Nieratko, I--for the most part--think that you and I are on the same page about most things. Over my nearly thirty years of traveling and skating, I have had the honor and privilege to have relationships with a number of different shops (and families) throughout our country (and several here in the Detroit area). Shops are the thread that bind our fabric as a collective community--in my eyes, nearly indispensable in fact. "Scenes" radiate outward from them. I know you are concerned with the future of the world that most of us in here, have dedicated ourselves to. This is according to what I have heard you say and write over the past few years--a past few years that seem like a bit of a watershed in skating, because generational transitions have ushered in some of the most acutely deplorable and unapologetic "selling out" that our world has seen to date. Sheckler, and any and all of his decisions and actions is the nadir of the world of skateboarding's relationship to western consumer culture--the gap has been bridged, and we really have no right to say that we are any different than any other commodified, packaged, and salable consumer product.
Although Sheckler is not necessarily unique in his utter and total acquiescence to all of the media and consumer shit, he is indeed the "extreme" (the nadir) and the other end of the scale. He has lowered the bar to about a third of an inch off of the shit-smeared floor. And if nothing else, he is a glaring illumination of the fact, that many of us skaters approaching the thirty year mark--although we still to this day skate almost every day--have absolutely nothing in common with the newer generations, when it comes to social and cultural perspectives, and the ways in which we measure the value and relevance of skateboarding.
Nevertheless, and to get back to your comment about me "tripping," with my assertion that the women with the fat arms had every right to tell you who, what, when and where skateboarding was during that "spectacle"...well, indeed she did my friend...and lamentably so. She--that fatuous, ambitious, "go-getting," aspiring, banal, nameless, faceless, random, media flunky--not only had every right to say that our first second-generation pro could not, and would not skate, but indeed, stopped him from skating. End of story. You take their money...and...yes...well...and so it goes.
Topic: Skateboarding so Gay Right Now (Read 11707 times)