Stop Skating With Your Eyes

We experience skateboarding with all of our senses, but we consume it with our eyes. Ironically, when you are actually skating, what you see is the least important part of the experience. The feeling of weightlessness in the air, the vibration of the grind through your feet, the sound of trucks on concrete: These are the things skaters are really chasing after when they ride. Yet the increasing emphasis on watching skateboarding, from pro vids to your own selfies, can make it real easy to lose sight of this.

A Wheel/Journalistic Ethics Review, Or, Why Skateboard Product Reviews Have Always Sucked

For decades, skateboard magazines have dealt mostly in celebrity.  Skaters buy mags to see and read about the exploits of famous skaters, not to get practical information that helps them skate. Sure, there are occasionally gear reviews and trick tips, but these are inevitably useless.  Skateboarding is not a spectator sport, our culture is driven almost 100% by actual participants, yet our mags are basically selling spectatorship. Compare that with the mags that serve cyclists and runners or particpants in any other physical hobby: in other disciplines, the media is driven by things like training tips and comically exhaustive equipment previews and reviews. Nobody would buy a copy of Runner’s World if it was nothing but pictures of famous runners doing laps, but that’s kind of what skaters re doing when they buy a copy of Thrasher or Transworld.

The last thing I want is for Thrasher to mutate into Golf Digest, but I’ve always felt that there is a place for something more “rider-oriented”, in skating. Figuring out how to do this, however, is not so simple, and plunges a writer deep into the weird, murky depths of skating’s unique nature, revealing just how complex and substantive skateboarding really is.

Don't Blame Jamie Or Jaws, Here's The Real Reason For The Scooter Menace

Skating often captures the imagination of those who lack the will, temperament or dedication to take it up. This is why trends like rollerblades, snakeboards, rip-stiks, and razor scooters are always yapping at skaters' heels.

The latest incarnation of this phenomenon, the Razor scooter, has been especially persistent, not to mention obstructive to the modern skateboarder.  More than one skater has placed the blame for the scooter epidemic on the high-impact, highly technical trends in modern pro skateboarding. At a glance, the connection seems plausible: Elite level Skateboarding has developed a more risky dimension than it had in the good ol days, they say. An emphasis on increasingly complex and risky tricks rather than "just rolling", is making kids take up scooters instead of skateboards. The skate world, they posit, has become an all jocks club that welcomes only the most athletically driven skaters.

Take a closer look at skateboarding, and a good hard look at the Razor scooter, and it becomes clear that the kids riding those Razors wouldn't be riding skateboards no matter what sort of stuff was going down in Thrasher magazine.

I'm Not An Old Guy Anymore, As If I Ever Was before

My days of peak skill on a skateboard are long past.  In fact, at 42, I may be one ankle injury away from never popping an ollie again. I skate curbs more than anything else. I spend a fair amount of time skating bowls, but I don't worry too much about getting up on the coping.  So yeah, I'm an old skater: a veteran, a lifer.

But I don't think I want to be an "Old Guy Skater".

I have no illusions. I am old. Older than any skater I knew when I was in my prime, and there are lots of great things about being an old guy. The emergence of an older demographic in skateboarding has had positive effect on everything from the building of municipal skateparks, all the way down to the revival of curb skating. But with the coming of the old guys has also come a lot of back-slapping and self organizing, as well as a tendency toward a sort of pouty self-imposed marginalization.

No doubt, "Old Guy Skater" groups on social media  have been invaluable in getting veteran skaters together to shred, socialize, and share spots. I frequent a couple of really great ones, and when they are done with the right attitude, they are a great resource. Still I can never quiet escape the fact that, at some level, being a part of these groups, even the positive ones, also implies that being old relegates some skaters to a separate place in skateboarding, a place of either perceived privilege, or resigned inferiority.

The thing is, now more than ever, age has nothing to do with one's place in skateboarding.  Maybe it's time to drop the "Old Guy" branding from all the groups, blogs, and other outlets that bear that tag. Maybe it is time to re-think what being an "Old Guy" means, and what we are really trying to promote when we exult in our "Old Guy" status.

