To the new generation: a guide to preserving skate culture

The impact of what this means for skateboarding has been debated by die-hard skaters since the first consideration of this decision in 2015. Some were looking forward to the increased participation and reduced condemnation from police and business owners. On the other hand, most feared what would inevitably become the exploitation of skaters for mainstream consumption. This is exactly what we’ve begun to see more of in recent years, most notably in the realm of women’s skateboarding.

Whether the benefits of having skateboarding in the Olympics outweigh the cost of control over the direction of skate culture is a discussion that’s far from over. However, as the skateboarding community is more organized than ever, it’s worth adding to the discussion what exactly we can do to keep the image of skate culture in the hands of the skaters. This is especially vital for women, non-binary, and queer skaters who are finding space in the community for the first time. It is important for skaters of all skill levels to understand our short history and the role we each play in keeping the roots of skateboarding alive.

In this article, we’re going to dive into what sets skateboarding apart from other mainstream sports, what is exploitation in skateboarding, and what we can do to continue preserving the delicate and organic system that defines the resilience of skate culture.

What is Skate Culture and Why Does it Matter?

For those who are new to the scene, it’s crucial to understand the roots of skateboarding and why these old heads take ‘skate culture’ so seriously.

Since the beginning, skateboarding was seen as counterculture. The only thing that truly defined who could be a skateboarder was the fact that none of us fit in anywhere else.

Unlike other sports where teams are organized, practices are scheduled, and funding is allocated, skateboarding is complete and total anarchy. Practice is on your own terms, every skater competes against themselves, and for much of our history (and still revered today), if you wanted to skate an obstacle, you had to find or build it yourself. While other sports grew from supportive communities and family encouragement, skateboarding grew from being chased, tackled, and tripped by adults and authority figures. I personally grew up in a town where city officials would rather let an abandoned tennis court decay in isolation than allow a few kids to keep the ramps they made in a safe, shared space.

For a long time, the treatment of skaters in small towns and communities was less than supportive. It was straight-up hostile. This hostility led to an entire generation of skaters defined by personality traits that were pre-determined by the conditions of their treatment. They were labeled as rebellious, disrespectful, and of course, criminals. Their reputation preceded them no matter where they found a place to skate. As a result, much of skateboarding culture and the strong ties among the skateboarding community in the following years were born out of these obstructive experiences.

The Role of Local Skate Shops

Despite complete rejection, skateboarding survived and started making a comeback in the early 2000s. Skate shops would pop up, owned by groups of local skaters for the simple purpose of getting gear to their community. These shops often became a safe space for skaters who came from dysfunctional families. It wasn’t just a business, but an extension of the skatepark. Skaters could hang out, watch skate videos, learn, and be mentored by older skaters. The relationship between local shops and skaters was more familial than consumer-based.

The more these local shops were supported, the more they could build and donate ramps to the local spot. They made connections with the larger skate brands and had sway in helping skaters in their community get sponsorships. In my hometown, our local shop was responsible for organizing Go Skate Day events every year, which often consisted of renting a bus to take kids to the closest real skatepark over 45 minutes away. Many local shops still go out of their way to pass down gear and donate recycled setups to kids who can’t afford them.

The survival of skateboarding through the early 2000s was dependent on the fact that local skate shops provided resources and were directly responsible for increasing participation rates. There were no regulations or higher institutions providing grants for the sport to grow. Everything from the clothes skaters wore to the ramps they skated were DIY, designed, distributed, and controlled by skateboarders themselves. Although, as skateboarding culture flourished on its own terms, exploitation started to slowly creep its way in.

What Does Exploitation in Skateboarding Look Like?

Exploitation in skateboarding is nowhere near new. Throughout the history of skateboarding, skaters have been fighting to balance creative control vs. economic needs. This has always made skateboarding an easy target to be used by larger institutions. At first it was subtle. Skateboarders were so desperate for any type of resources and financial support that we didn’t even really notice how it began or how it would affect our sport in the long run.

I started skating in 2007, 3 years after Go skateboarding day had been officially established, 2 years after Zumiez had become a publicly-traded company and Nike was still considered the ‘poser’ brand of skateboarding. The scene was exciting and I had no idea what was going on. I was just a girl who had fallen in love with skateboarding. While California was already known for its concrete parks open year-round, the East Coast had its own set of problems as weather conditions called for more expensive upkeep. The positive impact skateboarding had on mental health had not yet been explored, so those in power just didn’t see the value in it.

