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in the
CROWD
Steve Olson, nose-picker.
HELP
Many magazines and newspapers have given
their versions of the current skate trends. A lot
of these articles end up being "fad is back" fluff
or "let's outlaw skateboarding" tirades. Occa-
sionally a story turns up that has some thought
behind it instead of a bunch of facts and figures.
The following piece is reprinted
from Frank Magazine, with a tip of
the board to its author, Mark
Mardon
of San
Fran-
cisco,
for taking
a more realistic
approach.
Against the yellow wall there
are no mysteries. There the tall
man sits, the tall young man with the
green sweater tied around his waist,
there he sits, his back against the
wall, his butt upon a skateboard,
upon a non-skid surface, his legs
drawn up, his arms folded around his
knees. He contemplates the world.
There are no mysteries. There is con-
crete, asphalt and metal. There is
some brick and wood. Every once in
awhile there's a tree. It is no mystery
why the tree is there: someone plann-
ed it, just like everything is
planned-and then falls apart. There
is nothing natural in the city, and
nothing elornal. That's why the tall
young man with the green
sweater sits upon his skate-
board. If there is nothing
natural, there is also no-
thing unnatural-all is
fixed, all is a facade.
Skateboarding is just
another facade in the
city, another way of life.
All-American punk
white boys on skateboards:
as standard in the city as
lax and cream cheese on a
bagel. You see them in the
skateboard shops with their parents,
when they're still squeaky clean and
innocent and too young to buy the
equipment on their own. They plaster
their boards up and down with car
toon decals, hideous monsters and
demonic faces of evil. They are
delighted by the clash of flourescent
greens, oranges, reds and the black
lips of hell creatures.
They wear the requisite
multi-colored hi-top tennies
and standard knee-length,
Hawaiian-patterned
shorts. They assemble
on street corners-con-
sciously cool post-
pubescent boys wanting to
be looked at, never admit-
ting it. One steps out of the
circle, gingerly tosses his
board to the ground, toes it,
makes it pop up, steps on it,
makes it squirm, dance. The
others watch impassively out
of the corners of their eyes; he
pays no attention to them, only to his
motions, to his performance. But the
dance is quickly over, even before
any climax to it can be made, and the
boy rejoins his buddies. He has not
the power to leave them. Not yet.
Over in the East Bay two punked-
out girls are preparing to invade the
City. They have their spikes and
black leather jackets, their ripped
black jeans and their bruise-colored
eyeliner-and their skateboards.
These are skateboards that have
dumped their riders and propelled
themselves to freedom by bucking
and running under cars. These are
mean skateboards, and the only
reason the punk girls have them is
because their punker boyfriends
stole them. These are scarred and
battered skateboards, solemn
skateboards, skateboards with a
ravaged, angry look. These are
skateboards with short, nasty, violent
lives, that will have their backs broken
my the end of the night.
The girls will thrash on the hills
with their rad boys and one of them
will end up bloody. It's cool. Her boy
will like her better after that. She
widens the rip in the knee of her
jeans and exposes the five-inch scab
That's just one: you should've seen
what she did to her head!
Out of the city there are the
highways, even unto the Midwest. On
these highways in ages past and
even unto the present there sailed
solitary figures in convertibles. They
were loners, drifters, free men. They
were, and ever are, American heroes.
No less, the solitary skateboarders
of the City. These few, a very few, feel
no tie to heaven and are ever defy-
ing the earth, but it holds them. It
holds them and twists them, but they
twist back and so an antagonism of
forces conspires to create a most
startling and unworldly ballet on the
streets. Nothing engages these men
so much as the act of breaking free.
They are a long, long way from their
gangs on the streetcorners, all of
whom vanished from the scene.
These men are on their own. You and
I cannot touch them.
A green sweater around his waist,
a blue, torn tanktop, some well-worn
black jeans, old running shoes-
shoulders, arms, breast and neck
bare, skin tanned, jaws wide, hair
long, curly, dirty blonde, turned-up
nose, cleft chin, high cheekbones,
hardened look, wary eyes, eyes that
have seen inside the walls of the city,
into the cubicles of human isolation,
a body that has felt the humiliating
blows of ignorance. Maybe he'll open
up for someone, a woman, maybe,
someone to pound his flesh and
heart hard.
This man on a skateboard lives an
aesthetics, a philosophy, a sport and
he doesn't give a damn if you know it.
But I do.
73