All My Friends Are Skaters.
The best photos are the ones with skateboards in them.
I dedicate this blog post to all the friends that heard me say “ Here, hold my skateboard and pretend you know how to skate!”
Let's get this straight, I have a skateboard and I use it. I have an intense love for skating. However, does my love for it carry the usual history a “religious skater” may carry? - with constant day to day practice at the parks, breaking through boards, ripping through shoes and conquering those stairs at that one strip mall? - not exactly. Let’s talk about it.
I began skating in middle school. Truly if I really think about it, besides drawing, I actually think skating was the first real hobby I picked up and attached to my identity. I hadn’t even really discovered photography yet. I recall some great times in my parents home outside wobbling around trying to figure this thing out. And yes, along came the great falls with scraped knees and elbows and bruised ass cheeks. It was great. Unfortunately, here is my only little, teensy regret in life. Around this time, girls on boards were not as normal as they are today. And yes, the me today would say who cares! However,...middle school me COULD NOT handle any type of attention, so of course I was NOT about to go out in these streets and skate around. Thus shutting away any opportunity to even get close to a skate park, meet other skaters and make skating any type of consistent habit. Plus, I was the youngest female in a hispanic household with immigrant parents. Even if I wanted to step out, the tower was too tall to climb down from.
And so it goes. I held on to my board tightly but it only got to see the perimeter of my home and SOMETIMES the local park two blocks away. I still remember how hard my heart would beat when I would venture this far. I had created an unjustified pressure upon myself to be great at every single thing I did. And because I didn't believe I was great at skating, it was so nerve wracking to do so in front of people out in public. Silly things in my head ya know, but very real and uncomfortable for me at the time. Fast forward to my early twenties and I came to a place in my life where I finally had someone to go skating with more often than ever before. But there was a problem. I was a photographer now and I’d say the passion I had for skating and drawing now had to be shared with another hobby. A hobby I was much more certain I wanted to make into a career. Something that for multi layered reasons, like therapeutic expression, needed to be prioritized. So here I was skating around a bit more, dare I say going to a few skate parks, not by myself (although I did go to one alone once and I have a scary story about it. But basically I was like never again!) but now, what did I have with me?,....a camera. And so when the session began I was naturally defaulting to the need to record what was happening right in front of me. Especially when my skating bud was a waaay better skater than I was. Out here actually doing tricks and ollie-ing over things.. I’m not going to say that watching this person - along with other skaters I was finally surrounding myself with - skate their little ass off was discouraging. It very much wasn't. But throughout this time, I was making an observation.
Here I was, a 22 year old, watching some dedication and fearlessness come from these people. I realized I exuded the same, but specific to photography. And we all know that if I wanted to dive deeper into skating, the way a Kim does, I needed to practice almost everyday, get over my fear of hurting myself, be committed to my tricks, and get over the uncomfortableness I still felt when people would watch me skate. And truthfully, at the end of the day, I didn't want to do these things, not when I had a deeper desire to document with my camera climbing the highest buildings, sneaking into private properties and playing dress up with different personas. So I made a choice. I left skating to mean, “cruising around” because in a schedule filled with 2 jobs, part-time school and trying to be a better photographer all while having a social life with no sleep( oh to be young), that's all I was willing to do with it.
At the tail end of 23 there was a turning point. I made grand decisions about how I was splitting my time and the habits that were not serving me. Further away I drifted from skating with people and back to doing it on my own I went. So now, after the mourning of a missed opportunity for proficiency in skating whilst in a faster healing body, how best did I decide to hold onto it and the culture for the rest of my life? By continuing to let it take me from place A to B. By continuing to let it be an outlet in the darkest of times as it never fails to bring forth a freedom and a high much like the way running can do. By continuing to be entertained by skate parts from my favorite skaters, skate photo books, skate films etc. And simply by always keeping my board in my car and making it a point to skate at most four or at least once a month at the beach, my favorite place to cruise around. I love skating. I love the people I’ve met through it. I love the love I've seen in the skating communities I've been lucky to cross paths with. I love all the sounds, the grinding, the pops, the slams. I love the wind against my face when I cruise for hours, and I can do it for hours. (in my dreams I will find a person that can hang and go as long and far as I can but for now, I ride solo and that's okay). And I've loved it enough to have always allowed it to inspire me in my art. And so after this 3 page essay of my brief and uneventful skating history, we have finally come to my dedication. A little ode to the love of skating.
After always having one foot in and one foot out of a commitment to skating, I cannot say I truly had a group of skating friends. Even during my most involved times when I recall the people I skated with, it was more different individuals every other week than a consistent gang per say. But I always longed for one and that longing was present in the worlds I created with my photos. This month's post is dedicated to all the times I brought my board out and made my model hold it “real quick”. All the times I brought my skateboard along to our adventures in hopes to convince someone to ride it while I held their hand (I'm so romantic) and snap a quick pic of the joy I so knew it would bring on. To the whole photoshoots dedicated to pretending we’re skaters, out doing skater things. Skating has never let me down. All my friends are not skaters. But maybe one day they will be. And maybe one day the people in front of the camera won't have to pretend and I’ll publish a whole photo book of my experience with this skating gang. I will do that one day. So if you and your friends have this goal to skate different spots in a different country or countries and you would love it if I tag along and snap some pics of the whole adventure, hit my line, documenting adventures is my specialty.
