The crux of your issue is that Skateboarding as a whole is no longer an escape for kids like it once was, but instead we're going to see it split into factions. Skating is so large already that it has already happened. (Street vs Skatepark skaters)
I don't necessarily have an issue with parks and I don't think that this is the crux of my argument. I love my local park and it often operates as a meet up spot before we go out and skate a spot. Or, now that I'm one of the old dudes, it is a great place to roll around during the week.
The crux of my argument is the difference between youth dominated skateboarding and adult regulated skateboarding. While the park may operate in a "civilizing" fashion, it is still a space that the young often (socially) control, unlike, the training facility, which is regulated and dominated by adults. Think of Dunbat Park in Toronto, it is certainly one of the best places to roll around and it is dramatically different than Jagger's dad's Dust Devil skateboard/gymnastics training facility.
Without quotes from those sources you're just speculating [on Ream, Hendrix, Dyrdek, etc on their pursuit of profit].
For all we know, Dyrdek could be sitting back puzzled that he think's he is doing the entire industry a solid by way of increasing exposure to a wider audience and driving sales to Skateboarding companies.
Whether he's right or wrong, without explicit intention we shouldn't pretend to know what he/they are thinking.
You are right that I cannot read their minds. However, I can look at their previous actions, their associates, the personal rewards each of them is likely to receive from their sale of skateboarding, and I can examine their public statements (which are often mixed with their bullshit promotional statements) and to try and figure out their real motives or the consequences of their actions. Each one of these people obtains access to economic and social and institutional capital by selling our skateboarding to the Olympics and recreating skateboarding into a format that requires their control, instead of the diffuse model we have today.
Not to mention, I can look at the lack of small companies or anyone from DLX or High Speed Productions and think that this may be Ream, Hendrix, and Dyrdek's best attack on the "skate and destroy" form of skateboarding.
I can look at the stupid ass promotional videos they create in order to sell skateboarding to the Olympics
. And I know they have been trying to get skateboarding into the Olympics for at least a decade, despite their bullshit about it being "inevitable." In 2008, Wade Martin (an exec at NBC and the Dew Tour) stated, "There's a group that's put together the International Skateboarding Federation that's been organizing and putting the pieces together that will give them the platform to hopefully get into the Olympics at some point."
How Dydrek, Berra, Brian Atlas, Ream, and Hendrix rationalization their murder of skateboarding for their own personal gain is really not all that interesting to me. Hendrix recently did some silly interview where he explained that the Olympics would help places like Finland when it comes to skateboarding. Hendrix was so busy sucking his own dick that he failed to see Finland already has some amazing concrete parks, the nation's official tourism webpage promotes street skateboarding, Finland already has an amazing board culture, and Helsinki airport allowed Saari and a few other skaters to skate anywhere in the airport. Not to mention, his fake ambivalence about Olympic skateboarding, he skated in the 1996 Olympics and he directly benefits from its inclusion. His "oh I don't know if it is good or bad" strikes me as bullshit. Moreover, Hendrix tried to guilt the suburban kids about being selfish and how this would open up opportunities to poor kids, despite the fact the Olympics regularly harms the economy of the host nation, pushes the poor out of their homes, and even relies on trafficked labor who work basically like slaves (no pay and their passports have been taken away from them so they can't return home).
Who cares [if ESPN/NBC play up the Jaggers, etc.]? When did NBC or ESPN ever give a shit about the Cardiels or the Fred Galls?
They weren't drowned out by the Nyjah's, they were elevated to a higher level of respect for sticking true to their cause and being found by those seeking a level of authenticity beyond what they were initially exposed to.
This ignores my points about the megaphone, institutional power, and now that I think about the "law and order" paradigm that bureaucratized adult run skateboarding can now be placed into. With a major cultural trophy being at the end of the road (gold medals), government support for bureaucratized skateboarding, major media support, etc. it
may change the economics of skateboarding. This isn't just money being thrown at skateboarding, but this is an amazing power play by the mainstream side of skateboarding to become dominant and more powerful than the youth run side of skateboarding.
Finally, despite any disagreements we may have about the possible affects that the Olympics, the Olympics money, government involvement in bureaucratized skateboarding, I'm glad to see that we all seem to agree that skateboarding should be run by the kids themselves, not old men. I don't expect and I don't want skateboarding to remain exactly the same as when I was 18, but I'd like to see it continue to be a place that allows kids to be kids and not be turned into docile bodies by the adult authorities.
Also, it'll be interesting to come back to this thread in 2024 and see what has happened in skateboarding and if the Olympics did create a significant change in the way it is set up. Will there be a woodward in every country and local pee wee street leagues?
Topic: Kid got a full scholarship for skateboarding from Sydney University (Read 4986 times)