This skateboarding thing

Hmm, so this is gonna be a rambling one.

Lately i've been thinking about this skateboarding down hills thing, and I think it's changed somehow. I've known it for coming up to or around 2 years now, and it's a bit different now to how it was then. Going for a skate then was going to Peep, and it was skating with a crew of usual suspects. It was before the whole "facebook gear talking shit longest standy bitchathon" era, just about. It was cool. It's cool now, but it's different.

I remember when you'd hear about some bit of gear or see it at a skate and there wasn't a massive discussion on facebook about it.

Suppose it's natural that you get more into the scene and the sort of mystery and novelty goes away. It's a jarring thing when you finally realise that somebody can be a downhill skateboarder and a bit of a knob at the same time. It's a jarring thing when you realise that people care so much for the thoughts of everybody else on what they are doing.

On that-I've always tried to do my own thing, and I care very little about what most people might think about something I'm doing. If something needs to be said here I will say it, if I can be arsed. I'll skate how I want and approach things however I want. That might be how I'm feeling at a certain time, right now I'm enjoying cycling a lot and trying to build some fitness to get more runs in at each skate, and improve from there.

I, personally do not go to a skate for much but the skating and the people. Some people need the drink or the social or the whole "yeah we're here for the party, we're so not serious, observe our lack of seriousness" thing. And thats fine. But I percieve some lack of respect for anybody not following the crowd. If I go now and post somewhere discussing, for instance, how you might go about training outside of skateboarding for something inside of skateboarding, the responses would be pretty funny. People are scared of seriousness and words like "training" and "practice", because most downhillers are the half arsed anarchist type. I identify a bit with these words. Who's scared of a word?

A good way to be is if you don't like something in skateboarding, let it be, and do your own thing. Don't like the IGSA? Don't take part. I don't like any soup apart from tomato. I don't have chicken soup and bitch on the internet about it. Unless perhaps you can improve something for the benefit of yourself and others, be constructive. The requirements of building a sandcastle are a lot more than those needed to kick it down.

What stuff has changed then? Well, in a couple years the number of sponsored riders has shot up. I didn't understand before how the skill level could suddenly rocket in such a manner but I think I've got my head around it now. I thought that the sport was in a place where people were leaving and coming in at the same kind of rate, maintaining some kind of balance. Having thought about it more I realise we haven't got there yet, and things are going to be pushed a lot more before the skill on show levels out. We are enjoying the boom. Also the number of people getting hold of so much sponsor gear shows how healthy the companies around are, that they can throw so much produce into supporting riders. Its nice that those that do all the right things- shred, have a laugh, try and be good people, get pushed by the companies and the scene.

Cool boards are coming out now. I remember a time when the range of boards at a company would have some highlights. Now the designs are going so far that even a board which I would never buy still interests me with it's coolness. This is another facet of the boom.

So yeah, stuffs changed, but it's still downhill. We're going skating this weekend. The scene has changed, but the road feels the same when you hit it and the excitement is still the same in the morning before you skate and you still make those funny little calculations before you dive into a run and see what happens. The urethane sounds the same and the banter is still there but we're all going faster now. I still love it.


Will