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You've been skating since 1986 and never once heard of SLAP the mag and website? Or just of its online message board that is now its last wall standing? Not questioning your street cred on the fucking Internet, really just curious. In general I'm kind of into knowing which bits of the culture people either were or weren't exposed to and whatnot.
You know, there are skateboarders that don't subscribe to ANY of the bullshit you guys think is important. It's fucking wooden plank with trucks and wheels that's fun to ride on.
No, honestly it's not hard to believe because some skaters choose to remain more or less foreign to the industry and media, and since a lot of it is mystified marketing most should stop buying into upon entering their 20's I can grasp why. Plus a lot of what one is culturally exposed to has a lot to do with their geographical location growing up. That's why I was specifying that my question was genuine and not loaded, again I like hearing about people's individual backgrounds and how they got to experience skateboarding, which clues they had about it growing up, etc.
Personally nowadays I'm not surprised when people don't know about SLAP at all, especially now that the mag is long gone and the web rules everything; but I do go by the logic that to this day, one who loves skateboarding not just as an activity but also as a social practice will spontaneously try to learn more about its history and culture, not necessarily falling into skate nerd category but at least expanding their horizons and see what others have been, or are currently doing. Skateboarding can be that weekly thing you do at the park on Sundays or it can be something you totally project over and let influence your interests and direction in life. If one is remotely curious about it the point where they've done some basic research about its history then in this case yes, I'd be surprised if they never ran into at least one SLAP mention somewhere though. The mag and its legacy, not the message boards.
I mean, SLAP was never even distributed in my country and still I knew about it. For a while (I'd say late 90's to mid 00's), internationally, the three most famous big mags in U.S. skating were Transworld, Thrasher and SLAP and I feel like most skaters would have told you that at the time if asked. Out of all three (with the exception of some great Transworld phases), SLAP had the most inspired writers and photographers of their time as contributors and - at least here - always notoriously carried the reputation of being what I could only describe as being the most poetic skate mag (fuck how corny that sounds).
So yeah, if you've been around since 1986 with no pause, really lived this shit and cared about the culture one bit whilst doing so (which I'm not questioning), depending on where you grew up and how much of a shit you gave, you may or may not be some kind of odd man out if you really never heard about the mag. The message boards are an entirely different matter, but SLAP the mag might have been more important than you think and you may have been insulated from its impact somehow. Which isn't of any importance whatsoever, but may be a funny anecdote.
Also from my experience, regarding the popularity of the message boards - it seems to be quite popular in English speaking countries even if most people won't admit knowing about the place, honestly, maybe besides a handful of exceptions who are more of the skate-in-circles-around-the-local-park type I don't think I've ever heard one U.S. skater never bring up the SLAP boards ever at any point. In most non-English speaking countries though, the average skater has never heard about it because they're too busy with Instagram and maybe their weekly check of one website in their language if they're bored. The nerdiest of the crop (small number) do seem to know and a lot of them occasionally come on here, though.
Topic: Nine Club experience says Slap is worst thing in skateboarding (Read 41900 times)