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You struggle in skateboarding like you struggle in anything important
in life, and I'm constantly told that skateboarding is for kids, not
something I should be spending my time doing. It's rarely validated by
anyone who doesn't do it.
I skate to Pulaski Park, because it's a great place to skate,
and I ride around, and fall, and bleed on the smooth marble because
it's something worth bleeding for. But then I find myself running away,
because a man is running after me, and it's only because I have in my
hands eight layers of plywood, with some wheels and assorted metal
pieces. A bicycle would be fine, or even those new roller skate things
that everyone's riding, but my stuntwood is off limits, seen as a
scourge to the city.
The easy explanation for them is that I'm damaging the property, and I
certainly am. But what's it worth to anyone in the scheme of things?
Some curbs are blackened, and rounded off, but the flipside of this
damage is that I'm able to put tremendous amounts of time and energy
into an art form that people are passionate enough about to risk a
criminal record.
How noble of a sport is skateboarding whose participants knowingly break the law in order to do it?
Is there any other sport you can think of that does is similar in this
aspect? Can't it be argued that the pleasure derived from skateboarding
far outweighs the financial cost of fixing marble curbs? Is the eyesore
really that bad that skateboarding needs to be banned outright in
cities throughout the world? Furthermore, could skateboarding just be
seen as interpreting the city in a different way than others? We are
creative, and as discussed in the last issue, skateboarders see the
world through a different filter than most people... ledges aren't just
to sit on, damnit.
The sad part of all of this is that the few times I've actually
attempted to employ this logic to people who don't want me riding my
skateboard, they've looked at me blankly, then repeated, "You can't
skate here." It is lost on them, and so my thought process described
above may make you feel better about justifying your actions, but the
chances of it changing the mind of anyone who seeks to prevent you from
riding your board are slim, and for those people, I have no answers.
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