How the Heck Didn't I Kill Myself

It was about 3:00 pm last Friday night when I decided to learn how to skateboard again. I was seven when the last time I had touched my cheap Chinese board, which I bought from Olympia sports. I didn't know any tricks then, and I sure as hell don't know any tricks now. I think it was a combination of the news of a new skate park in Cambridge, my skater friend Ishar, and a suggested video on Youtube of “how to ollie” that made me get on my board and try to jump. Whatever it was, I had a primal instinct to do something new, and skateboarding seemed like the most convenient at the time.

Youtube is abundant with “how to ollie” videos and they are all basically the same thing. A teenager[1] that is wearing a flat brimmed baseball hat tells you there are three steps: Number 1 - use your back foot to push the back of the board down. This needs to be done fast and hard to create a popping effect. Number 2 - Scrape up and out on the front of the board using the outside of your front foot (this is done while the board is tipped from step one). The side of your shoe should catch the coarse grip tape and pull the board up with it, and the out movement levels the board and pulls it forward. Number 3 - Combine the first two steps into one movement. The front foot slide pulls the board up into the air while the back of the board pops back up from its manic push down. You should be able to see your board fly up into the air. Once the teenager is done talking in his (almost certainly) west coast dialect, he skates off into some cool setting. Most likely it will be a warehouse or skate park. The videos, as simple as they are, emphasize hours of practice for each step. And so I practiced for hours, until I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere, and that my Walmart tier board might be holding me back.

With a working teenager’s budget of $200 I set out to find where I could buy a board, and where I could find out more about the culture of skateboarding (as an insider). From the recommendation of a skater friend of mine, I went to a shop in Davis Square called Maximum Hesh. In there, I was introduced to the strange specific yet entirely unspecific speech patterns of the skaters. It makes sense as Hesh is a style of not giving an f***.

Just to start out, my skater friend Ishar had given me several recommendations when it came to creating a skateboard. These were quickly either shot down or rendered useless. From boards, to trucks, to bearings, to wheels, it didn't seem to matter which one you got. Whatever you were looking at, the owner Joe would pick out every single type and then explain in minute detail what each thing did. Ending the specificity with a phrase resembling “but it doesn't really matter either way”. This strange way of selling his product worked. I bought what was not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive. And after all that, it was $148.75 down the drain. I did not only have a skateboard, but the knowledge of skate parts, that skateboard bearings are so precise that MIT robotics people buy them over any other bearings because they are the best. I also learned that skateboarding is a uniquely niche all American business. Skateboarding started in southern California, and it largely remains there today[2].

Skate culture is not about the tricks though; it is about the laidback attitude and general friendliness. People want to connect with you and teach you. When I was in the skate shop, a couple of people came, and started up conversations. One guy looked like a short skateboarding Jesus, and his friend looked just like the guy from Jackass. They talked with me about how it was never too late to start skateboarding, and how many of their friends started at a later age and now skate just as well as they do. This encouragement was inspiring, I reallyfelt like I could see myself skating with these people[3].

To start the board, the first thing I had to choose of course was the board. Although I had options from many different companies, all the ones he bought from had their boards made in similar factories, and so the choice for me was not the quality of the board, but the artwork on it.

I'm a fan of minimalist art, so instinctively, 90% of the boards were disgusting to me with their jelly frosted donut graffiti looking fonts. I picked something that was a bit radical, against the system. It was a board that not only had still shots from the JFK assassination on the back, but it also had Lee Harvey Oswald’s mugshot on the front. If I was going to experience this counter culture then I needed to experience it fully[4]. The other components I chose (trucks, bearings, and wheels) were all generic, and Joe told me that they didn't really matter for someone just starting to skate. After all, I really only needed a board that could do tricks.

The major difference between this board and the older one was the efficiency of the bearings, the concavity of the board, and the make of the components. This means that it basically does everything a little better than the old one. Although on paper these changes are only decent, in person it felt amazing. Once I got out of the shop and started to ride it back to the train it felt amazing -- like I could glide over the street. When I got home, my ankle hurt a lot. It wasn't a muscle soreness pain, or an injury. It felt as though I had started to stretch the muscle, and never stopped until two days after.

