Boarders Are People Too
There is one subculture that has undergone a lot of "social evolution," as one might call it. The Skaters, those cool guys (and to some degree, girls) that glide across the ground with their four-wheeled boards, are one group that changed about as many times as my socks.
Back in the days of 8th grade, being a skater was the cool thing to do. This was the beginning of a trend that has become markedly more noticable. Skaters were once the outcasts, the misfits, the kids the cool guys hated. In my early adolesence, this was slowly changing. Certainly, there were skaters that were cool guys, who did it for fun, back in the old days. Even some of our parents were these people, careening around on their boards in the late 70's and 80's, marching to the beat of their own drum, as it would seem. But when "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" debuted for the PSOne and introduced a wider variety of people to the culture of the skateboard, it immediatley became fashinable... meaning any degenerate ass-whole with enough money to be trendy could go out and buy his own set of wheels. I admit to being one of those kids, not buying my board or donning my "Think" baseball caps to endorse an image, but rather to desperately try to fit in, to show that "I could do it too." We were supposed to be the "punks," like those original skaters 20 or 15 or even 10 years ago had been, but we weren't. There were those that really did mean it, and those kids had something most of us didn't. They had an identity, something we craved and scrounged for but could never quite reach on the shelves.
A little bit later, Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" topped the charts for a while, expanding the image to not only accept skaters, but glorify them as well. Beore this, girls in the mainstream had thought of the generic skater as just what the song describes... losers. Sure, skaters had the punk girls, the bad girls, after them, but I'm talking about the mini-skirted sunglass-totin' blonde bombshells that our culture so often defines as 'Babes.' All of a sudden, not only was it trendy to be a skater guy, but the girls dug you too. Because of this song, punk girls became the hip thing to imitate, and shops like Hot Topic prove that mainstream culture needed something new... trying to latch onto a strange combination of Led Zeppelin rock, death-metal insanity, fishnet hooker badness, and skater culture... all the seemingly disparate aspects of people going against the norm, combined into a large mass of people claiming to be individuals, to be revolutionaries... all doing exactly the same thing. This makes me wonder where the recent trendiness of the long-dead revolutionary Che Guevera is going in our culture.
But that's something else. I was talking about skaters.
The skaters of the now are a different type, especially the odd (but awesome) cross-section found here in Santa Barbara. Now, these are not the punks, these are not the outcasts, these are not even the trendy kids. Trendy kids realized they couldn't tell an ollie from a hamburger years ago. Now, it's these new ones, much more akin to surfers than of their former bretherin. These were the few skater kids in middle school that were nice to you, the couple that didn't have an attitude, the ones you felt you didn't deserve to be tlaking to... because they were nice and cool at the same time. Skaters nowadays, at least around here, seem to have made an interesting full-circle movement. Like the Original Skaters, those Z-Boys that started skateboarding back in '71 around their home Dogtown, these kids have a more laid-back attitude and a more warmly accepting demeanor. These guys (and girls, as well) have gone back to the roots of a surf culture: easy-going, non-judgemental, happy to know your face, doing their own thing. They don't judge, they don't make fun of you because you don't have Flameboy endorsed on your clothing, and they don't scream in your face about problems of social conformity or how 'HaRdCoRE' they are. These are the guys who skate because they like to do it, and on the whole, you will find that they are a nicer breed, a passive breed, people you can talk to about anything and not feel a pressure to worry about their perceptions of you.
If you don't beleive me, you should come down here. I'll introduce you.
Back in the days of 8th grade, being a skater was the cool thing to do. This was the beginning of a trend that has become markedly more noticable. Skaters were once the outcasts, the misfits, the kids the cool guys hated. In my early adolesence, this was slowly changing. Certainly, there were skaters that were cool guys, who did it for fun, back in the old days. Even some of our parents were these people, careening around on their boards in the late 70's and 80's, marching to the beat of their own drum, as it would seem. But when "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" debuted for the PSOne and introduced a wider variety of people to the culture of the skateboard, it immediatley became fashinable... meaning any degenerate ass-whole with enough money to be trendy could go out and buy his own set of wheels. I admit to being one of those kids, not buying my board or donning my "Think" baseball caps to endorse an image, but rather to desperately try to fit in, to show that "I could do it too." We were supposed to be the "punks," like those original skaters 20 or 15 or even 10 years ago had been, but we weren't. There were those that really did mean it, and those kids had something most of us didn't. They had an identity, something we craved and scrounged for but could never quite reach on the shelves.
A little bit later, Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" topped the charts for a while, expanding the image to not only accept skaters, but glorify them as well. Beore this, girls in the mainstream had thought of the generic skater as just what the song describes... losers. Sure, skaters had the punk girls, the bad girls, after them, but I'm talking about the mini-skirted sunglass-totin' blonde bombshells that our culture so often defines as 'Babes.' All of a sudden, not only was it trendy to be a skater guy, but the girls dug you too. Because of this song, punk girls became the hip thing to imitate, and shops like Hot Topic prove that mainstream culture needed something new... trying to latch onto a strange combination of Led Zeppelin rock, death-metal insanity, fishnet hooker badness, and skater culture... all the seemingly disparate aspects of people going against the norm, combined into a large mass of people claiming to be individuals, to be revolutionaries... all doing exactly the same thing. This makes me wonder where the recent trendiness of the long-dead revolutionary Che Guevera is going in our culture.
But that's something else. I was talking about skaters.
The skaters of the now are a different type, especially the odd (but awesome) cross-section found here in Santa Barbara. Now, these are not the punks, these are not the outcasts, these are not even the trendy kids. Trendy kids realized they couldn't tell an ollie from a hamburger years ago. Now, it's these new ones, much more akin to surfers than of their former bretherin. These were the few skater kids in middle school that were nice to you, the couple that didn't have an attitude, the ones you felt you didn't deserve to be tlaking to... because they were nice and cool at the same time. Skaters nowadays, at least around here, seem to have made an interesting full-circle movement. Like the Original Skaters, those Z-Boys that started skateboarding back in '71 around their home Dogtown, these kids have a more laid-back attitude and a more warmly accepting demeanor. These guys (and girls, as well) have gone back to the roots of a surf culture: easy-going, non-judgemental, happy to know your face, doing their own thing. They don't judge, they don't make fun of you because you don't have Flameboy endorsed on your clothing, and they don't scream in your face about problems of social conformity or how 'HaRdCoRE' they are. These are the guys who skate because they like to do it, and on the whole, you will find that they are a nicer breed, a passive breed, people you can talk to about anything and not feel a pressure to worry about their perceptions of you.
If you don't beleive me, you should come down here. I'll introduce you.