Skateboarding is Not A Sport

You can take practically any physical endeavor and turn it into a “sport”. Just flip through the cable channels late at night and you’ll see. There is competitive lumberjacking, competitive aerobics, competitive martial arts. There's even professional eating. Turning something into a sport is simple all you have to do is impose limitations on it.  Mark Twain once  joked that the sport of golf was  “a good walk spoilt.”  It was just a smart ass remark, but the essence of sports lies in that little quip. Add in rules about teams, official measurements and require someone to carry a ball, and something as simple as walking from one end of a field to another becomes football.

Skaters have been antagonistic about branding skateboarding as a sport for decades. A lot of this comes from skating's DIY roots and the punk rock ethos it picked up in the 1980’s, but the need to refute and reject all attempts to make skateboarding a sport go beyond simple rebellious desires, it cuts right to the nature of skating itself. Limitations and skateboarding are two entities that always have trouble getting along. Entities that should have trouble getting along.

The Popsicle Experiment

For the last two years I have been one of the thousands of skaters who has embraced alternate skate deck shapes. I've ridden shovel heads, punk points, curvaceous, wide bodied hybrids like the Street Plant Street axe, and I’ve had custom shapes made to my own specs, The whole time I've been pretty vocal about how these shapes can be more than just nostalgic, stylistic affectations.

About 3 months ago, for the first time in 2 years,  I set up my first popsicle deck. It was my attempt to come full circle with all my experimentations, and see how my perceived preferences stood up against the baseline of modern skateboarding.

Even in light of all of my shape advocacy, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t notice immediate advantages with the popsicle. There are good reasons to ride a standard shape, just as there are good reasons to ride a well-designed alternate shape. Teasing out what advantages come from the actual popsicle shape and which come from other factors like a shift in wheelbase size and width is a more subtle matter.

Stop acting Like The Taliban. Start Acting Like The Hell's Angels

Skaters like to wax poetic about the virtues of core skateboarding, the values fostered by the underground...they go on about how important all of that is, how vital it is, yet, when anything comes along that might (gasp) move skateboarding outside the boundaries of their own personal, subjective and usually overly idealized ideology of "core" skateboarding, they start ranting about how skateboarding is in peril of being "ruined".

I have to wonder: Just what is this fragile thing they call skateboarding that needs so much protection?  It's not something I recognize. The skateboarding that I have cherished for three decades is not some precious, fragile little flower, it's a fucking weed that won't die no matter how hard it gets pulled, stepped on, or doused with poison. It's a weed that can't be killed because its roots are too strong.

SLAPCHAT: With Matt Field

In the mid 90’s Matt Field and his Real Skateboards teammates like Keith Hufnagel, Mark Gonzales, and Greg Hunt did just as much to bring flow back to skating as any of the Sub Zero or Zoo York crew. Although he may be more renowned for wallrides and one of the best nollie front 180’s ever popped, Field’s east coast roots and soulful style means he’s also deeply connected to the dao of slap. Subjecting Field to the slapchat grind revealed that this smooth operator had a lot to say about slapping curbs. No doubt, he’s one of us.

What you should be talking about when you're talking about "Old School"

The term "old school"gets thrown about a lot nowadays. Old school tricks. Old school boards. Old school style... It's a term that's crossed the rubicon of cliche and gone straight on to meaningless. So much water has flowed under the bridge, "old school" is now a term that equally applies to a backside boneless or a front foot impossible. The term "old school" is so relative its easy to clown yourself using it casually. So your $100 Powell Caballero dragon re-issue is an "old-school" deck? Let me introduce you to my bro over there whose first plank was a Bahne Fibreflex back in '78.

Refer to decks, tricks, styles, music as "old school" and  I'll probably tune you out, but there are some legitimately "old school" concepts that we should all be talking about much more. These are things more relevant than pointed noses and no-complies. You want to talk about :"old school" let's talk about about old school skate culture, and I'm not talking about Jim Phillips graphics, flipping the bill up on your Suicidal Tendencies hat, or paint penning a bad approximation of the Rat Bones logo on your griptape, either. The term "old school" ought to be trotted out only in instances where it can really matter, instances where it refers to values and practices that are getting lost in times when skateboarding is more accessible and more codified.

