a part of, especially if you lived outside California in the 80s and 90s.
If I was a child right now in 2021, I'm not sure skateboarding would have much appeal to me and part of that is due to exposure and accessibility as well commodification, co-option and exploitation of the culture. These things are nothing new, of course. Contests, sponsors etc, have long been a part of skateboarding. How many people, were stoked o skateboarding after "Police Academy 4?"
There is a lots of talk about how inspiring Olympic skateboarding might be for a young girl in Afghanistan on her way to liberation. Great. But then there is a thirteen year old in China who was hand-picked by coaches to leave her King-Fu Academy to become an Olympic champion. Within three years, her moves and routines were good enough, with daily training, to get her there. I hope she loves it. I hope she gets to smash curbs and bomb hills with friends on her weekends but I doubt it.
I tried to watch the Olympics and I know I am going to sound old, stale and predictable here but I just did not get it. Honestly, the rugby was more exciting. It is as if they have broken down skateboarding to its most sanitized, cynical machine-like, characterless, tasteless base-level. Very boring.
I'm too old to count but I hope today's eleven-year-olds- have a special little subculture that speaks to them in ways, uniforms, training, golf hats, "best tricks,"judges, points, flags, podiums, teams, energy drinks, robotic routines, televised performances never can.
Not sure what that subculture might be but it is not skateboarding.
As for surfing... ah... I'd rather not waste another keyboard tap...
