OK, I feel like it's worth pointing out that Biebel was always the kid who was the most hyped on African American culture and he always loved rap and seem to gravitate to it without any hesitation whatsoever. He has always been more than happy to bridge the gap between white and black and seemed to have a "colorless" worldview. With that being said, he has always come off as an airhead, which I'm sure he hates, but it's the case. Like in the Final Flare talking about "the new words he learned that day". He seemed easy to confuse. The guy chugged semi-legal energy drinks...he has always been our answer to the jock crowd.
There was a time in skating, yes in the early 2000s, when there was the tight-ripped-pants and tank top days, where we skaters quickly found an impasse when approached by jocks, thugs, and bullies alike. We had spent our childhood skating, watching skate vids, cracking jokes, yes making fun of people who were bogus, but when the time came, and someone was right in our faces, many of us quickly realized that we had some developments missing in our bags, that the football crowd we mocked clearly had. They had upper body strength. They punched people in the faces. While being fat was always a faux pas in skating, being strong was frowned upon too. Just the natural in-shape body was the right skate form. That made it hard too, right? When the body-builder soldier-type wanted to shut us down?
Well, Biebel was our answer to that. You could take him to any country in the world and he couldn't lose in arm wrestling. Maybe now, in 2021, it sounds lame. But, back in the day, when the haters are ready to prove to your they're better than you, shoving that shit back in their faces was glorious. I don't claim to have been on those trips, but I lived them vicariously through the skate videos like most of you. When the girl team won at life, so did we skaters. Whether it was Spike Jonez taking home Oscars, or guys like Gino and the Chocolate team keeping us in the game at the cutting edge of an ever-changing and ever-competitive world with their versatile cross over styles that could rock the spot, or the club, with the same amount of bang (perfect for our college years), and reminded us that there were skaters who had all the angles covered. The wind pushed the sails ahead and we remained in the rat race, representing for our niche, that most of experienced a certain type of hell to be a part of, but the juice from fruit was worth it, the fruit of the vine.
Now back to Biebs. He was always the kid who could hit a trick shot in basketball. That may sound dumb to a kid who is 14 now, and everything is so controlled and predictable, and everyone is so accepted now. But, again for us skaters, who forfeited our basketball practices and intense competition to practice our tricks in the summer nights under the street light, our skateboards the only sound beside the ambient night life keeping the world in rotation, having someone like Biebs who could step up and dunk was a much needed card in our deck. Sure, he was never an intellectual, but we had plenty of those. Hell, Rodney Mullen could have been Elon Musk if he had wanted, and Steve Rocco could have been Jeff Bezos, but were skaters and that's good enough.
So, allow me to bring this 360.
Was what Biebel did wrong? To be sure. Was it racially motivated? That assumption I do call into question. We know he loves African American culture, and is also a bit of a moron from time to time, so it seems likely it was just some horribly bad judgement that played out in the worst way possible, something happening so fast, and being kind of basic he just reaches for his phone and films it...and the outcome ensued.
Was he ever rude to kids at the park? Does he have a history of questionably appalling comments and behavior? Not to my knowledge.
It seems highly unlikely that he would go around looking for people to beat up, albeit I have never seen the video that lead into all of this, but judging from his life on video, he does not seem to be some horrible person at his core.
Topic: Fuck Biebel (Read 175212 times)