The wishthound gave me a new skateboard a month or so ago, much to my wife’s disgust I might add.

Since then i’ve spent an enjoyable number of hours (in upstanding member of the community fashion not like a ne’er do well abusing council property or anything ) rolling around Barnstaple’s new-ish skatepark. I have discovered a few things:

Firstly I’d forgotten how much fun skating is, not having ridden anything other than a big long skateboard for 5 years. I can actually remember how to do some tricks though i’ve forgotten more. Each time I leave for home, I remember something else that I should have tried, a trick that used to languish in the bottom of the trick bag. all those years ago. There is still that same satisfaction from landing something (however simple now) and rolling away clean that never changes.

Secondly, I don’t bounce like I did 10 years ago. I have a fraction of the bottle I used to have – gone are the days of throwing myself down sets of stairs with abandon. The threat of broken limbs & their consequences loom ever larger and well, concrete is hard and it hurts, for a lot longer as well at my advanced age. In the wishthound’s words, the ability curve for surfing is gradual but with an overall upward trend for most of your life, with skating it peaks early and it’s pretty much all downhill from there, but if you’re having fun, who cares right?

Thirdly, like surfing, it never truly leaves. Skateboarding was a big part of my growing up, becoming a man, it shaped my future path in life in a way that I only recently understand. It changes how you look at the physical world we interact with on a daily basis and I don’t think you ever fully forget that or ever lose the desire to skate, it’s just your body that lets you down. Even though there are a couple of long periods when I haven’t rolled around, it’s always in there bubbling away under the surface.

Finally kids today have it easy! The park in the pictures is one of at least five small skate facilities (off the top of my head) within a 30-minute drive, in a relatively rural area, all well built and good to skate. Back in the early nineties, my friend’s mum fought for years for our midland council to build some ramps and when they did it was virtually unusable. Skateboarding is acceptable now in a way that it never was when I started (though there is still a punk ethos like there used to be once you dig beneath the shiny veneer of Tony Hawk & the x games)

Kids today learn tricks in their first year that were beyond the imagination of the pros of the eighties and it’s easy to learn them because the boards are light and you can see things to inspire you in magazines, dvd’s, on youtube and in your local town. Things never used to be like that (please excuse the monty python style “it were hard in my day” monologue but..)

Take learning to ollie for example, essential basic skating building block. That took us ages to learn, we had heard reference to it and seen stills of people in the air but never actually seen a video or much less anyone do it in real life. Our town had no older skaters to copy and it wasn’t until a friend of a friend managed to get a photocopy of a “how to” from an old mag that we managed to see how it was done, before that it might as well have been magic. In fact I can still remember the afternoon my friend and I first managed to properly leave the ground.

Steve Pezman has a great quote in Andrew Kidman’s ‘Glass Love’ where he talks about surfing as you get older being just as challenging and rewarding even though your actual ability level might be decreasing as your body ages. His point is that as even the simpler things become harder, the satisfaction in still achieving them increases and the sum total of joy (or stoke if you like) in that is the same as it ever was. I think he’s right and the same applies to skating, surfing, pretty much any physical activity

So here’s to my fellow old skaters with a peter pan complex! It’s a shame I have a princess-obsessed daughter, because a son might have given me the perfect, spouse-approved, excuse to keep going!

Incidentally I just saw the latest Flip Skateboards movie (Extremely Sorry) The level of skating is fully RIDICULOUS!  I always have a soft spot for Flip, being the phoenix from the ashes of Classic Brit brand Deathbox & sponsors of two of my favorite ever skaters Tom Penny & Geoff Rowley. Their new dvd is well worth a watch if you get the chance, just not with any young impressionable children in attendance!

]]> http://www.driftmagazine.co.uk/index.php/archives/4520/feed 4 http://www.driftmagazine.co.uk/index.php/archives/4196 http://www.driftmagazine.co.uk/index.php/archives/4196#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:41:43 +0000 Finisterre http://www.driftsurfing.eu/?p=4196 Finisterre has been busy forging links with the emerging Afghanistan Skatescene. Skateistan is Kabul’s first skateboarding school.

At its core is an honorable mission to offer young people with bleak futures and troubled pasts a cheap and alternative activity to engage positively with each other by cutting across ethnic and socio-economic rifts. Sophie Friedel, a professional mountain boarder and a friend of Finisterre who did work experience with the brand, has been grafting hard with the Skateistan team in Kabul to pass on her love of skate to the youth of the war torn country.

Sophie has been updating the Finisterre team on progress; “The Skate Park is going great – we finally managed to get control of the flow of students and the regular classes set ups. Sometimes lots of kids turn up and things are pretty crowded and other days, like after a terrible day we had last week on Monday, people were scared and stayed at home. But life goes on and things are quickly returning back to normal. Class is always well attended but we have a waiting list of 200 kids.”

The classes that are always taught by both a foreign and a local teacher are divided between equal time in class and outside instruction in the newly created skate park. Classes focus on teamwork, peace building, safety, learning new languages, and more. The band of committed instructors who have their motorcycles piled high with skateboards, helmets and kneepads are standing defiant by offering some hope and escape from years of fighting and poverty.

Via sketchy satellite phones and email, the Finisterre team has been leasing with Sophie to offer their support back in the U.K. Tom Podkalinski, Finisterre’s design director remarked; “After Sophie finished her work experience at Finisterre she decided, that she was going to push her love for skate and work with children. Before we knew it she had jumped on a plane and she’s now in Kabul, bringing kids education and teaching them some skills on a skateboard – she’s a great inspiration and we’re supporting her all the way. We wanted to show our support, so sent some of our merino base layers, and we’re working on plans for future support. It’s the least we could do.”

Find out more and donate here.