The New Yorker on skateboarding's history

[256 Ply]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/07/top-thirty-skateboarders-transworld.html

[Bobby Peru]

That was great.

[alcol]

thanks, that was a good article!

[ttching!]

Finally a publication outside of skateboarding assigned a non-retard to writing a skateboarding piece.

[ChronicBluntSlider]

Finally a publication outside of skateboarding assigned a non-retard to writing a skateboarding piece.

[artichoke]

I just read an article fanning out on Gonz in The New Yorker.  With a Busenitz shout out.  That was surreal, but awesome.

[Nosferatu]

This article in this setting at this time feels important for some reason. Someone tell pilot light at Boil the Ocean. Maybe that was him?

[Bloody Matt]

Dude likes Henry Sanchez.

[The Mess]

damn. good read and on point. props to the new yorker.

[GatorsGhost]

The person so many pros agree on is Mark Gonzales. This will come as little surprise to skaters, who are used to hearing his name pop up in such conversations. Gonzales, who is known affectionately as the Gonz, thought up avant-garde tricks and impresses skaters of all kinds with both his style and his uniquely free sensibility?as Matt Hensley, another great, puts it in his interview, ?There was no ?no? in it.? Gonz?s part in ?Video Days? is still often regarded as one of the best ever, not because it distilled years of the most intimidating, lengthily rehearsed feats but because it reflected an artistic and versatile approach to skateboarding, one with a memory, where the old mingled naturally with the future, and you still skated whatever you encountered on the way to the bus stop (as well as the stop itself). Where people saw un-rideable things?a long, zigzagging handrail, for instance, or two thin benches separated by a foot-long gap?Gonz saw ingenious new possibilities, and realized them without a further thought. His genius is both complex and simple: it entails doing tricks that are damnably hard?sometimes difficult merely to conceptualize?while making being on a board look like the greatest fun. Watching Gonz skate is to be reminded that the basic essence of the sport is a novel act of the imagination. It?s to be hit by a sensation with which most skaters can identify.

I've tried to explain to people (and I'm not old enough to have been there when it happened) why Gonz is my favorite.  This guy nails it much more eloquently than I ever could.

[ramplocal]

I just read an article fanning out on Gonz in The New Yorker.?  With a Busenitz shout out.?  That was surreal, but awesome.

very impressed w the article,awesome read

[kizzapalooza]

Another article by the same bloke

http://meanjin.com.au/editions/volume-68-number-4-2009/article/on-wheels-the-art-of-skateboarding/

[Beeda Weeda]

god read. It feels good to be an aging skater.

[Matze]

it's hard to disagree on something he wrote, which makes it awesome in the nerdy way.

[jums]

Cool. The Legacy article by Eli Gesner is better.