Skateboarding is an Art, a Lifestyle, and a way of Life

My Passion is Skateboarding

 Skateboarding is an Art, a Lifestyle, and a Way of Life.

                                           By Mike Lombardo                       -December 2012                          

 

People who don’t skateboard have no idea what I’m about to describe, but if you have a passion for skateboarding like I you will totally understand. Skateboarding is not a sport; we don’t have any coaches telling us what we can and can’t do. We can literally do whatever we want on a skateboard, it is complete creativity and freedom. Skateboarding is an Art, a Lifestyle, a way to live. So pretty much we are artists selecting what spots we want to share our art on. Just like art there are unlimited amount of styles people can come up with. Vincent Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Faust all are artists who create art and showcase them in many different ways. Van Gogh used a Style of paint, Pollock used a Style of Splatter, and Faust used a Style of calligraffiti. Even though all of these people are artists that have the same intentions, they all have a completely authentic style as to what they do and create. People think skateboarders just destroy property and disrespect security guards/police but they are not thinking outside the box and looking at the world like we do. Skateboarders have a different eye for everything they see in this world. For example you might see a pole sticking out of the ground that looks extremely dangerous. But we skaters would call that a pole jam, and our minds would open up and think about all the possibility’s and tricks that can be done on this obscure object. Just like Art, Skateboarding takes time and patience. You can’t just wake up one day and be like “Hey I’m going to land a 900 on a Vert Ramp today” but hey you never know. But most likely you won’t be able to stomp that out in a couple of tries. But in Reality learning to spin a 900 would take years to practice. Tony Hawk was the 1^st person to ever land it, and it took him years to completely master. Skateboarding is all about building your craft and then added parts to it. It’s a complete form of progression that takes days, weeks, and years to master. As a skateboarder you will get hurt, trying to do tricks is actually really dangerous and you can get hurt by just messing up once. Before trying a trick Skateboarders mentally prepare themselves by thinking “what’s the worst that can happen?” or “think about how good this will feel if I land this”. Before you try a trick there is a million thoughts in your head, but you have to learn how to break the ice and just go for it. Artists do the same exact thing, especially graffiti artists; When Graffiti artists are bombing a huge train station. They are just thinking “Think about how cool this would look after its done” They are thinking about cops or security guards rolling up on them, But they are caught up in the moment and just want to express their art for everyone to see. It’s an adrenaline rush like no other, and Skateboarding is the exact same way.

       Art is also intertwined with Skateboarding Culture. On Every Skateboard deck on the bottom there is a Graphic. You need to remember that someone created this Graphic with their Imagination and thoughts. It’s awesome because there are so many different kinds of graphics on the bottom of skateboard decks. Cool to think that some dude sat down and created that with his own hands. Skateboarders have their own style; we wear our own type of shoes that are meant for skateboarding, shirts that resemble skateboarding, hats, and pants, whatever. Of course there are many people that wear skateboarding related clothes that don’t skateboard, but we can easily tell who skateboards and who doesn’t, we can tell by looking at their shoes, if they are scuffed and slightly ripped we know that one skateboards because that’s what happens to your shoes when you slide your feet on the grip tape of a skateboard when doing tricks. But hey I don’t judge people, do whatever the hell makes you happy. If you like to wear skateboarding clothes and you don’t skateboard, who cares. At least you’re not wearing some lame polo s**t that everyone in this world wears.

       Many skateboarders that are consistently doing tricks, film these tricks on spots with a filmer. Before you land the trick you need to imagine the landed trick in your head.  Landing a trick completely perfect the way to pictured it rarely happens. Sometimes you land the trick just as you imagined in your head but that rarely happens. After many tries you land the trick, when you watch the footage it probably doesn’t look like what you pictured in your head. Skaters land tricks differently because of their style of skateboarding. Many skateboarders do the same tricks, but every skateboarder does the trick completely different. For example some skaters can do a kickflip and the flip will be extremely fast but other skaters pop a slow kickflip and will look a lot different from other skaterboarders. Skater’s styles also develop from their influences and who they look up to in skating. You get influenced by a pro and add your own twist. We are all influenced by each other. Or we can simply create our own flow and do whatever we want on the board. 

       My Homie Pat came up with our skate crew called Tacosluts. Before our DVD came out in April no one really knew who any of us were. The DVD Really set things off. I filmed footage for a year to make a full part but the rest of the homies were filming for around 3 years. It was cool when the DVD dropped on 4/20/12. Tommy G and I took literally a whole day of sitting in front of a computer to edit all the footage with music to create full parts.  Seasons Skateshop located in Albany, Ny really hooked it up too and helped us out. They premiered our DVD in their shop and a lot of our friends came to watch our DVD. Everyone was hyped, it was awesome knowing we started this crew of skaters and now people are getting influenced off us. Throughout the summer we met some really cool skateboarders. They were really hyped on our crew also. We supported them so they supported us.  It’s crazy how one simple idea can start a chain reaction and basically blow up. This fall my homie Kazuo bought a heat press and really got it set off, he started making shirts and now we are starting to sell them. We have like 6 or 7 designs and people are really hyped about them, we have made more clothes other than tee shirts. We have also made hoodies, sweatshirts, long tees and plan to make many more.

       Skateboarding is “ideas put into action” said by Marc Johnson, A pro skater. I couldn’t agree with him anymore on that quote. Skateboarding is my life and I’m so glad I started to skate.