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| All hail skateboarding. |
I have a confession; I've hardly been skateboarding at all lately.
Any free time I get nowadays I try to spend at the beach catching waves, rather than grinding at the local bowl. And the balance has inevitably been tipping that way for the last 10 years or so. But after reading a great post by foulweather recently I had an epiphany...
For me, skateboarding is the source. Discovering skateboarding was a defining point in my life. From that day on I slowly but steadily became a skateboarder.
Of-course, I understand that skateboarding originally evolved from surfing and not the other way around, but personally, it was the skateboard that set me free, that enabled flight, that taught me lessons, that challenged me to push myself and rewarded my efforts.
Sure, growing up in Kernow I knew about surfing and had even dabbled a bit, but it was the skateboard that truly and wholly captured my imagination. And it was skateboarding that provided me with a sense of identity and a set of life-long friends. Funnily enough many of those same friends are now very good at surfing and we still share the stoke, albeit in the water these days.
Skateboarding informed many of my life choices too. When I decided to relocate to a city I chose one with a healthy skate scene. My career path veered into the skateboard industry for a while. The people I gravitated toward and even the bands I listened to were often influenced by skate culture. I wasn't intolerant of other influences and I've always been interested in other realms of music, art & culture. But my roots, if you like, are very firmly embedded in skateboarding.
So despite being a committed non-conformist with a reluctance to join anybody else's club or be stereotyped. I have to admit that there is one label I'd be happy to accept - the one that says "I'm a skater - (who also surfs)".