Aside from the pain, I was excited to start really learning how to ollie. I re-watched all the videos, and began to practice the steps in front of my house. Here is where I learned I should have bought some extra shoes while I was at the skate shop, and that ollieing does not just come down to your board. I first started skateboarding in thin Nike running shoes. These ripped in about half an hour. The second pair of shoes I tried was some old leather cleats, but of course you can't skate in cleats. The third pair of shoes I tried was my flat lifting shoes, and these quickly became mincemeat as well. I think that my woodworking skills were somehow taking over when I tried to practice jumping, because instead of getting any air I was just sanding down my shoes. I thought that putting a hole in two pairs of shoes would stop me - boy was I wrong [5]. As I went inside to do my homework, I found myself getting distracted not by funny pictures of animals, but by skateboarding videos. This struggle to even get the board to jump off the ground gave me a newfound appreciation for the crazy flips that the pro skateboarders do. Their foot eye coordination seems to be at an inhuman level, above even pro soccer players. It made me feel better about being a tennis playing, rock climbing, and hand-eye coordinated individual. Craziest thing about Skateboarding is that it always looks so easy. Every skate video makes it seem like doing tricks is second nature and the only thing messing the skaters up is injury. This procrastination catalyzed my want to skateboard and subconsciously put better ollieing form (and probably more guts) into my mind. And then I realized: I was thinking way too hard about how to do the ollie, and not focusing at all about just doing the ollie. I needed an excuse to go outside.

The excuse came. It was a phone call from my friend Silas[6]. Although our conversation had nothing to do with skateboarding, its contents did require me to go outside away from my parents. I brought my skateboard with me. It was at the end of the phone call where I tried to ollie again. I wasn't thinking about the movements, I just kind of did it. Although I only popped the board up about one centimeter, and most of the movement was just a quick wheelie on the back wheel, I still felt amazing. The key to doing the ollie was not breaking it down into technical steps, it was taking on the skater mindset and not thinking about it. I now knew the purest meaning of the phrase “just go with the flow” and probably also the term “gnarly”. As I went inside to procrastinate again, I read about people taking months to years to learn how to ollie. I was happy that I might be getting it.

The online skate community is very welcoming, and if you mention that you are learning to skate they will first comment on how they learned the trick, and then on how to help you[7]. This nostalgic atmosphere is prevalent in everything from your first ollie to your first kickflip (where the board flips under you). Apparently the kick-flip is the hardest to learn because you need to diagonally ollie while kicking your board up to flip it.

I still had one concern; did I need a helmet? It has been a constant fear since the beginning, and even though I own a helmet, my bike helmet is too uncool[8] to wear skateboarding. This fear has only been worsened as the old guy across the street yelled at me for not wearing a helmet. My fear is that my skateboard will slide out from under me, making me fall on the back of my head. This will only become more likely as I start to skate at a skate park with jumps and bowls. But for now, as my board slides precariously under me after I fail a trick, I like to think that my balance is enough to compensate for lack of head protection.

Regardless of head protection, skateboarding isn't really a sport that deals with the mind[9].The problem with writing about skateboarding is a phenomenon I call “sports thinking” - the ability to do better when you think about the play before doing it, but not during. It's in the middle ground among instinct, muscle memory, and logic. It's the reason that nerds in movies always fail to be good at sports even though they can think about the sports mathematically. The sports thinking phenomenon is counterintuitive because as your tricks get more technical, the more you think about them, the less you do them well. Skateboarders have to know about how to do the tricks, but then they have to supplement their brain with muscle memory from practicing the trick. The good thing is that once you can sports think your way into completing a trick you can do it the next time. ‘Sports thinking’ hinders writing because the writing and thinking cross. If you don't think in the moment then you can’t write about it, it's as simple as that.

That is why this essay is not about learning to skateboard, but about my short visit into the community of skateboarding. The 60’s toy that was predicted to end up much like many fads: Hula hoops, Moon Boots, Rip Sticks, Zumba - Dead in just a matter of time. But this simple sport persevered because of its community of dedicated fans, and because of the companies. The fans created their own unique culture that people latched on to. So skateboarding remains because it is cool, and companies such as Vans and DC have their brand image centered entirely on the sport. These companies fund events, skate parks, and pro riders to keep the sport cool, and in turn to keep the money flowing. Skaters themselves don't care that they are being used to sell products, they just do their thing. As long as they can skate they are happy.

As skating became better funded and pushed to new heights, different styles began to appear. The two main styles are vert skateboarding and street skateboarding. Vert is the more extreme air based style that started out with skaters skating empty swimming pools and ended in corporate events like the X-games. Vert is almost always done in a skate park because half pipes and bowls don't just appear naturally. Almost all household name skateboarders such as Tony Hawk are vert skaters. Skating a bowl is said to be a lot like riding a rollercoaster, only much harder. The other side of skateboarding, street skating is much less air intensive, but it can be said the tricks are equally hard. Street skaters comb their cities for spots to skate. They try to find areas with large staircases and raised blocks to grind[10] on. When someone tells them to go (as usually happens because grinding on things damages them) street skaters just find a new spot. The street skater community is much less merchandised because their tricks look less impressive. Despite their lack of sponsorship, the street skater community is the heart of the skateboarding community. They appeal to the masses because most towns don't have skate parks, yet they are also the most hated because they mess up curbs and such. Large cities have skate parks that combine the two - Some bowls, some jumps, and some rails.

