My friend Chris Battle wrote this article on his blog back in 2018 and has added some comments and post-scripts.
The Lunatic Fringe: An Open Letter to Anyone Who Sucks at Skateboarding
When you’ve been skating for decades and seeing the shifts in the culture of skateboarding, and of culture in general, and especially if you’ve never been a sponsored skater, pro, or big shot, watching skateboarding on the Olympics is a weird experience.
I’ve always had conflicting feelings about the notion of skateboarding going mainstream. On one hand I have always wanted pro skaters to be compensated for the life energy they put into skating. I’ve also never trusted “big money” to do right by skateboarding – the skateboarding I know at least. But skateboarding is a lot of different things. It’s not the same thing to me that it is to the next person. I accept that.
Yet still the intrusion of big money, jockism, and investment bank dirtbags into this thing I love irks me.
Anyway, I can’t say it any better than Chris, so read that blog post linked to above.
I’ll leave you with this video of my fat old ass working on a line.
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