Beyond Go Skateboarding Day: Some New, More Festive Holidays For Skaters

Skateboarding now has its own quasi-holiday with Go Skate Day. Every year the occasion gets bigger and that’s pretty cool, on the other hand, creating a special day for skaters called “Go Skate day” is kind of like a bunch of junkies getting together and declaring a “Go Shoot Up Day”.  After all, go skateboarding day is any day you’ve got time to skate...that it isn’t raining...or that you are not in too much pain from the last “go skateboarding day”. Still, the precedent of a skateboarding holiday is great because it paves the way for some better, more specific holidays for skateboarders. Here’s a few festive ideas I came up with, some holidays that commemorate more specific aspects of skate culture that I think need to be celebrated and cherished:

Janksgiving: Janksgiving is a day for skaters give thanks for all the sketchy, chunky spots that helped them learn to skate before they were good enough to rip their local park or hot street spot. Skaters are encouraged to re-visit the two-step staircases, strip mall curbs, and school/church parking lots they cut their teeth on as a way to foster an appreciation for their skate heritage. It is also a day of thankfulness for DIY skate parks, so hug your local cementhead and give him a bag of quikrete, then get to work. The day of appreciation peaks with the Janksgiving Feast, where you and your extended skate family gather together with whatever scraps of wood and other semi-skateable materials you can find, and then use them to build a new janky skate spot. After shredding it, you have a pot luck dinner where everyone contributes their favorite recipes from old Skarfing Material columns.

Editorial: WE DO NOT CRUISE!: Lot Lurkers Of The World, Unite and Take Over.

The mainstream of modern street skateboarding, if you define it by what the media is selling, has a pretty high barrier to entry. There’s something perverse in the fact that what we now call “street skating” has developed (devolved?) to a level where it seems as if you can’t drop your board down just anywhere and start doing it. Skateboarding has matured to the point where there’s no longer an expiration date on a persons’ skate lifespan, but it often seems as if the queue up to the street skating section of the subculture is blocked by a sign that says: “You must be this young or this skilled to enter.” Videos transmit the latest, most skull-perforating tricks and create an orthodoxy of what high-impact, terrain qualifies as a legit skate spot, and what tricks are “real”. If the ledge ain’t knee high it doesn’t count, and anything less intense than popping a double set or hitting a handrail at mach 12 is mere “cruising”. “Cruising” I hate that fucking term. Its called street skating, folks, even if all you’re doing is rolling down the block and floating up curbs. In some ways street skating is a victim of its own success: in becoming the pre-eminent cutting edge venue for skateboarding, modern street skating can seem narrow, highly specialized and, competitive. In short, street skating is in constant danger of veering away from all the things that made it so crucial to start with.

Skateboarding's Critical Mass: The masonite/Boneite Revolution

For me 1986 and 1987 were the years of a sort subliminal indoctrination into skateboarding. By the end of ’87 I had reached the turning point where I realized skateboarding was not going to be just a diversion for me, but a passion. These were the years when my friends and I slowly and painfully began to realize that those Nashes and Valterras we were riding weren’t going to be enough.

These were the years before Thrasher showed up in the bookstores but Thrashin' and Police Academy 4 were on movie screens. 720 appeared in the mall arcade promising answers to the tao of skating that, alas, remained elusive no matter how many quarters we pumped into it. At home, my friend Monty and I were ignoring the hackey sack and volleyball stages of California Games on the commodore 64 so we could go straight to shredding the 8-bit half pipe in the skateboarding stage. Skate Or Die came later, and we would find ourselves taking pixelized advice on equipment and skate spots from a double-chinned, purple mohawked skateshop owner named Rodney Recloose in the hopes of taking down aggro eddie. Of course when the screen went blank, no matter how well we scored head to head against Bionic Lester, we had to go back out to our driveways with our Valterras and Nashes and be Poseur Pete.

 In the living rooms of our suburban ranch houses there were sporadic commercials with tiny snippets of skating flash cut in between pitches for cola or hair gel. Each split second of shredding between money shots of Swatch watches or perspiring cans of Mountain Dew would have me putting my face right up to the screen, searching for information. In the mid 80’s, if skateboarding was the bright center of the universe, I was on the planet farthest from, but like a radio telescope operator with an open line to alien world, I was poring through the pop culture static and aggregating a transmission of skateboarding whose signal to noise ratio was slowly getting better.