It just so happens that Cambridge decided to finish a skate park at the exact time I am writing this. This skatepark, sponsored by the Lynch Foundation and Vans was a multimillion dollar project. It opened on the 14th, but because I had work on the 14th my friend Emilio and I decided to visit it on the night of the 13th. I had been bugging him to come with me for about a week, but neither of us skate so he resisted. When I finally got him to come, we loaded his car with a scooter and my skateboard. Once we got to the skatepark it was about 8:30 pm, a particularly dark night. The skatepark technically wasn't opened yet, but we tried our luck and hopped the two low fences that sported the Vans logo. Now, before then I had never been to a skatepark, or even seen many pictures of them. I walked along the perfectly flat smooth concrete of the skate park and onto its backside: The vert skater area. As far as I could tell, dropping into a bowl was like falling off a cliff. Its 90 degree angle gave me shivers, and so Emilio and I walked over narrow bowl dividers in order to avoid these traps[11]. I wanted to skate some type of hill, so I tried to go down a small ramp. I fell on my ass. It was about this point when we noticed the police car that just parked toward our end of the skate park. Emilio and I scrambled out of there in an adrenaline panic. We ducked into the curves of the jumps and frantically hopped back onto the path that we came from. Vans couldn't have sponsored me to run so fast. Looking back, that cop must have had quite the laugh.

I finally recognize the thrill of skating. Skating is about adventure, about friends, and about challenging yourself. Not being able to skate places only makes finding a new spot more exciting, the thrill that you not only get to try a new area, but also that you are probably there illegally. If your friends are there then you can share and bond over these experiences, like running from the cops or laughing about each other's inability to skate. The sport’s noncompetitive nature encourages challenge of the self, and that is why its community is so welcoming. People remember their benchmarks, and want to help you overcome them. Skating is about being at maximum hesh. ________________ [1] Or someone who is trying to stay in that teenage youthfulness by doing some or all of these things: Getting full body tattoos, smoking lots of weed, presumably living with their mom, and Skateboarding. It is a mystery how grown men who look like shaggy from Scooby Doo manage to afford skateboarding all day. [2] There is something about southern California that promotes ingenuity and hipster culture. Many of my high end bicycle parts are made in Santa Cruz, a haven for mountain bikes and skateboarders. I have a theory that the same people who snowboard and surf are the same who mountain bike and skateboard. Each is just a winter or summer version of each other [3] Skateboarding is the one weird sport where all ages respect each other. Young skaters help old skaters, and old skaters help young skaters. If you look on Youtube at skate crews, there will always be a huge variety of ages. It's delightfully welcoming. [4] And experience it fully I did, because while on the train back from the skate shop my board got quite the stares from the well-dressed Chinese couple across from me. I didn’t understand them, but I both hope and don't hope that they were talking about me. [5] To be truthful, I don't know what kept me skateboarding. It was like an itch I just had to scratch. I think it might have been the motivation that the skate shop guys gave me or my stubbornness to succeed. Either way it worked. [6] To be truthful, calling Silas my friend is not truthful. Silas is my brother, just not by blood. We have known each other since preschool, and our families are just about family. He even lived with me for about half a year while his mom was away. A call from Silas is always welcomed, and we both really enjoy talking to each other like brothers do. We have a unique relationship, that is at a point where we will always pay attention to each other, but oftentimes chose to not. Silas also had talked to me about learning to skateboard! [7] Although I haven’t been to a skatepark with other skaters yet, many online commenters will say that people help others out in person as well. This makes me feel great about the community. [8] Not only is my bicycle helmet uncool for skateboarding, it's uncool for bicycling. Its chunky baby head shaper frame and ice cream truck color scheme add to its stupidity. And no, it is impossible to wear ironically. [9] This is part of my theory why skateboarders smoke so much weed. Skateboarding is in this strange place between muscle memory and long term memory. The sport doesn't use your short term memory at all. Smoking weed doesn't hinder anything. [10] Grinding is sliding the skateboard’s front, middle, or center over something. Skateboarders wax the edges of railings and curbs in order to grind better. [11] There is two ways it could go if I tried the bowl. The first would be that I just fall face first straight off my skateboard and down 18.9 feet between my head and the bottom of the bowl. The second option would be if I somehow managed to make it down into the bowl. On my way up from the decent I would slip backwards of my skateboard and land on the back of my head. Both ways end with a concussion.

Photo Source: http://newbostonpost.com/2015/11/16/shredding-new-worlds-at-lynch-family-skatepark/