Skateboarding and the City
Skateboarding and the City

Author: Iain Borden

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1472583477

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Skateboarding is both a sport and a way of life. Creative, physical, graphic, urban and controversial, it is full of contradictions – a billion-dollar global industry which still retains its vibrant, counter-cultural heart. Skateboarding and the City presents the only complete history of the sport, exploring the story of skate culture from the surf-beaches of '60s California to the latest developments in street-skating today. Written by a life-long skater who also happens to be an architectural historian, and packed through with full-colour images – of skaters, boards, moves, graphics, and film-stills – this passionate, readable and rigorously-researched book explores the history of skateboarding and reveals a vivid understanding of how skateboarders, through their actions, experience the city and its architecture in a unique way.

Skateboarding and Religion
Skateboarding and Religion

Author: Paul O'Connor

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-10-02

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 3030248577

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This book explores the ways in which religion is observed, performed, and organised in skateboard culture. Drawing on scholarship from the sociology of religion and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports, this work combines ethnographic research with media analysis to argue that the rituals of skateboarding provide participants with a rich cultural canvas for emotional and spiritual engagement. Paul O’Connor contends that religious identification in skateboarding is set to increase as participants pursue ways to both control and engage meaningfully with an activity that has become an increasingly mainstream and institutionalised sport. Religion is explored through the themes of myth, celebrity, iconography, pilgrimage, evangelism, cults, and self-help.

Skateboarding LA
Skateboarding LA

Author: Gregory J. Snyder

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2017-12-05

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0814729207

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Inside the complex and misunderstood world of professional street skateboarding On a sunny Sunday in Los Angeles, a crew of skaters and videographers watch as one of them attempts to land a “heel flip” over a fire hydrant on a sidewalk in front of the Biltmore Hotel. A staff member of the hotel demands they leave and picks up his phone to call the police.Not only does the skater land the trick, but he does so quickly, and spares everyone the unwanted stress of having to deal with the cops. This is not an uncommon occurrence in skateboarding, which is illegal in most American cities and this interaction is just part of the process of being a professional street skater. This is just one of Gregory Snyder’s experiences from eight years inside the world of professional street skateboarding: a highly refined, athletic and aesthetic pursuit, from which a large number of people profit. Skateboarding LA details the history of skateboarding, describes basic and complex tricks, tours some of LA's most famous spots, and provides an enthusiastic appreciation of this dangerous and creative practice. Particularly concerned with public spaces, Snyder shows that skateboarding offers cities much more than petty vandalism and exaggerated claims of destruction. Rather, skateboarding draws highly talented young people from around the globe to skateboarding cities, building a diverse and wide-reaching community of skateboarders, filmmakers, photographers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Snyder also argues that as stewards of public plazas and parks, skateboarders deter homeless encampments and drug dealers. In one stunning case, skateboarders transformed the West LA Courthouse, with Nike’s assistance, into a skateable public space. Through interviews with current and former professional skateboarders, Snyder vividly expresses their passion, dedication and creativity. Especially in relation to the city's architectural features—ledges, banks, gaps, stairs and handrails—they are constantly re-imagining and repurposing these urban spaces in order to perform their ever-increasingly difficult tricks. For anyone interested in this dynamic and daunting activity, Skateboarding LA is an amazing ride.

'93 Til
'93 Til

Author:

Publisher: Goff Books

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781951541460

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"To be a skateboarder today is a much different experience than it was for much of the 1990s. The photographs, quotes, and anecdotal text in ''93 til' captures a time in skateboarding when making a livable income as a professional skater was a luxury and public understanding of skateboarding was at an all-time low. It was a time when skateboarding was searching for an identity, a time before Instagram and big corporate influences. Street skating was coming of age, testing its limitations and aligning itself with a new and innovate style of hip-hop culture that was emerging. Looking back, many skaters today feel as though the '90s were the golden years of skateboarding. ''93 til' is a captivating portal into a decade and a culture that is remembered with warmth and nostalgia. Much of the photography that Pete has unearthed for '93 til was buried in boxes for close to two decades and hasn't never been seen or published before. The 250-page book also contains several timeless images from his years shooting for SLAP and Transworld Skateboarding Magazine that will be familiar to the initiated. In addition to his stunning action shots are plenty of portraits and unguarded, candid moments that span from the late '80s up through 2004. The book reveals a raw, unapologetic perspective of a world that no longer exists."--Provided by publisher.

Skate the World
Skate the World

Author: Jonathan Mehring

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1426213964

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"Hit the streets with 200 exhilarating photographs of the worlds greatest professional skateboarders in action. In this dynamic collection, award-winning photographer Jonathan Mehring takes us from New York to Hong Kong to Istanbul and beyond as he sets out to capture the heart and soul of skate culture on six continents. Featuring stars like Tony Hawk, Nyjah Huston, and Eric Koston, Mehrings images have been published in top skateboarding magazines, and ESPN named him one of the sports ten most influential people. Now, in his first book, Mehring invites us along on his exhilarating photo adventures across six continents. By capturing these experiences on camera and including complementary images contributed by other top skate photographers, Mehring presents an exciting and artful look at skate culture around the world. With an adrenaline rush on every page, this book celebrates the joy of skateboarding and its power to inspire young people to overcome obstacleson the board and off."--Amazon.com.

Skate Freak
Skate Freak

Author: Lesley Choyce

Publisher: Orca Book Publishers

Published: 2008-10

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1554690420

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Quinn Dorfman's struggling at school and watching his family deteriorate and, since moving to a new town, has trouble enjoying his passion, skateboarding.

Impossible
Impossible

Author: Cole Louison

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-07-19

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0762768002

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Skateboarding: the background, technicality, culture, rebellion, marketing, conflict, and future of the global sport as seen through two of its most influential geniuses Since it all began half a century ago, skateboarding has come to mystify some and to mesmerize many, including its tens of millions of adherents throughout America and the world. And yet, as ubiquitous as it is today, its origins, manners, and methods are little understood. The Impossible aims to get skateboarding right. Journalist Cole Louison gets inside the history, culture, and major personalities of skating. He does solargely by recounting the careers of the sport’s Yoda—Rodney Mullen, who, in his mid-forties, remains the greatest skateboarder in the world, the godfather of all modern skateboarding tricks—and its Luke Skywalker—Ryan Sheckler, who became its youngest pro athlete and a celebrity at thirteen. The story begins in the 1960s, when the first boards made their way to land in the form of off-season surfing in southern California. It then follows the sport’s spikes, plateaus, and drops—including its billion-dollar apparel industry and its connection with art, fashion, and music. In The Impossible, we come to know intimately not only skateboarding, but also two very different, equally fascinating geniuses who have shaped the sport more than anyone else.

Strangely Familiar
Strangely Familiar

Author: Iain Borden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 1134761856

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This series of provocative views presents the ways we use and inhabit places and the ways our lives are shaped by those places. Strangely Familiar is a book about the unexpected, about the vitality and the complexity of the everyday.

The Most Fun Thing
The Most Fun Thing

Author: Kyle Beachy

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 153875410X

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Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR • Southwest Review • Electric Literature Perfect for fans of Barbarian Days, this memoir in essays follows one man's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding, and explores how this search led unexpectedly to insights on marriage, love, loss, American invention, and growing old. In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike’s corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood. What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married? Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime—often overlooked, regularly maligned—whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy—and what it continues to teach him as he strugglesto find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.