Using so Little

Sean Wilsey

Clopp. Ssh . . . RRRaaaaooooowwwwwwrrr rrrrrrrrrrr – reeeeee eeeeeeeeeeppp – rrraaaaooooo wwwwwwrrrrrrrppppppp – tic! – rrraaaa ooooowwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrr – reeeeeeeeeeee eeeeppp – tic!-schrapp! –

BAM! COMBP! – RRrraaaoooowwwwwwrr rrrrrrrrrrrrr –

– TNK! – rrraaaaooooowwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Skateboarding’s inspiration springs from adversity: surfers without waves; pools without water (1970s skating owes much to the California drought); kids without family. It’s a particular product of American rootlessness. A 1952 photograph of kids on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, taking part in the Children’s Aid Society’s Anything on Wheels derby, shows a handful of rogues (all out in front) with steel rollerskate wheels bolted to planks – the first skateboarders. There are girls and boys, black and white, from the city’s poorest neighbourhood, and they outnumber the spectating parents in the photograph by 13 to one. The boy whose father takes him swimming, the girl whose mother takes her to the theatre, children whose parents ‘do things’ with them – these are not skateboarders. Skateboarding has always been a ‘sport’ for fuck-ups.

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[*] Century, 354 pp., £9.99, September 2002, 0 7126 1537 7.

Vol. 25 No. 12 · 19 June 2003 » Sean Wilsey » Using so Little (print version)
Pages 18-21 | 6370 words