Posted on 12/31/2022 6:30:31 AM PST by george76
Forget Jan. 6. The worst day in recent American history came on May 2020, when the city of Los Angeles filled the skateboarding park at Venice Beach with sand. The move was a deterrent done in the name of preventing the spread of COVID. A month later, and without permission, the skaters dug out the park and started riding again.
For those of us who are skateboarders , the closing of the park was a dark day. We seem to intuitively know what has since been proven: joyful exercise in fresh air and sunlight is a natural preventative to illness, including COVID. We knew better than the buzzkill bureaucrats.
Now, science has caught up with the skaters. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that “a regular exercise routine may significantly lower the chances of being hospitalized or even dying from COVID-19.”
Skateboarding is the perfect form of blocking COVID . Shredding down a hill with the sun on your face and the wind in your hair is the antithesis of masking up. It’s no wonder the sport has thrived during the pandemic. By the end of 2020, skateboard sales had jumped 75% compared with 2019, according to ActionWatch, which records the numbers.
There was a time in 2020 when the sales boom collided with supply chain shortages and missing workers. Some shops were out of boards, trucks, wheels, or bearings, which are the “hard goods” of skateboarding. One plant, BBS, was forced to shut down temporarily due to the pandemic. Now, BBS is producing 10,000 boards a day, double what they had been producing four years ago.
Then there is Girlswirl, a female skating group that began in 2018 when nine girls on a text chain in California decided to get together and encourage themselves and others to take up skateboarding. The group is now a thousand members strong and has held more than 100 public group skates.
Seeing the pictures and video of the Girlswirlers, who describe themselves as “the world’s okayest skaters,” it almost seems like a bygone America. Smiles. Laughter. Fun. Joy. Being outdoors.
Last January, University of Exeter scholar Dr. Paul O’Connor released a study showing that skateboarding provides a significant psychological boost. “Skateboarding provides a serious emotional outlet for people who have experienced personal trials in the collapse of long-term relationships, career challenges, parenthood, and substance abuse,” O’Connor reported. He told the Independent: “For those I spoke to, skateboarding was more than about looking after physical health. On at least two occasions when I asked informants to try to explain what skateboarding meant to them, I was confronted with grown men fighting back tears, literally lost for words in grasping to communicate the importance and gravitas of their pastime.”
Like jazz, movies, and comic books, skateboarding is one of America’s great original art forms. A $5 billion industry with 16 million members in the U.S., skateboarding fosters community, physical grace, and freedom.
It has also, despite its reputation for attracting laid-back surfers and countercultural urban thrill seekers, been a wellspring of entrepreneurship. In 1971, a young Virginia Tech student named Frank Nasworthy turned $700 he earned working in a restaurant into the Cadillac Wheels Company, which soon produced a new model of a polyurethane wheel. He was soon selling 300,000 sets a year.
More recently, in 1996, Carver Skateboards in Venice patented a new truck design for their boards. The video history of the trial-and-error period should be shown at the Wharton School of Business. A cross between Edison and the guys from Jackass, Carver and his colleague crash, roll, and tumble into the sidewalk as they perfect their invention.
America in the last few years has been like a downhill skater who takes a bad spill. It’s been painful and depressing. The thing about us skaters, though, is that, like America, we always get back up.
I admire the author’s optimism, but America ain’t getting up from this one.
Many skaters I know of turned to drugs. Some dead.
The Jackass crew were skaters.
Yes, an optimistic take for sure.
May 2020 was when the local authorities, seeing how well pushing people around it was working out, decided to put up tape to block the bike trails and trail parking lots.
Sadly, cyclists tend to be health nuts and germaphobes, so not only did you see idiots on bikes with masks, but even with a mask on they were afraid to be downwind, following of another rider.
It drove me out of the sport, and I suspect many others too.
We went snowshoeing on Mt. Hood and crossed paths with two guys who put their masks on as they saw us approaching.
I remember when the news came out of SoCal about these “skateboard” things, around 1965. Every boy immediately stole one of his sister’s roller skates and nailed the two halves onto a piece of 2X4, and within a few months the first commercially made skateboards were showing up. Clay wheels were state of the art, the kind that would stop your board dead if you hit a pea-sized pebble. Good times and plenty of scabs for all.
I don’t remember any of my friends and classmates still skateboarding after high school, though I’m sure some did. Skateboards were pretty much considered toys for kids back then.
I live on the beach in the panhandle of Florida. The strangest thing to me was seeing the police close the beaches and patrol them with helicopters & pickup trucks. You’d see families sneak out of their condos, dad would stand looking one way down the beach for patrols and mom the other direction. The kids would run out and splash in the surf for a few minutes then dad would yell for them to run back into the condo. It was then I realized how quickly the U.S. could turn totalitarian and how little we could do to fight it. Seeing police helicopters constantly patrolling the beaches was surreal.
Olive pits were the worst for instant stop.
One of my brothers had a Makaha board and also made his own laminated board. I borrowed those or made do with lesser boards. My first was a Roller Derby #20, remember those?
No olive trees where I lived, though.
When in wood shop, I turned in my plans for my board, the wood shop teacher spent the entire hour lecturing us on the fact that a 1 inch board was in fact only 3/4 inch.
the things stored in the memory banks with random access!
“The move was a deterrent done in the name of preventing the spread of COVID.”
I disagree. It was a move intended to demonstrate control, solidify government power and prevent freedom of movement.
How absolutely crazy; may I assume they were white? Even at the height of hysteria here in NJ, many of our imported braceros never bothered with masks or distancing.
COVID protective measures are becoming the exclusive realm of middle-aged and older white people.
Not sure about that. Many of the maskers I see are parents with school-age children with them. The kids are masked, too.
What a sad message to send to young people...
Yup...white...and obviosly brainwashed
An ignominious demise to the freedom regulators.
10,000 curses on the mustaches of their ancestors.
May wild dogs scavenge their offspring.
Well, yeah, my very first was the homemade roller skate version, and it didn’t turn very well, as you say. The RD20 was my first ready-made board, with metal roller skate wheels that would slip out from under you in a sharp turn. Had a few other clay-wheeled boards, but I don’t remember the makers after 50-odd years.
One of my brothers broke a wrist skateboarding, and the other a collarbone, but I escaped with no worse than road rash.
In 2020, Safeway stores in Oregon created “one way” aisles complete with directional arrows on the floor. Needless to say, I ignored this absurd rule. Occasionally, I was confronted by scraggly gray haired white women pointing out that I was violating the rules. I pretended I couldn’t hear them, so I drew close to them asking them to repeat what they said. Of course they retreated yanking their carts away from me. It was hilarious fun!
I think many of these public health experts are morons and/or tyrants. That said, I'll play the devil's advocate. It is possible they weren't really concerned about people catching Covid on the trail, but rather getting in accidents going to the trail or on the trail which would put additional strains on hospital capacity.
When golf courses opened up after a month long shutdown in my area, only walking twosomes were allowed and tee times were 20 minutes apart. No overtaking was allowed. My golfing buddy and I broke that rule on the second hole first time out.
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