Slowly, some towns and cities started to allocate some funding to build skateparks in response to citizens who petitioned and attended town meetings with large groups of supporters. (I even tried this once to no avail). They hesitantly agreed, but not without cutting a few corners. The issue arose that these towns would commission playground makers (with no experience in the mechanics of skateboarding) to lay plastic and metal ramps over an old, abandoned parking lot. They didn’t bother to repave the gravel-covered grounds and these parks were obscure in size and shape, often tightly crammed and fenced in.

The worst part is that a majority of the town-owned parks charged money to enter and if there was no one to take the money, the park would be locked up for no one to use. Eventually, the inconsistency and inaccessibility would leave these parks desolate, and after years of paying for a park that received no upkeep, skaters were left with nothing to show for their investment. The towns had no intention of reinvesting that money, nor did they care for the needs of the skaters. This lack of control over park design paved the way for participation rates to take a blow.

The Battle of the Local Shop vs. Mall Shops

The debate about the costs and benefits of letting the Olympics profit off skateboarding didn’t actually start with the Olympics. It started with the fashion industry. Most notable in this monster takeover of skate culture is Zumiez.

Zumiez actually began as a clothing store in 1978, created by two men who managed a J.C. Penny and did not skate. They didn’t start selling skateboards until the late 80’s when they saw a profitable potential in extreme sports. They had begun their venture to the East Coast by 2000. This exploitation went under the radar for a long time because management had enough sense to let store employees (often skaters) design the space. It became a replica of our home-like skate shops and the most accessible way for beginners to get skate equipment. They even started the annual Zumiez Couch Tour which gave people the opportunity to compete and watch their favorite pros skate live demos in pop-up parks.

It quickly became the same debate we’re seeing today. On one hand, their large financial backing made skate equipment more affordable and accessible than ever. On the other hand, none of that money was being reinvested back into resources for recreational skateboarders. At the end of the skate competitions, they would take all their ramps with them before they left. Every dollar spent on food, vendors, and even competition entry fees went straight into the pockets of 2 men who had no connection to the skateboarding community. While they participate in some general charitable donations, in the 43 years Zumiez has been in operation, they have still yet to sponsor a single skateboarder. Just this past June, Zumiez announced a record increase in sales by 102.6%. They’ve profited an additional $200 million between May 2020 and May 2021.

For companies like this, who are profiting tremendously off of the growth of skateboarding, I would love to see more investment in building permanent parks across the country or providing grants to shops and organizations that already do this.

Instead, these types of corporate skate shops were directly responsible for putting skater-owned shops out of business for the better half of the early 2000s. The same shops that supplied skater-owned brands, built ramps to donate to parks, recycled decks to give away to kids and provided ample gear for skater-run events. The shops our community once relied on couldn’t compete with the ample choice of low-cost clothing and centralized location of chain retail stores.

This was the first major sign of exploitation which opened the door for the fashion industry to step in and take hold of skate culture. Local skate shops and recreational skaters have been at war with these monster brands ever since.

Now, it’s not only Zumiez types of stores that have access to our buying power, but more than ever new skaters are turning to online stores like Amazon and Walmart to acquire their first boards. If mall shops were a black hole for skateboarding funds, then these monster online retailers are a complete and utter abyss. It has only been through grassroots marketing and community support that many local skate shops have been able to keep their doors open today.

The New Exploitation

Now we are at the foothold of a new era of exploitation on the rise. This time, it is directly impacting women in skateboarding. Since the 2021 Skateboarder Representation Survey, we found that women and non-binary skaters make up just under 60% of the skateboarding population. This number is expected to continue to rise in the coming years. However, there is a sharp drop off in women’s participation going back only 5 years.

This means that, for the most part, women have missed the battles between counterculture crimes, dilapidated skateparks, and the survival of local skate shops. These spaces haven’t always been as welcoming or safe for us to build the same type of relationships. Now, as a result, there is a huge gap between the skate culture of the past and the culture of the future. Skateboarding, in its truest form, is still a completely unregulated sport with minimal foundations for organization. While this is exactly what draws so many of us to its accepting and welcoming community, it also leaves us vulnerable and open to repeating the same mistakes of our history.

Women in skateboarding have always been subject to the way fashion companies control how we are depicted in skateboarding. Often they bypass women skateboarders completely and simply hand a non-skateboarding model a board to hold.

