The OG skate scholar | an interview with Becky Beal

While her day job is wrapped up with the slings and arrows of being a Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, she still has the time to answer unsolicited interview requests from complete strangers (i.e. me). In this interview, you’ll find out her views on Pushing Boarders, the value of studying skating, and what the American Association of Retired Persons and Tony Hawk have in common! So without further ado, Becky Beal.

What are the latest projects you’re working on at the moment?

Well actually right now there’s a textbook [holds up a copy of Sociology of North American Sport] that my advisor George Sage wrote. It’s like the 12th edition that’s coming up and a couple of years ago he asked me to join him. He died a year and a half ago. I think very highly of George and so I would do anything for him. Writing a textbook is not what I would consider the most fun thing in the world but I’m so grateful to George, he was my dissertation advisor and just a great human being.

I teach in California and a lot of my students are from Mexico or have family from Mexico, and when they have a book called ‘Sociology of North American Sport’, and Mexico is in North America but there’s no comment about Mexico … I decided we cannot — absolutely cannot — do this anymore. So yeah, I’ve got a few things I want to change. And I actually just finished a very short chapter, on political activism in skateboarding.

Woah, tell me more.

It’s a short chapter, and we [Becky, Matthew Atencio, ZaNean McClain, Missy Wright and editor Kristin Lawler] framed it around this typology about African American activism in sport. We used symbolic activism and grassroots activism. One of our students actually started a Black Lives Matter skateboarding event in San Francisco and it was a huge hit. There’s also a grassroots group out of Oakland California that does a lot around Black Lives Matter – centering Black and Brown Lives and using skateboarding as a sort of tool for that. So we wrote about that.

What drew you into studying skateboarding, especially in the 1990s? I don’t think there was a lot of scholarship around skateboarding in those days.

I’ve only found one other article that was published and it was on changes within technology in skateboarding. It was posted in 1989 in the journal of popular American culture about urethane wheels, technology and the changing skateboarding scene. Otherwise, I think, as far a sociological perspective, I’ve been told that my dissertation was the first… from a non-skater!

Historically I was a distance runner, and I was going to write about distance running and the subculture of distance running and he [George] asks “was there anything else you wanna write about?” And I go, “well, I’m kinda really curious about skateboarding too.” And he goes, “I think you should do skateboarding”. And so he actually really encouraged me to branch out. I really appreciate more democratic types of practices, so I saw skateboarding as both a democratic practice and an artistic movement – not that it is perfectly those things – but that’s what drew me to it much more so than say, like, high school basketball. Here are people creating their own value systems, their own meanings. That they get to express themselves in the ways they wish is important. That’s what drew me to it.

Was being a non-skater helpful in studying it in those days?

Well first of all, I think being an outsider helps a lot in many ways. I think insiders’ perspectives are super important, but being an outsider, you can ask the naive questions that an insider can’t ask. So I could ask “what is that?” and be sincere about it and then they’d have to explain it to me. But if I was a skater, they’d be like “why don’t you know that?”. And it’s interesting because I’m an openly queer person and so being a queer person, even back then, guys relate to me differently. They weren’t thinking I was trying to pick them up or flirt with them. So they’d talk to me like one of the guys and not their girlfriend, which I totally appreciate. It kinda took away a sexual dynamic or a flirtation dynamic that could’ve been there. But there wasn’t. I found it shockingly surprising how open people were with me.

Yeah?

I thought there’d be more defensiveness, but there wasn’t. Which was one reason why I think I got drawn to skateboarding because people would be in for the conversation. They would want to have a conversation. It was awesome.

So why even study skateboarding? What’s the point?

[Laughs] Well… I don’t know if there is one. I think for me, politically thinking through how people practice democracy is really important. Of course, it has its own politics, but the fact that it’s participant-driven – people make up the rules, make up the games, all that kind of stuff – I think that is one of the most important skillsets anybody can learn: how to create their own social spaces and to think about democratic places. And now skateboarding, and a lot of other lifestyle sports or alternative sports, or whatever people wanna call them, is central to what a lot of what people in pedagogy are doing about authentic learning. And so when it comes to this concept about how people learn — people do it on their own and they learn more authentically than if I tell them “you need to do this”. So now there’s a bunch of research on self-paced and self-directed learning and how skateboarding is a prime example of that.

