Skateboarding as a Career

This chapter shows the feasibility of having a skateboarding career, as well as the support careers, like filming and editing, that arise to showcase skateboarding. In this chapter I show how the skateboarding industry creates subcultural enclaves in cities like LA that act as beacons to a global community of skateboarders. This chapter introduces the model of subcultural profitability that can be generalized to understand the ways in which not only skaters, but numerous other subculturalist use digital media to forge careers. This chapter expands on the idea of the subculture career and addresses the criticism that skaters who make a career of their passionate play are co-opted by capitalist consumption. Here I use the ideas of Angela McRobbie to further the critique of the Birmingham School, while also suggesting that subculture careers may put youth at high risk in this new creative economy.

Skateboard Activism

This chapter shows skaters’ efforts at lobbying local politicians to decriminalize a cherished landmark. The Courthouse in West LA had long been a skating mecca, but in the early 2000s was shut down. Skaters were given heavy fines and often chased out by police. As a result the spot became a site for indigents. Nike began an effort to “remodel” the Courthouse to use for one of their events, but the local skaters became incensed when they learned that the company and the city were intending to make skateboarding legal for only one day. Thus began a concerted effort to make a deal with the city to allow skaters to skate legally at the Courthouse. This chapter describes the efforts undertaken by Aaron Snyder and Alec Beck to lobby the West LA Neighborhood Council. This involved a concentrated social media campaign as well as attending community board meetings. In the span of just four weeks, the skaters realized their efforts. This chapter also describes skaters’ experiences skating the Courthouse legally, and being stewards of this cherished public space.

Skateboarding and the City

This chapter offers a brief history of the subculture and introduces readers to skateboarding practices. There is a detailed description of tricks and a discussion of how skateboarding forces a reexamination of classic urban sociology by focusing on the specific history of the growth of Los Angeles. In doing so we come to appreciate not only how skateboarding changes one’s perception of urban space, but also how skaters’ cognitive maps of the city offer a critique of classic Chicago School sociology.

Prologue

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY, 21, 2010 It is a sunny Sunday in Los Angeles and Matt Gottwig, a skater who one day hopes to become a pro, is attempting to perform a trick on a ledge on Hollywood Boulevard. Matt fails to land his “back tailslide” on the first attempt, but on his second try he nails it. A security guard approaches us, but we gather our things and quickly leave before he can say anything....

Coda

This chapter checks in with not only the people who have participated in this book but also the spaces. Nick Tucker, Sebo Walker, and Matt Gottwig are all successful skateboarders now, while famous places such as Hubba Hideout in San Francisco and Love Park in Philadelphia have been demolished. This chapter reflects on the experience of working with skaters and also thanks the participants.

Matt Gottwig

This book ends where it began, watching Matt Gottwig get a trick. On a random spring afternoon, the author runs into Matt Gottwig, a skateboarder whom he had not seen for five years. At this point Matt’s career is on the rise and he invites the author to witness him skate. After four unsuccessful days attempting a never-been-done trick, Matt successfully landed his trick and experienced all the associated joys. This is only one of two times that the author has witnessed a groundbreaking trick. This chapter highlights the joys of experiencing something beautiful and original in public space. In addition this chapter provides a reflexive account of the experience of completing this book and reflects on the serendipity of this meeting at this time. The chapter also evokes the awe and pleasure of having been on this journey.

The Production of Skateboarding Tricks

This chapter focuses on the media strategies used to develop and hone a subculture career in skateboarding. Skaters have developed an infrastructure of positions with the industry to document and disseminate skateboarding contests to a global audience. This affects the social production around skateboarding that allows for it to become a self-sustaining subculture.

Skate Spots

This chapter focuses on the places where skateboarding takes place. Skateboarding at the highest level requires spots to skate. Over the years the places where tricks get filmed have made not only skateboarders but also the spots famous. Spots evolve and develop their own history according to the feats performed; therefore to learn about famous skateboarding spots is to also learn about the history of street skateboarding. Good skate spots become stages for performing skateboarding tricks and inspire skaters to come up with new and more difficult tricks to perform, thus adding their names to the history and legend of a particular spot. Skate spots become invested with deep meaning for members of the subculture, depending upon the feats that have taken place and, as a result, are treated with great reverence.

Introduction

I got my first and only skateboard, a used Alva, in 1980, the summer between sixth and seventh grades. This was the summer when Peter Hoeffel introduced my middle brother Brian and me to the Sex Pistols, Devo, and the Clash. Peter was also a skater, and he made it clear that in order to be “punk” we had to build a skateboard ramp in our backyard, so we too could become skate punks. At the time there was no such thing as street skating and no skate parks in our hometown, Green Bay, Wisconsin, so building a ramp was our only option....

Landmark Achievements

This chapter shows the process whereby a particular skate spot becomes a subcultural landmark. This focus on skating in public space touches many of the debates in urban sociology about the use and abuse of space. This more theoretical chapter reviews some of the literature surrounding public space and argues that skateboarding creates its own landmarks by taking the banal and the everyday, like a set of stairs, and turning it into a place to perform, to talk about, and to cherish. In this way spots become part of the historical legacy of the culture.