Have you ever wondered why so many women have experienced being called a poser by our male counterparts? This is why. Skateboarders can tell just by how someone holds a board whether they actually skate. Since there is a lack of representation in mainstream skate media, women have been stereotyped by this exploitation of the fashion industry from the start.

The new version of this exploitation is going to come from the film and ad industries. Since the release of Skate Kitchen and Betty (both of which cast real skateboarders), there has been a huge surge in castings for women who skate. The problem with this is that you’re not being cast as a skateboarder to sell skateboarding, you’re being cast to sell a product for companies that have no ties with the skateboarding community. While the opportunities seem abundant on the surface, these opportunities don’t cast who they truly see in skateboarding, they cast who they want to see in modeling. Just recently, I was asked to be part of a film about a skater girl. They needed a skater double because the main character “had no experience on a skateboard”. Not a stunt double, but a skater double. In other words, they needed someone to be able to push. Industries like this tend to pick out the stereotypical, edgy blond-haired California skater girl, not realizing how diverse and obscure our community truly is. They’re looking for pretty, not gnarly.

In tandem with the lack of representation by actual skate companies, this puts an additional expectation on women in skateboarding to be everything skateboarding wants of us AND everything Hollywood wants of us. These industries may pay you nice now, but your skating won’t be credited and when they’re done with our sport, the money leaves with them.

Don’t be fooled, skateboarding is a highly profitable and popular sport on its own. The potential for growth is immeasurable. The threats to that growth, specifically in women’s skateboarding, don’t only come from outside of the skate industry either. Women and gender non-conforming folks are subject to less funding within skateboarding than we realize. This may not be intentional, but it’s certainly swept under the rug and avoided by the larger traditional skate brands. It’s important to note that ‘skate industry’ doesn’t always translate to ‘skate community’.

Preserving Skate Culture for a New Generation

There are a few things we can do to not only preserve skate culture but to assure the space we’re making for ourselves has a lasting impact on the growth of our community.

What matters now are the brands we choose to support and the outlets we choose to support through. Though women and non-binary skaters make up over half of the recreational skate population, there are still only a handful of teams that include even one woman. Even fewer are receiving sponsorships from major core skate brands.

There are still only a small number of women and queer-owned brands, but these brands go out of their way to invest in opportunities for women in skateboarding. Brands like Meow have filled a team of women and contribute immensely to their ascension to going pro. There Skateboards not only provides ample decks and clothing to their esteemed team of BIPOC women, trans, and queer skaters, but they go above and beyond to give away free boards to their community more often than any OG brand I’ve ever seen. Equally as diverse and underrated is Glue Skateboards, recently started by pro skater, Leo Baker.

I would be foolish to sit here and expect every woman or queer person in skateboarding to only buy from women and queer-owned skate brands. Let’s be real, there are just not that many and just because a brand is woman or queer-owned doesn’t mean you’re going to like their boards. The most beneficial thing any skater can do to assure their money is going back into the skate community is to buy from their local skate shop. Sometimes they’re women-owned, a lot of the time they’re not, but the one thing I’ve learned from my experience with shopping at local skate shops is that there is never partiality.

Your local skate shop is less part of the industry and more part of the community. They actually care about the safety and progression of the people who spend time at their shop. I’ve sent girls to their local and told them to ask for spare parts, and never, not once, has someone come back and told me they were denied.

Your local skate shop has connections with all the major skate brands in the industry. When they are asked to sponsor skater-run events, they often go above and beyond without question. I recently had the opportunity to host the first all-women and non-binary skate competition in NYC and out of all the companies I reached out to, the local shops were the most eager to support. One shop even reached out to me to contribute boards! The more we buy from our local skate shops, the more room they have for growth and the more they can supply to our community.

No matter your skill level or gender, your local skate shop will always see you as more than a customer. Sure, their websites may be wonky and it may seem less convenient than that Prime delivery, but when everything is going to shit and all you have is skateboarding, building a relationship with the people at your local skate shop will help you (and the skate community) push forward.

As the debate over whether skateboarding in the Olympics has helped or hurt our community fades into the new norm, all we can really do is focus on how to keep skate culture in the hands of skateboarders. For this, my recommendation is:
Keep being weird,
Keep making video parts with your friends,
and always, always, always,
buy from your local skate shop.

Article: Mariah Davenport
Illustrations: Sarah Huston