The conluding page of this story about the meeting point between freestyle and streetstyle skateboarding includes the plea: “How’s the public going to accept us when most skaters won’t even accept a form of skating?” But who wanted to be accepted in the first place? The divisions within skateboarding are just as much about establishing personal identity as the desire to identify with other skaters.
You do a 360 Shove-it to Fakie at South Bank and they don’t really accept it as a proper trick because you’re on a freestyle board, after all. I do a Blunt on a freestyle board and they say ‘What’s he doing that for? Freestyle boards aren’t for that.’ Skaters say ‘the public should accept us’ How’s the public going to accept us when most skaters won’t even accept a form of skating?
3 responses to “Inter-skateboard prejudice?”
Now that was a good day 🙂
David Tring
Misses the point. You don’t skate for acceptance from anyone you skate because it’s what you want to do, it’s self expression. I don’t think any of the skaters I knew gave a shit about public acceptance but we all got on and encouraged each other.
Thanks, Steve.
Interesting to think of this article provoking discussion decades later.
I was at South Bank yesterday. There was a tiny kid doing good stuff. So good to see it all carrying on.