1989
skateboarding
IS
Skateboarding is many things to many individuals.
Pure and simple, it's a healthy, radical art form. Skateboarding
is the positive release of undirected explosive youthful energy.
Skateboarding utilizes the ever-expanding environment of steel and concrete as
canvas. For pure spontaneous action, skateboarding is unequalled. It makes the
skater become one with his board, while the board in turn translates the language
of cement. Like all great pastimes, skateboarding is a succession of stimulating
experiences. It's sensations and impressions; a remembrance of early radical lines
thrown down in a private empty swimming pool; laughter, friendship and calm shared
by all after an intense session. Skateboarding is waking up at noon after raging
through the night, dancing and celebrating your latest move. It is waking up at
five a.m. to drive 300 miles, rockin' all the way, in search of a secret pipe, pool
or ditch rumored to be located "in the middle of nowhere," only to find it bulldozed
by big time yuppie developers making way for new wave unskateable mall architec-
ture. Or better yet, the "wingnut" paranoid owner of a perfect ten-foot keyhole
pool, who won't let you skate because he's sure someone will "break an arm and
sue." When you're mellow, skateboarding is the joy of soulfully carving surf-like
moves down a gently sloped street. Toward the bottom of the hill you drop into
a long section of banked driveways and hit air off their lips. When you're gnarly,
skateboarding is done in a twenty-five foot cement pipe, where every move must
be carefully calculated because one mistake can be fatal. This is the ultimate test
medium for man's ability to pit flesh and bones against the laws of gravity and thick
cement. Skateboarding is hitting eleven o'clock on the ceiling of that pipe. This
weightless second of exhileration and release represents days, months...years of
experiences. Skateboarding is being scared and doing it anyway. It's doing a grind
too fast so that it pops over the lip into a lipslide. It's hanging on and making it.
It's hanging on and slamming. When you're a sponsored am, skateboarding
by David Hackett
Dave Hackett in rolling communion with the soul
of his life's desires.