Skateboarding in Berkeley
Skateboarding today is a huge business. As of 2017, the industry in the United States alone was valued at $4.8 billion with more than 6.3 million participants. No less than $80 billion were spent in streetwear production and sales.
Professional skateboarders became celebrities making way above a seven figure, while amateurs keep a loyal–and huge–audience in social media. In skateboard competitions, the numbers are no less astounding: the last X Games brought over 119,000 people to Minneapolis in just 4 days, and next year skateboarding will make its debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
It couldn’t have been more mainstream.
But in the city of Berkeley, CA, the skateboarding culture is preserved by the cooperation spirit of common people who keep it an authentic practice of the streets. Toddlers, teenagers, college kids, middle age men, women and queer can found a safe and respectful place to practice their ollies and nollies.
One can have a taste of how well organized and diverse this community is by visiting any of the the go-to places where skateboarders often gather together. Among them, Berkeley Skate Park is the unanimity among the locals.
In fact, the skateboarding scene in Berkeley owes much of its life to the existence of the Skate Park. It is the largest park in the city, providing a variety of ramps that welcome as much first time learners as old school skaters. The park is an 18,000 square foot area located at 711 Harrison St and it is open from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., 7 days a week. Many programs and special events are held throughout the year, but during the summer skate camps are overwhelmingly popular.
Besides the great structure, the park is an environment where skateboarders feel at home: a couple of years ago, the city replaced professional security guards for experienced skaters who have a better dialogue with the kids in the park.
On the sunny afternoon of August 2nd, many young kids learned their first steps over the board. Not far from there, more experienced skaters already used to the injuries fly high and fall hard, getting back on their feet in less than 5 seconds. They get hurt, visibly, but that is the essential condition of skateboarding, some of them explain.
“I had surgery on my arm 2 months ago. I should take a break, but I just couldn’t,” tells Cliff Lapinski, 46, a skateboarder for 35 years. After countless fractures, he said he became immune to the pain due to the desire to keep practicing. “I don’t feel the pain anymore. When I’m skating, I feel a certain power … It seduces me beyond my logic and reasoning.”
While he gives the details of his surgery, Steven Orellana, 21, arrives to greet him. The two exchange a warm handshake that gives the impression they are long time friends. “We are one big family here,” he says.
Steven, an Architecture Major at University of California, Berkeley came from El Salvador at the age of 6. He began to ride the board in the late 2000s, when his older brother got bothered and abandoned the toy. By then, skateboarding was already immensely popular and a major industry. Even so, he says it was not a favorite among the kids of his age.”You were an outcast if you skateboard,” he says.
Skateboarding Tricks by Joe
"To ollie you have to place one foot on the tail of the skateboard and the other foot behind the front bolts. Then you crouch down and prepare to spring upward by putting a lot of pressure on the back foot. As you spring up, you slide the front foot up the skateboard at just the right time."
” A kick flip is based off of an ollie: you setup and initiate the trick but the difference is that at the top of the ollie, you flick your ankle to flip the board over. After letting the board make a full rotation you have to stop it with your back foot, then get the front foot on as well before coming to the ground.”
"A 360 flip is a more advanced skateboard trick. It involves getting the board to rotate on its axis 360 degrees while also doing a kickflip. To do this, you scoop the board with the back foot instead of popping it straight off the ground like you would for an ollie and kickflip. As the back foot is scooping the board the front foot is flicking the front of the board similar to a kickflip. After the board does it’s rotation, you stop it with your front foot, bring your back foot around, and land with your knees bent.”
"A kickflip manual is just a kickflip as described before but instead of landing on all for wheels, you land on the back two wheels and balance across the obstacle. If you scrape the tail or let the wheels touch, it doesn’t count.”
But the reality Steven found when he was introduced to skateboarding was quite different from the one his friend grew accustomed to. Cliff started skateboarding in 1984 at an abandoned skate park in Harlingen, TX. At that time, to be a skateboarder was more than uncool, it was dangerous.
“Skateboarding it was very different than it is today,” he says, “ it was more than expected to have a bottle thrown at me every time I rode my board out in the street. Gangsters and skinheads were always after us … they’d steal our boards… The other kids called us skate fags.”
