THE JOY OF SKATEBOARDING T h e P i t f a l l s o f t h e E x p l o re Pa g e
HOW TO KNOW HOW TO THINK ABOUT SKATEBOARDING If you’re like me, between the ages of 7 and 57, you undoubtedly use social media to document and relive your experience as a sentient being. You stream your stream of conscious for all to see, and you are privy to everyone else’s intimate and mundane minutiae as well. If you’re like me, you post edits of your skating in hope’s of connecting. Humbly wishing to inspire others—and, perhaps, thirstily praying to receive validation for your efforts—you hastily tread the thorny gauntlet of criticism. We endure the spurs of haterism from those trolls we don’t even know. We internalize the shit talk. We question our very core. Is there any truth to their disapproval? Skateboarding IS an artform. You may have heard otherwise elsewhere—disregard that completely. As an artform, skateboarding, especially when altered from an act to a curated video clip, is now a piece of art. A product to be consumed, rated, and, occasionally, for the artist to be berated over. What makes some skating “bad” and some skating “good” is purely subjective. There is no right way to skate. There is no objective truth. You’ve heard this before and it’s still true. Skating is based on personal preferences, a series of criteria that you’ve noticed in others and deem acceptable or despicable.
Your taste is based on your exposure to influences. I grew up in the age of VHS and DVD full length videos. A new one didn’t drop every day. We patiently waiting for the gods to descend to our mortal plane and to blow our minds from the TV in our parents’ basements to faraway spots and exotic locales. The stars of these videos—their tricks, style, and spot selection—cultivated a lush landscape of what skating could be and what it was! Full-length skate videos are few and far between these days, and new mindless, meaningless edits populate our portable pocket TVs at every moment. Consumed and washed away from the banks of memory as quickly as they were conceived and distributed. Our minds are a chaotic mess of skate media. Who did what where, when, and how blurs together in a soupy mess of multicolored camouflage cargos and miniature beanies. There is too much, and yet there is too little. Too little that sticks with us. These instant bursts of impressive stunts and technical ability leave an impression on our psyche. THAT’S how skating should look NOW! Replaced by another sugary cookie cutter clip as soon as you refresh your feed. When you open up your explore page and stare into the spiraling vortex of viral clips, remember to think for yourself, to skate for yourself, and, most importantly, to skate as yourself.
B y A b ra h a m “ O ra n g e M a n � D u b i n