More Skaters, Less Culture

Why participation stats can’t explain skateboarding’s identity crisis

(An unrequited follow-up to Sebastian Perez Higueras’ keynote on skateboarding’s paradox)

Sebastian Perez Higueras recently did a commendable job mapping the mechanics of the skateboard market since COVID. It’s no small feat organizing the data.

The keynote aimed to detail how the industry faces a paradox (more skaters don’t necessarily mean more business) through pricing, inventory, and marketing mechanics. The equation always seems to miss the most elusive component that made skateboarding grow in the first place: culture. These curves of participation, inventory, and margins chart the body of skateboarding, but not its soul.

Participation ≠ culture.

Yes, it can be mean and gratuitous, but we coined the word “poser” for a reason. Having more people on boards does not mean a healthier skateboarding world. History shows the opposite: every boom acts like a blood thinner when skateboarding becomes purely a numbers game. It’s only beneficial because it opens the doors to more infrastructure and more marketing budget (and padding the owners’ wallet).

Here’s a test: what is more important, kids everywhere that are being pushed towards the smoke and mirrors that are the Olympics without teaching them what really is skateboarding? Or a raw TFunk clip at China Banks? That’s the difference between performance and culture. What do you think skateboarding really needs to feed passion?

As Julian Dikmans pointed out in the comments on that post: “Skating needs to be attractive again as a way of life with enmeshed subcultures, whether music, fashion, and so on. We need to tell better stories, we need original skaters— weirdos that inspire. We definitely want youth and inclusivity.” He’s right. How do we make skateboarding attractive again? One option is to celebrate those who pour sweat and blood into it more than those who come from a gymnastic background, or are raised with competitions and prize money in mind. Competitions—however prestigious— have never ordained the future of skateboarding. Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk may have won countless competitions, but they built their reputation outside of them and largely contributed to the culture of skateboarding.

Skateboarding’s lifeblood has always been DIY culture, originality, and its cross-pollination with music, art, architecture, not structured programs and podiums.

On the media front, the instant dopamine of social feeds has replaced the forever-giving stoke of magazines. Endless scrolling has replaced the thoughtfully crafted interviews and stories that once weaved the scenes’ layers together, with recycled clips that vanish into the algorithm.

Earlier this year, to a young skater trying a backside nose blunt (that he accidentally slid), I mentioned Matt Hensley—the inventor of the trick—and he’d never heard of him. Can a culture that forgets its lineage survive? I’m genuinely asking.

The accelerated rate at which kids enter and exit skateboarding is connected to the shift from scene-led to algorithm-led discovery (Instagram/TikTok). Nonetheless, the local ecosystems — shops, DIY spots, and art spaces — are the invisible backbone.

There’s a lot to be said about the number of brands out there. One is that too many brands asphyxiate the market. Yes, I understand the concept of the freedom of the market and all that. Still, someone with a few hundred bucks, an idea for a name, and three logos should ask themselves how ordering 100 decks of shape #0058 will contribute to the culture other than clog the market.

On the other hand, brands say they want authenticity, yet safe marketing has become the norm. In the ‘80s, Craig R. Stecyk’s Powell-Peralta ads spoke a language you had to feel, not learn. In the mid-90s to mid-2000s, huge budgets went to glossy agencies who moved logos around and called it “culture.” One still resonates; the other is dull.

I understand that it is tempting to reduce skateboarding to tricks and business to numbers. Still, this approach also alters the reason we got into skateboarding in the first place, and instead of explaining it, it creates a distance.

When the skateboarding business starves, it’s not from low margins; it’s from abundance replacing culture. Algorithms and sanitized marketing create participation without nurturing passion, and involvement without passion hardly lasts.

(This piece was originally published on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-skaters-less-culture-fabrice-le-mao-8kmqc/)