I Love Skateboarding by Shaw

Foreward:

Shaw is one of those friends that you meet and realize that you’ll probably never see one of again. We met back in high school running track & cross country and have been tight ever since. Shaw has proven himself to be an authority on everything gnarly; a word he used to use when we first met lol. I trust Shaw’s opinions on mostly everything, so when he approached me with something for LowPreaux, I knew it was already going to be quality. But don’t take my word for it, take it from him.

I love skateboarding…..everything about it, the really cool stuff like landing tricks you tried for weeks or maybe months, obstructing and trespassing on property, video parts, magazines, *very few of the video games (PS5 is on the way and there’s still nothing on SKATE 4, total b******t), and really just the general culture. But something I’ve noticed even going back to being a little skate rat in middle/high school is that skate culture is in literally EVERYWHERE. Yes, this is a Mr. Fantastic level of reach but hear me out, if you are somewhere in your early to late twenties or maybe even thirties what I’m about to get at makes total sense and if not oh-f******-well. 

My experience as a black kid liking what people around me would consider “white things” (i.e. rock bands, skateboarding, pronouncing most letters in a word, etc.) but still being very much involved with my mostly black friends in my mostly black neighborhood, going to mostly black schools gave me a really interesting perspective on cultural happenings. I remember when Pharrell was in his Skateboard P bag and Lupe dropped Kick, Push. At that point I had been skating for about maybe a year and other 11 year olds around me pretty much ignored that until those two things came out, all of a sudden, everybody wants to skate. I think Terry Kennedy was probably approaching the height of his popularity around time, everybody wanted Bape or Ice Cream (funny how that came back around to mainstream culture in like 2015 but real ones knew). G******N ROB AND BIG happened, RIP Big Black. In short, all of a sudden it was starting to be cool to skate for black kids, very cool time in life for sure.

Now that was just the beginning, we can fast forward a little to about 2010 – 2013, at this point SB’s were a cool thing to non-skaters or sneakerheads, you probably weren’t getting laughed at for wearing vans, and more rappers like The Cool Kids, Curren$y, Joey Bada$$, and others where very important points in the culture and while they may not have been great skaters or even skaters at all they represented parts of skate culture that weren’t readily in the forefront. In short they had the style kids like me had that grew to be the style that everyone adopted. Remember Jerking? They took skater style clothing and made it corny. What about when the really “cool” people in your school started rocking The Hundreds, Diamond Supply, or Supreme? All skate brands. It got to the point where if I went to Sole Brother (Rest in Peace) I’m seeing folks I would never expect in there trying to cop heat and I’m not mad at them, the s**t was hard!

I don’t think I can mention the lowkey rise of skating in black culture without bringing up….OFWGKTA. Literally, when Tyler the Creator dropped Goblin and niggas were yelling “Free Earl” in every tweet or Facebook post I was in my major “Pretentious Teenage Music Snob, don’t wear skate s**t unless you skate” bag. Holy s**t, quick side note look at Tyler, Frank, and Earl now, music icons in their own right Whatever, ask any of my friends including the guy who runs this site about how insufferable I was, in hindsight, it’s embarrassing. I digress, at this point skating, rapping, clothing, were starting to merge into one and really outside of the flagrant use of thrasher shirts and folks yelling at me to do a trick from their car, it was pretty tight. Honestly after that era I fell off skating, literally and figuratively, almost broke my ankle in the middle of track season so my coaches and parents collectively had a sit down with me told me to chill with the “Tony Hawk bs” because that’s the only skateboarder people over the age of 40 know and I did. Went on to go to college, play sports, get a job and become a jaded adult using opportunities like this to reflect on an era that came and went. But, to everybody reading this in that demographic I was talking about earlier, just think about where you were, what you were listening, what you were wearing, or watching around that time and look at how things grew from that. You’ll see. (Support local shops, f**k mall shops).

-Shaw.