Hey there!
I have been way off the skateboarding loop since the mid/late aughts, but I recently rediscovered some of the passion it once wakened on me. That said, I'm nothing more than just a fool who got hooked on Tony Hawk Pro Skater and later enjoyed the following versions and other alternatives such as Skate.
I have always believed in videogames as learning tools, even more when it comes to sports, and also as great archives of snapshots of different points in the evolution of them. Obviously, it's not the same split, say, basketball teams into seasons than it is to split tennis players into eras, let alone skaters with this sport being a really blurry mix of what we call "sport/numbers game" and just pure artistry/style.
However, there is still room to build a roster full of characters that have defines the skateboarding landscape over the last 30 years, aka the Modern Era, aka the Post X-Games years, and that's pretty much what I'd love to do with this little project, and for what I would love to have y'all contributing names that you think really defined and were talked about/discussed/hyped yearly from the 90s to the 2020s, so we can craft a large and comprehensive list of skaters worth knowing about by everyone interested in learning more about the sport.
One simple way could be just using your memory. If you remember a name, that's probably because it meant something to the evolution of the sport or brought something to the equation in unique ways. Another way could be checking lists published in the past, for example nominees for the Skater of the Year (SOTY) Award handed out by Thrasher. On and on.
By comprehensive I don't mean to include the pal from your street corner, but the more skaters we can add with some worldwide recognition back when they were at their peak and also in terms of the legacy they built, the better.
Feel free to contribute what you want and can. You might an expert with vast knowledge of the last 30 years of skateboarding in full, or maybe you only know those super active and important from 2020 on. That's cool! I encourage you to add the names here anyway!
I will try to put together some sort of spreadsheet in order to build the timeline and split it into some eras, if we can up with something like that, or any other idea you have. I was also thinking about making some sort visual map of how the sport has evolved, with overlapping lines of the periods each skater was active, etc.
I think this could make for interesting conversation and a fun project overall. Feel free to join the discussion and contribute something!
TL;DR: Which skaters defined each year/era of the skateboarding landscape from 1995 through 2023? Drop the names!
Topic: [Project/Help] Building the Most Comprehensive Modern Era Skater Roster (Read 760 times)