Salvation?

My friend BLKPRJKT recently brought something to my attention. GoSkate.Com wrote something about the declining popularity of skateboarding. I quote - There is a culture associated with skateboarding, one that has not always had a positive image.  It is important that going forward, all of us involved with the skateboarding industry create a universally positive image of the sport. In August of 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted unanimously to include skateboarding in the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.  The emerging ‘90s punk scene and the 1995 X-Games saved skateboarding in the ‘90s – Will the Olympics be skateboarding’s “saving grace?” End quote.

I wrote a fairly long and hostile reply to this… But I’ve scrapped it. After speaking with friends, it is easier to simply state that the Olympics won’t change anything for me or my friends. The X Games didn’t save skateboarding in the nineties because it didn’t need saving. The Olympics won’t do anything except usher in a long pathetic host of people that DO NOT skateboard, yet will try everything in their power to reap benefits and financial gain from our beloved skateboarding. If anything, I think skateboarding needs to be saved from them… We’ll be out here in the backyards, doing what we do, staying stoked, having fun and being lawless and unorganized. Purity. Skateboarding the way it has always been. FINI.

Thank you to MRZ for the images. Skate- Ozzie PS- As far as “…the emerging 90’s Punk scene” Go listen to The Stooges and not The Offspring. Punk had pretty much blown its wad by the 90’s.