The Echo
An ode to skateboarding
“Can’t buy stoke; remember that. People want to tell you about it. It’s all right there around you, the world – it’s all yours.”
- Jake Phelps
As of this month I have been skateboarding for twenty years. Much like the industry itself, I’ve had periods of boom and bust. Years long stretches where I made a point to skate every single day and whole seasons where I didn’t even look at a board. I took breaks intentionally and incidentally, but I never quit, and I never will. Like Jeff Grosso said, “When I get to that age, the day I can’t roll, can’t even skate to the corner store for a Coke, I am fucked.” Luckily, he had the good sense to die before he hit sixty, an obvious and avoidable tragedy, but I’m sort of glad he never had to meet that day.
Before we get into it, I want to preface this by saying I know how silly this sounds. All this passion and solemnity about a children’s toy. It’s like waxing poetic about a hula hoop. It’s dumb, you can make fun of it, but it really does mean this much to a lot of us.
Skateboarding was the first thing I found that felt like mine. I found it in the summer of 2004. It was the same summer I discovered punk music so in my mind they’re inextricable, but that’s a different piece altogether. Up to that point I had toyed with a lotta things. Soccer, fantasy books, anime, video games, tennis, roller blading, even snowboarding. I liked certain things about all this stuff but none of it lit a fire. When my brother read Harry Potter, I read Harry Potter. It was alright. When my friends played Marvel vs. Capcom, I grabbed a controller, sometimes I was even kind of good, but it didn’t do to me what it did to them. I got distracted easily, fidgety, bored. Video games and books could never hold me when I was young. Then my best friend’s older brother got a skateboard, then my best friend got skateboard, then I got a skateboard.
My first board was a Walmart complete. Real piece of junk. It barely rolled. The graphic was a drawing of a skateboarder doing a frontside air. Someone better versed in deconstructionism would have something to say about that. My mother insisted I wear full pads, so I suited up. I looked at myself in the mirror and wanted to die. I talked her down to just a helmet. She was ruthless. Her friends were all told to alert her if I was seen pushing around without my helmet. I often was. I’d bring it and promptly take if off at whatever spot we chose. Or I’d leave it whichever friend’s place was acting as home base. I’d come home after a session and theatrically remove it in front of her to really drive home how long I’d been wearing it. She’d say X’s mom had seen me at City Market skating curbs without it on. Mrs. Y from school saw me in the bank parking lot wearing a hat where it was supposed to go. This went on for a while. Eventually I defied her rules outright and just tossed the thing. We fought about for a while, but she gave up. I just wasn’t going to do it and she was happy I had an outlet.
I sucked then and still do. I’ve gotten better and worse and better again over the years, it’s not a straight-line activity. I’d say my best years were 16 and 28. I was skating a lot during the pandemic. I’d go to the park in Logan Square pretty much every day. I think I achieved local status but that’s not for me to say. That’s a big part of it, is being welcomed into the club, earning access to an underground. I never made it in on the strength of my tricks, but I was studious and I had a big mouth. I’ve always been spongy and quick with a joke. These traits got me far in this subculture. I watched video parts closely, learned the stances and sponsors of all my favorite skaters, figured out who directed videos, and which companies shared a parent corporation. At the skatepark or spot I’d win games of S-K-A-T-E with sheer ball-busting warfare. Don’t get me wrong, I usually lose, but I could and still can mind game my way to a W I don’t deserve. You develop a thick skin. You must bite back when bitten. Your shoes gotta be right. It seems like a lot of that toxicity has died out for the better, but a trace of that jocular, lighthearted mean-spiritedness remains.
Some of the best nights of my life were spent sweating under a setting Colorado sun trying to learn nose manuals on the flat of a cracked and crumbing concrete basketball court. Drinking, drugs, day jobs, and the duties of adulthood interrupt this for almost everyone. It’s tragic. When you’re a grown man out on a skateboard you’ll often get other grownups chatting you up about how they “used to” skate. They say it wistfully, looking off into the middle distance. You could change “used to” to “still” with one push. I can’t recommend it enough.
It's so corny to say but it changed the way I look at the world. Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and Minor Threat has this talk at the library of congress where he’s explaining how skateboarding changed him. He touches on something I think is profound. When you choose to skateboard in the streets, your surroundings change. You realize the plasticity of all things. A curb is not just a curb, but an obstacle to jump up and down, to grind, to stall. A handrail becomes not just a vehicle to help one up and down stairs but a path to glory, to self-expression.
Skateboarding attracts creative, reckless, sensitive people. I can trace a lot of my behaviors back to emulating my skate heroes. I’ve problems with alcohol because Dustin Dollin made it look so fun in Baker 3. I’m a vegetarian because Ed Templeton used his art and skateboard company to express his passion for animal rights. I’m a ham because I saw how much fun people had watching Louie Barletta skate. I read Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski because of a Marc Johnson graphic, I learned to speak loud on injustice from guys like Jim Thiebaud. I crib my sartorial choices from my favorites like Andrew Allen (although I don’t have an ounce of his San Capistrano swag). I toy with photography because Tempster and Jerry Hsu made me laugh with their pictures. I have no claim to my personality or interests. I am a poser. There’s a Fucked Up song about hardcore but I can apply the same exact sentiment to my relationship with this dumb hunk of wood, metal, and plastic. It goes like this:
I'm an echo
So young, so old
Never let go
Of what you outgrow
I'm an echo