Six More Weeks of Winter

Skateboarding is one of my favourite things in the world.

While I was waiting to get my haircut yesterday, I flipped through a copy of Thrasher that was at the barbershop. How awesome is it that they had Thrasher there? One of the features in the magazine was about a tour that the Birdhouse team, my current favourite team in skateboarding, did of the Midwest. The cover photo for the story was a close-up shot of team member Mike Davis' bare feet, which looked god awful from being banged up skateboarding. On his left foot was a tattoo of the Thrasher pentagram logo. The other members of his team got Thrasher tattoos to score them points in the magazine's annual "King of the Road" road trip/scavenger hunt, but Davis refrained because he, rightly, thought that getting a tattoo on his foot would interfere with his skating in the contest. Then, a few weeks after the contest was over, he just got the tattoo on his own, just because he thinks Thrasher is sick.

This is a big reason why I love the Birdhouse team, but also why I love skateboarding so fucking deeply. Once corporations and companies moved into skateboarding following the post-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater boom, there's been a seemingly endless quest by some entities to distill what is "cool" about skateboarding and then sell it back to kids. The X-Games, Street League, West 49, PacSun, all of that shit. Thrasher, and the Birdhouse team who are certainly the magazine's darlings, remains committed to presenting skateboarding as what it is: a personal expression. This isn't about a pretty narrative or Monster Energy sponsorships. It is about doing the coolest things on a skateboard you can.

For me, that tattoo on feet that have been ruined by a life of skateboarding is proof of the inverse. Despite how hard some people may try to take skateboarding away from skateboarders, it will never happen. This is because the people trying to take it away and sell it in a mall don't skateboard and don't get it. And pal, if you try, I can smell the corporate stink of your DCs and Element deck a fuckin' mile away.

Skateboarding is perfect thing. It represents youth, freedom, and expression. Those are things that I create myself, through thinking and experiences. You cannot sell me those on a t-shirt. Skateboarding can never be taken away from me.