Yeah honestly I've been trying really hard to just shoot the shit, I feel like every time I've genuinely asked you a general question with no big weight to it it's been taken as a personal challenge or confrontation when in reality your character never once even entered the equation, for instance here I never brought up your own habits, why would I and what the fuck would I even know.
For skateshops I'm honestly still skeptical about the validity of the phrase (of course not of the concept) because although the potential is always there for hard-working passionate skaters to run something great for the local community (and thankfully many still do), there's also a shit ton of them who just ride the skate hype train to cash in on selling shoes with no humanity in the approach whatsoever and only spoil kids with logos in the end; in a way 'support your local skateshop' as a saying is almost an insult to the ones who don't need it to have their role speak for themselves. It shouldn't need to exist for people to actually do it (but I guess we're that stupid and it's all the more welcome in the context of the pandemic), in general I'd rather see people rely on logic and common sense instead of following catchphrases.
Regarding quality, to each their own, like I was saying States have always performed way better than Adidas and Vans to me, people will have varying experiences with different models and the comments on here constantly prove that, so I don't think comparing performance is that unreasonable; about contribution, that's totally up to whoever benefits from it to appreciate it, unless one has worked for (and not just with) the big names they have zero idea how much they actually pay people besides whatever's going on in their own fantasy land, recently a few in particular indirectly killed a bunch of small mags by using Covid as an excuse to get their yearly advertising budget back and then redirect it elsewhere in their marketing with no shits given about the impact on the culture (as expected here), I have many stories of people getting laid off for things like suddenly looking too old with no regard for their current life situation, freelancers are getting fucked over the same as you've heard they used to be by the most prehistoric skater-owned companies. So yeah they may be funding skateparks in the richest cities in the world, paying a handful of athletes on the planet the skate equivalent of soccer money and releasing an impressive amount of uninteresting ads a year but as far as I'm concerned I don't really see any positives around me, especially as they keep killing the alternatives. I think a lot of the problem resides in how those structures are by definition too big and complex to successfully get to communicate with the average skateboarder, regardless of the professionalism of their PR's (which only means so much when they can sell in malls instead, and yes I'm aware State also has to sell in Zumiez in consequence and it pisses me off).
No offense intended either, again, I'm just laying random food for thought on the table and your person has nothing to do with this (I was intrigued by your logic at first, but you've clarified enough).