People of color had long been part of the scene in small numbers - Williams recalls Black kids, whites and Latinos skating together in his hometown - but Hawk says urbanization supercharged this dynamic: “That’s where you saw more kids from different backgrounds.”īlack people and Latinos now account for nearly a third of an estimated 9 million skaters in the U.S., according to Sports Marketing Surveys, an international research agency. The 1990s brought a return to the streets with an emphasis on using curbs and stairs as props.

Downhill cruising morphed into trick riding inside empty pools and skate parks and big jumps off vert ramps. Surfers started the whole thing around the 1950s, looking for something to do when the ocean lay flat.

“It was such a great way to be social as an individual or a collective.”īy then, the sport had experienced a series of evolutions in its relatively brief history. “Young people were building communities,” he says. Cooperation was the best way to improve and this, he realized, fostered diversity.

If you showed up at a skate park or a street spot with a new trick, or merely an eagerness to learn, strangers tended to accept you. This might be the best way to understand the culture, through tales of people and places around Southern California, the birthplace of skateboarding. The recent Aunt Skatie meet-up puts this notion to a test as the crew ventures - a bit nervously - inside El Sereno Skate Park. Skating legend Tony Hawk calls it “safety in numbers.” “It just happens organically with people who come together to do this thing they love.” “No one owns skateboarding, it is not made up of institutions that formulate policies,” says Neftalie Williams, a USC scholar and visiting fellow at Yale. Now more women and the LGBTQ community are joining in. People of color have risen to the highest levels of competition and the vibe is distinctly urban, fueled by hip-hop music and street fashion. The Tokyo Olympics helped show the world that skating is not just for white kids in the suburbs. Their sport is not immune to cultural issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, but Bowen says “for women and queer people, it’s easier if you skate as a group.” And the increasing popularity of crews like hers has sociologists wondering if skaters might teach the rest of us something about inclusivity. How women and the LGBTQ skate community are revitalizing skateboarding culture

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