In an earlier post I wrote about the flower stoppers at Shenzhen Museum. Weirdly enough, spring came and the flowers went away. At least for now. Perhaps they have something more sinister in mind? For the sake of 10 foot long grinds, let’s hope not.
Sometime during the late 90′s Joel Patterson wrote a piece in Transworld titled “Participation is 9/10 the law.” The point of it was that most fans of skating are skateboarders themselves, a contrast to the sweatpant-wearing cheerer-ons of traditional sports such as football and basketball, who often have no experience as participants. Skateboarding is more of a “spectator sport” now than it was when Patterson wrote this, but spectators remain mostly irrelevant to the core skate world. Regardless of how enthusiastically they wave their foam hands, they will never be given the respect of one who actually skates.