He brought his rule breaker spirit when he arrived at Berkeley in the early 2000s, founding a welcoming community at Berkeley Skate Park. "I cannot think about a more inclusive circle of skateboarders than us here."
To Steven, this reality is not so much a product of the place, but of the time: “Sure, Berkeley is a liberal place, but I honestly believe that how much things have changed over the years has a larger impact on the diversity of the scene,” he said.
The ability of the community of organizing itself can also be considered a factor: groups such as Unity Skateboarding (a queer skateboarding collective in Oakland) and Skate Like a Girl (a girl centric organization that arranges skate camps for girls) help to ensure that the scene will manage to get more and more welcoming.
It's All History:
Much of what is seen in the skateboarding scene today is the product of a specific moment in culture. Skateboarding roots date back from the early 1950s, when South Californian surfers got bored with the flat waves on the ocean. They got creative and decided to attach roller skate wheels to crates and surf the sidewalk. In 1963, the first skate exhibition happened in Hermosa Beach, Calif.
After the first appearance in the public eye, skateboarding quickly fell into oblivion until late 1970s. That was the time punk rock loomed from alternative clubs to the Billboard Hot 100, and skateboarding made a comeback, tying itself with the aesthetics and sound of the emerging subculture translated by the punk movement. The musical style was all about fighting the Establishment, a rebellious attitude that showed itself as the perfect match for the skateboarding. It became the official soundtrack.
From SoCal, the scene arrived in San Francisco and found a right place in the ramps that once were part of the Embarcadero Center. To prove how much In 1981, Thrasher Magazine debuted its first edition, echoing the growing interest of skating in the area. The publications is credited as one a key fixture in shaping the culture of skateboarding in the San Francisco an throughout the Bay Area.
Crossing the Bridge:
It was only a matter of time until the San Francisco skateboard scene got to Berkeley. In the late 1980s, the city was already taken by skateboard culture and punk rock. The prolific musical scene from that period gave the world bands like Rancid, Green Day and Operation Ivy (this last one a one-record local legend mentioned by all the old school skaters that were here interviewed).
Nowadays, some of the favorite places include SoMa Skate Park, Under the Bridge Skate Park (both in San Francisco), Treasure Island Skate Park (in Treasure Island), MLK Skate Park, Kennelly Skate Park, Oakland Ice Center (all the three in Oakland) and City View Skate Park (in Alameda).
For shopping, the curated selection of boards and the staff of experts of 510 on Telegraph Avenue makes them a fixture, mentioned by all of the skateboarders interviewed for this piece. The store is also sponsor
On the other side of the bridge, Deluxe Skateshop, Mission Skateboards, FTC and Everyday (all in San Francisco), is some of the most popular names for buying skateboards, footwear and clothing.
What the Future Holds for Skateboarding:
In the midst of this solid popularity, the most recent discussion among the community is the inclusion of skateboarding in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, they are not discussing who will be the favorites–U.S., Japan and Brazil are big names so far–but how the whole event can reverberate in the very nature of the sport.
First scale professionals are both excited and skeptical in equal doses, reflecting the sense on the street scene in the Bay Area. Thrasher opened the debate back in 2016, already showing that opinions would certainly diverge as the Olympics approached. On the internet, the controversy is scaling up, as skateboarding legend Tony Hawk recently expressed some worries while attending an event in Paris.
“My only concern of skateboarding on the Olympic platform is that somehow that will inspire people to skate only for fame or fortune,” Hawk told Reuters.
And there are even people whose own opinions remain divided. “There are pros and cons,” said Matt Derrick, 45, manager at Deluxe Skateshop, in San Francisco, and a skateboarder for 34 years. He did not come to terms for a single position about the inclusion of his lifelong passion for the Olympics. “This level of competition is good because it exposes [skateboarding] to a wider audience. On the other hand, skating is about style and expression and these are two things extremely hard to judge.”
Whatever the future holds for skateboarding, in Berkeley it will remain an important part of the city's landscape, surviving in the streets as much as in the hearts of these amateurs, yet great skaters.
Credits:
Ana Lopes (Story)
Keyao Ji (Video)
Ningbo Zhang (Infographics)
Rui Zhou (Video and Photo)
Tingwei Lu (Photo)
