Skateboarding: Art and Culture

Kristin Ebeling from Skate Like a Girl

Skateboarding is a living breathing modern art form.

It is a unique artistic endeavor that blends physicality, creativity, and determination, all while transforming urban architectural landscapes into a real-world canvas for self-expression, talent, and imagination. Similar to dancers or musicians, skating itself is an art form. Skaters create ephemeral works of art through movement, tricks, style, and creative use of the urban landscape.

Skateboarders reinterpret architectural space and urban design, forging new uses and functions for utilitarian objects and spaces. They turn streets and skate parks into their own temporary, often unapproved galleries, with peers and bystanders as their audience. This beautiful dance of skill and expression showcases how each person can creatively convey their vision on different spaces. Given skateboarding's fleeting nature, videography and photography are essential to document the movement.

Skaters relentlessly practice their tricks and movements, capturing them with videographers. In these videos, they blend technical tricks and daring maneuvers with fluidity, balance, and style, crafting visually captivating skate videos. Music selection and the overall atmosphere contribute to their artistic impact, establishing an emotional connection between skater and audience. Much like an album for a musician, these skate videos amalgamate various elements to create a cohesive visual experience. These videos are the backbone of skate culture, disseminating the latest skaters, spots, fashion, and tricks, amassing billions of views annually across digital media platforms.

Skateboarding's artistry extends to photography as well, where passionate skaters pick up cameras to capture skateboarders and their surroundings, reflecting the skater's personality, taste, and environment. These photographs grace online media, galleries, advertisements, and print, immortalizing moments and capturing tricks, skater style, and environment.

Yet skateboarding transcends being a mere activity; it constitutes a vibrant, living global culture with its own norms, values, traditions, and sub-genres. Skate culture champions individuality while fostering togetherness. While there is no coach, team, or uniform, skating thrives when done with friends, embracing one another's uniqueness, effort, and creativity both on and off the board.

Skating forges a sense of community, uniting skaters through shared passion and breaking down age, race, gender, and background barriers. It inherently includes all, regardless of background or identity, given the absence of leagues, guidelines, or team dynamics. This culture thrives on perseverance, as skaters push their limits, confronting falls and failures head-on to achieve personal moments of triumph, buoyed by the applause and cheers of friends. Its influence resonates through fashion, music, architecture, photography, videography, and art, establishing skateboarding not merely as an activity but as a contemporary lifestyle that perpetually inspires generations, leaving a tangible mark on the global community.

Skating's impact on popular culture is indisputable, with skateboarders often becoming influential figures in music, fashion (brands like Vans, Palace, Supreme), design, photography (such as Glen Friedman, Atiba Jefferson), videography (like Spike Jonze, Ty Evans, Jason Lee), and art (notable names include Ed Templeton, David Choe). Skateboard fashion has evolved into a global phenomenon, shaping trends and inspiring generations across the world (think baggy pants in the 90s or skinny jeans in the 2010s).

The creative, countercultural essence of skateboarding has inspired films, documentaries, and even mainstream advertisements. Major multinational corporations enlist skateboarders as spokespeople due to their vast reach, and even the Olympics have welcomed skateboarding into their games as a way to draw viewers into their aging platform.

Skateboarding culture shares similarities with martial arts, emphasizing discipline, etiquette, control, repetitive practice, and drilling to master each individual trick or movement. Skaters train tirelessly, honing their skills and pushing mental and physical limits to attain new levels of proficiency, akin to martial artists honing their craft.

Like martial arts, skateboarding necessitates a profound understanding of one's bodily capabilities, equipment, and environment to execute intricate maneuvers with style and precision. The self-discipline cultivated through repetitive skate practice and ongoing skill development extends to various aspects of a skater's life, imparting valuable life skills.

Skateboarding is profoundly physical, like martial arts, yet athleticism or a specific body type isn't a prerequisite for enjoyment or participation. Skateboarding, at its core, is constant physical activity and exercise—a pursuit that can be challenging to motivate many individuals to engage in, but skateboarders worldwide eagerly anticipate their next skate session.

Skateboarding nurtures a connected and diverse community, with data indicating its significant contribution to mental well-being. It serves as a positive outlet for stress relief and acts as a remarkable vehicle for personal growth, unlocking human potential. Skaters cultivate perseverance and determination, learning to embrace failure as a stepping stone to success. This vital life skill instills the tenacity to rise after a fall and persist even during life's challenges.

Skateboarding transcends conventional definitions of a mere sport or hobby, embodying the essence of art and culture. We urge the city of Tacoma to invest in and nurture skateboarding's art and culture by establishing small, medium, and large-scale skate spaces citywide. These skate spaces won't solely nurture Tacoma's skateboarding art and culture but will also inspire a new generation of artists, musicians, photographers, videographers, designers, architects, builders, and creators who find their home in the skateboarding community. Ultimately, creating skating spaces will foster a more vibrant and healthy community, promoting physical movement and inclusivity in ways that resonate with people's preferences.