Introduction

Barcelona is a beautiful city. Capital of Catalonia, Mediterranean port, Olympic host, multicultural meeting place, culinary haven, thriving metropolis, modernist wonderland. Perhaps you’re here because of the football team or Gaudi’s monuments? Or maybe you’re here for another reason. Maybe you’re here because this amazing city is also the world capital of skateboarding. With a perfect climate, lax authorities and a dynamic street culture, Barcelona is the place to be if you are a skater. And with the amount of skating that gets filmed here, where better to ask the question, is it still a street sport?

The Beginnings of Skateboarding - “Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. All it took were the minds of 12 year olds to realize it’’

The origins of skateboarding remain relatively ambiguous. By 1959, surfers and kids seem to have discovered skateboarding virtually simultaneously, and its origins coincide and interlock with its location in California surf culture. [9] While The Concrete Wave does not acknowledge surfers until the toy skateboard was commercially released; Thrasher contends that surfers found homemade skateboards in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before a toy board was produced. [9] What we know for sure is that skateboarding has been rolling in and out of popularity for almost five decades.

The late 50’s and early 60’s skateboard scene consisted solely of downhill slaloms and freestyle; ballet on a board. [14] In 1965 skateboarding crashed and passed out of almost all knowledge, dismissed as a trend similar to the hula-hoop. [14] However in 1972 with the invention of urethane wheels, new interest was sparked amongst surfers and kids. The new wheels allowed for greater control and harder turns, replacing the more dangerous clay wheels that had been used up to this point. [1,14] This is where we join the Z-Boys.

WHAT NEED HAVE I FOR THIS

WHAT NEED HAVE I FOR THAT

Santa Monica, 1970. While most surf culture sprang up around effluent places like Malibu, Santa Monica was run down and gritty. [1,15] Boarded up liquor stores and seedy dives, like an underground coke-snorting emporium known as the Mirror-Go- Round. The locals called it Dogtown. [15] The pier, a failed amusement park was in disrepair and disuse- if you don’t count the junkies and homeless. But it also served another function: 275 feet wide, extending hundreds of feet into the ocean, it created three separate breaks for the Dogtown locals to surf. [1, 15] The concrete pillars and crowded conditions made for dangerous surfing, creating an intense tradition of clannishness. [1, 15] Made to do ‘rat patrol’, The Z-Boys defended their territory with hostility, punches, stones and bottles - and for this they were allowed to surf. [1,15] It was here the principles would be learned that would later inform the Dogtown skate scene.

It was in this same year that the Z-Boys decided to go and check out Paul Revere High School. The flat playground gave way to sloping, 15-foot-high banks. "To a 12-year-old kid it was awesome," Alva said. "The asphalt had just been repaved, so the banks were really smooth and pristine--just these huge, glassy waves." [15]

Becoming Unrealistic and Removed? - “The mix of sunshine and rebellion is really intoxicating’’

Commercialization - “Skateboarding is for fun – that’s why people do it a lot. Not to be on the X Games or the Gravity Games but because they love to do it. If you want to make lots of money, go be a snowboarder, golfer or tennis player ’cause skateboarding is not the place for it.”

By 1959, surfers and suburban kids seem to have found skateboarding virtually simultaneously, and its suburban origins overlap and interlock with its location in California surf culture. While Michael Brooke’s The Concrete Wave makes no mention of surfers until after the development of a commercial toy skateboard, both Thrasher and James Davis contend that surfers discovered homemade skateboards in the late 1940s and early 1950s before a toy board was produced. The particular sequence of events is relatively inconsequential to contemporary narratives of skateboarding, for it is the overlap that allows for its multiple meanings. What matters, in other words, is that both surfers and commercial interests play a central role in the early days of the skateboard, and the tension and cooperation between “independent” youth culture and consumer culture traverses the remainder of skateboarding’s history.

Culture; Art and Music - “Freedom on four wheels’’