Are there any topics you feel need more investigating?

Oh yeah, oh for sure. The research on racial relations in skateboarding is minimal. Really, the voices of people of color are not there. Neftalie Williams, who just got his degree from Waikato, wrote his dissertation on African American perspective voice within skateboarding but I think that’s probably the most underresearched perspective in skateboarding is ethnic/racial dynamics. Especially really centering people of color and their voices. And I don’t think there’s been a lot of research on queer folks in skateboarding either. There’s a tonne of research on gender/women, generally speaking. But I know very little research sits out there on queer folks.

Why do you think those areas are underresearched?

I think part of it is general racism. That people of color are not well represented in academia anyway. And it’s not just about race relations, it’s about really centering people of color’s voices. Like they’re telling the story instead someone telling a story for a person of color. Or a straight person telling the story for a queer person.

Yeah, exactly. What was your experience with Pushing Boarders like?

It was weird.

Yeah? You just get a call like ‘hey, do you want to participate?’.

Yeah, so Ian Borden and I are like the first people who talked about skateboarding from a sociological perspective. And Ian and I never met before, so it was fun to meet him. It was cool because they were just like “yeah, we’re thinking about doing this thing”. They paid my way there and so I was like “of course I’m gonna go”. But again, it was very interesting because being there and not being a skateboarder made a big difference. Because people socialize around skating, they could talk about skateboarding [in a way] that I don’t have the nuance or the depth, and real honesty, the passion for some of the stuff that they’re doing. So people were totally kind and cool… but… y’know, I’m not a late-night person, I’m an old mid-westerner. So I wasn’t in the social circles. But it would’ve been fun as a sociologist listening to some of those conversations.

Get out a notepad and be like ‘could you repeat that again?’

Yeah, exactly. But it was cool to see the European perspective and how much work is being done for the general diversity and equity issues. So yeah, I got to meet a few people I’d never met before so that was fun too.

What were your views on skateboarding being in the Olympics?

I am going to probably differ from a lot of different skateboarders — I think it’s fine. I just wrote this piece with Kristin Ebeling, about 2 years ago, about women in skateboarding and the Olympics. And why women are more supportive of skateboarding going into the Olympics than men. I think [that with] skateboarding and the Olympics, because it’s so mainstream, a lot of the guys are like “it’s not cool, it’s not hip, we’re skating for the ‘Man’ now”. And most women in the US, especially the ones maybe going to the Olympics, were like “yeah, now finally we can get a paycheck”.

Exactly! Where do you think Skateboarding is heading?

Well, I actually think, putting a sort of nutshell response to this, I think Pushing Boarders is what’s next.

Yeah?

Pushing Boarders is a coalition of people saying “hey, we gotta push the borders of skateboarding, we gotta open this up. We gotta broaden the appeal”. I have some critique of it, but generally speaking, they’re really working for, I guess in a nutshell, promoting social justice in and through skateboarding. So that, I think, is where a lot of people are dedicated to that. There’re a lot of people who are using the sport for peace and development. In the United States, there’s a group called the American Association of Retired People. It’s an advocacy group for people 55 and over. So recently Tony Hawk has been on the cover of that magazine and also promoting skateboarding for older women as a popular pastime. So I just think that skateboarding is gonna be a pretty traditional form of physical exercise for a lot of people. In the US it’s being promoted as a good thing for older people to do. And Tony Hawk was the cover of AARP magazine!

I don’t know beyond the future stuff; it’s not going to just be in the Olympics. People are worried it’s just going to be a traditional sport. No way. People are going to spin off it in so many different ways because it’s an open sport like that and physical activity.

Well, thank you! That’s all my questions I have Becky. And just on a personal level, I read all your papers at university and now I’m here talking to you! It’s just exciting for me [*cue nervous/excitable laughter].

Thank you, it’s fun. I always feel like I get to learn where people are coming from based on the types of questions they ask. You know I get a kick out of it, so I appreciate it.

Get yourself a copy of Moving Boarders: Skateboarding and the Changing Landscape of Urban Youth Sports by Matthew Atencio, Becky Beal, E. Missy Wright, and ZaNean McClain.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview: Sara Riordan
Illustration: @madatthepen