Summary:
A personal essay about the outsider's life of skateboarding and why skateboarding is so great, along with recommended equipment.
Keywords: sports
Can you not live without something? Anything? Give it a thought. Music? T.V? Or perhaps a pair of legs? Well I'll tell you one thing, ever since my friend showed me a skateboard and we were just riding around the streets, I have fallen in love with it, and now that I have I just can't live without it. Some people say it's a sport, but just because it's a physical activity doesn't mean it's an actual sport. I quote the definition of Sport from Dictionary.com, "Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively". Obviously that's wrong if your talking about skateboarding, it can't be true. Because there are no rules and absolutely no competitiveness of any kind in this sport unless you would like to climb the ranks in skateboarding from Beginner to Amateur to Pro.
The incredibly down part of skating is how expensive it is. There are quite a lot of skateboarding companies, from clothing to shoes, to the parts of the board it's all wicked costly. Just to save some time I'll tell you what I'm riding. Let's start out with shoes. Right now I'm riding Americas, highly recommended but for a beginner I recommend Doubles, Lakes, or black panther, beginners seem to cling and get into those shoes along with comfort and flex with those types of shoes. Next up is the deck, I'm riding Alien Workshop at the moment - usually decks cost around 40 to 60 bucks. Now without grip tape on top of the deck you're totally screwed, I recommend Black Magic which runs about 7 dollars, or Black Top which is about 5, both very have very good grip. Next would be the risers and the trucks, you don't need risers but I highly recommend them because you get about 10 times more use out of it, risers are 2 bucks each. At the moment I'm riding thunder trucks, but all trucks cost about 20 bucks a truck, next comes the wheels and bearings. Four wheels cost about 26 to 32 bucks and bearings can range from 10 to 40 bucks. Do not buy the Bones bearings that cost 40 dollars, that's ridiculous, I recommend reds, or speed diamonds which are about 15 dollars. And what I almost forgot is the hardware that holds the deck and the trucks together; hardware is about 2 to 3 dollars, recommendation - Shorty's Silver men hardware, or Monkey Nuts, both very strong and light.
The first skateboard I ever had was a 30 dollar piece of poop. It was a Hands and the board was not strong at all, after about a few months the sand on the grip tape completely came right off and there was no grip whatsoever, the trucks were the wobbliest thing in the world, and the wheels were dumb- horrible urethane. The first real board I got was at the Milton Skate shop, Street Toys, which is now out of business. The board was a Zero deck, Black Magic Grip tape phantom 2 trucks, reds bearing, spitfire wheels, and plain generic hardware. Now I'm skating in Burlington a lot so now I get all my skate stuff at Talent Skate Park and Board shop - a wonderful place.
I first got into skating before I moved to Vermont, it was in Salem Massachusetts about 5 years ago, and I went over my friend Casey's house and I hadn't seen him in a while and he had two skateboards. At the time we didn't know anything about it, all we did was cruise around Salem and marble head all day and it was just so much fun. So when I got home the first thing I said to my mom was "I want a skateboard!." After we moved to Vermont for about I year I finally got one but it was fake and just horribly bad.
Now a day without skating is like I day without half of my life, its what sets me free, and helps me escape the horrible world that this world is its just so natural for me it is my natural high weather its doing tricks or just cruising around the town it all feels too good and it puts me in heaven. But sometimes freedom on a skateboard isn't free; you must pay horribly with cuts, bruises, and broken bones, but its well worth it.
Skating makes me think about the future and what's in store for me, it makes me think if I'm going to be doing this for a living or if I'm going to be working and doing something else. But if I do turn out doing skating for a living it's the fame and that I get paid for doing it, it's that ill be able to do what I love for a living. Today skating is just pure fun and its just a challenge so I push myself harder and harder each day, but its so hard since I live in the middle of nowhere and I cant push myself by flying down stairs or by hitting handrails, I get so stressed out when I don't skate and since there is nowhere to skate where I live I don't skate until I go to a place where I can actually enjoy skating.
In the big world of skating today there are so many skaters and competitions to raise the challenges of skateboards everywhere. Competitions are also for skaters from all around the world to get together and have a good skate among one another. All skaters have a respect for each other like no other, it's like the whole big skate community is just the biggest bunch of brothers that don't fight.
Even though the brotherly love is great I still like to see the haters. The haters are the people who totally despise skateboarding. They make me laugh and that's what makes me happy because I am totally different from them and that's what I love to be, I love to be different from everybody else and away from the drama of popular crowds and people who want to be popular, they all make me laugh.
I think outside of skateboarding; the people that don't skate, this is becoming the "cool" thing to them and now a days everywhere you look there is going to be a kid wearing skating clothing or skating shoes that doesn't skate, and I find it incredibly annoying, and offensive, since they are pretending to be what they're not. I would like to comment that skateboarding is not a fashion, and skating should be left in its own world just like in the old days like the 60's, 70's and 80's; those are the best skating days when skating was looked down upon, that's when everybody that skated and wanted to be different and wanted to be outside of the cool thing, I want to skate now to be different and to be myself away from others. To each his own.
This is the complete article, containing 1,174 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
