There's an unfortunate growing sense of loneliness in the world. This has been written about and studied a lot. Among the youngest respondents polled in a recent Pew survey, those aged 18 to 29, nearly a quarter say they feel lonely most or all of the time.
I'm going to take a different look at this issue by diving into one prominent community. Recently in Las Vegas, a big, historically significant community that anybody can be a part of set up shop for one day. I'm talking about skateboarding. Stay with me now. Even if you have never stepped foot on a skateboard, you have been impacted by skate culture. I'll prove it to you. Have you ever heard "I'm gonna bail" when somebody was leaving from something? Skate culture. This usage of the word bail can be directly traced back to board sports in California in the 70s, derived from bailing off of a surf or skateboard. The cultural relevance of skateboarding is immense. Imagine how gratifying it would be to be at the forefront of it? To be involved in something as influential as that? I got to talk with the folks at Street League during their Las Vegas Takeover skateboarding event to see what it means to be part of a culture.
"It's a lot more than just skateboarding. It's what you wear, it's who you are, it's what you represent."
Tal Cooperman, Chief Marketing Officer of Street League Skateboarding there.
"Anyone that takes a chance can become a part of the culture. What's crazy to me also, is people will be like 'oh I don't know anything about skateboarding' but you do! You wear the Vans, you wear Dickies, you wear the shirts, you're a part of the culture. You don't need to be a skateboarder to be part of the culture. Fashion in its own is the culture."
To return to the thesis here, fashion is a way to signal belonging. Keeping up with and understanding what's cool to like-minded people lets us potentially recognize and be recognized by those like-minded people. Ironically, it is the ubiquity of skate fashion and the popular, downstream streetwear that may demonstrate some of what's going with more and more people feeling isolated from any kind of community. As these trends become marketed and consumed as a product, the original significance of the fashion is lost and what was once a meaningful signal is no longer. Though that may be true to some extent, speaking with competitor Rayssa Leal, one gets the sense that there is still some community to be found.
"In Imperatriz, we have a public skatepark. I started very young. I was six years old. It was super chill to skate; they supported me a lot. I grew up there with the girls, a lot of them skating too. Now it's a lot more. That was good skating, so fun."
Rayssa grew up in Brazil, but she's been touring around the world doing skateboard competitions from a very young age. In fact, she's Brazil's youngest ever Olympic medalist for her bronze in skateboarding at the 2021 Tokyo Games when she was just 13. Being so highly competitive and well-traveled, she's the perfect person to talk to concerning the current state of skate culture as experienced by someone relatively new to the sport but already very accomplished. As she said, her progression in the sport goes hand in hand with being part of a community. In her case, a community of other girls and young women participating in skateboarding. While skating she says
"It feels like, when I'm skateboarding, it feels free! It feels like I'm playing in my backyard."
From her perspective, we begin to understand why skateboarding is such an enduring and important community. It's centered around an activity that allows people to express themselves, to self-actualize. I asked Rayssa if she thought she would always find skating fulfilling in this way:
"I think it's always going to feel fun. I don't think it's going to feel like a job. We can skate street. If I don't like to skate contests I can street skate."
Skateboarding is a flexible form of expression in that way. Competition skating is to street skating what sculpting is to painting. We can learn a lot about how to lead a fulfilling life from skate culture. Building a community around something we enjoy, and something we can express ourselves with in a variety of different techniques and styles: that is the stuff that makes life worth living. Whether its skateboarding, chess, the arts, whatever, I hope you seek that community out.
