When Skateboarding Was About Everyone, Not Just Yourself

There was a time when skateboarding felt like a community before it felt like a competition.

For those of us who grew up skating in the late 1980s and early 1990s, skateboarding wasn't simply about how many tricks you could land, how many followers you could collect, or whether you were good enough to earn the approval of somebody standing on the other side of the park.

You just skated.

And if somebody couldn't do something, you helped them.

That seems like an incredibly simple concept now, but somewhere along the way, skateboarding appears to have forgotten it.

Skateboarding Used to Have an Unwritten Code

You could turn up at a spot anywhere in the world and, more often than not, there was an immediate sense of belonging.

It didn't matter where you came from. It didn't matter what shoes you wore. It didn't matter whether you had the latest board. And it certainly didn't matter whether you could kickflip.

If you were a skateboarder, you were part of something.

Experienced skaters taught beginners. People filmed each other. Somebody would lend you a board. Somebody would tell you how to approach a trick. Someone would celebrate when you finally landed something you'd been trying for weeks.

There was an understanding that everyone had been a beginner once. Nobody was born knowing how to skate. The kid struggling to ollie today could be the person throwing huge tricks down a set of stairs five years later. The culture encouraged that progression.

You didn't need to prove you were worthy of being there. You simply had to skate.

Then Came the "You're Not a Real Skater If..." Generation

One of the most depressing developments in modern skateboarding is the emergence of videos and social-media posts telling other people what constitutes a "real skater."

"You're not a real skater if you ride this." "You're not a real skater if you don't do this trick." "You're not a real skater if you skate like this." "You're not a real skater unless..."

Think about how completely backwards that is.

The entire philosophy of skateboarding was built around rejecting rules. Skateboarding was attractive precisely because it wasn't organised like traditional sports. There wasn't supposed to be a governing authority telling you how to participate.

You could ride street. You could ride vert. You could skate pools. You could skate freestyle. You could cruise around your neighbourhood. You could learn one trick and spend six months perfecting it. You could build ramps in your driveway. You could skate badly. You could skate brilliantly. You could do things nobody else had thought of.

That was the point.

So when somebody makes a video explaining why somebody else isn't a "real skater," they're arguably demonstrating the exact opposite of the attitude that made skateboarding special in the first place. They aren't protecting skateboarding. They're policing it. And skateboarding was never supposed to be about policing who belonged.

When Being Better Meant Helping Someone Else

There is an enormous difference between saying: "Let me show you how to do that." and "You're not good enough to be here."

The first builds skateboarding. The second destroys it.

And unfortunately, social media has given the second attitude an enormous platform.

A teenager who has been skating for two or three years can now have thousands of views telling other beginners what they're doing wrong.

A learner walks into a skatepark and suddenly feels like they're being evaluated. Are they skating correctly? Are their clothes acceptable? Is their board good enough? Are they doing the right tricks? Are they taking up somebody else's line? Are they embarrassing themselves?

That is a horrible environment for learning. And learning is supposed to be one of the greatest things about skateboarding.

Progress Isn't the Problem

Let's be clear about something.

Skateboarding has progressed enormously. The tricks are unbelievable. The technology is better. Boards, trucks, wheels and bearings have evolved. Video production has become incredible. Skaters are doing things that would have seemed completely impossible thirty years ago.

The problem isn't progression. The problem is what we have sometimes traded for that progression.

Skateboarding has become more accessible than ever. But accessibility doesn't automatically create community. Sometimes it creates an audience. And there is a big difference.

A skateboarder used to need other skateboarders. Today, a skateboarder can potentially have an entire audience without actually having much of a community around them.

The emphasis can become: Me. My tricks. My footage. My followers. My sponsors. My image. My progression. Everything becomes my. And the word that seems to have disappeared is our.

Skateboarding Became Another Reflection of Modern Life

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable part.

Skateboarding once represented an alternative to mainstream culture. It was rebellious. It was creative. It was independent. It was suspicious of corporations. It didn't particularly care what society thought it should be.

But eventually the mainstream discovered skateboarding. And skateboarding discovered the mainstream. Money followed. Sponsorship followed. Marketing followed. Social media followed.

And eventually the same status games, ego, tribalism and self-promotion that exist everywhere else in modern life began appearing inside skateboarding.

The irony is enormous. We once skateboarded because we didn't want to conform. Now some skateboarders spend their time telling everyone else how they should conform to their definition of skateboarding.

When the Heroes Become Part of the Machine

This is where people from my generation can experience a particularly uncomfortable sense of disappointment.

Some of the people we looked up to represented an entirely different philosophy.

Josh Kalis, for example, was part of a generation that helped define what skateboarding culture meant. His famous sentiment that those who maintain the culture are the ones who will always be skaters captured something that resonated deeply with people.

Yet seeing skateboarding become increasingly intertwined with wealth, luxury and corporate culture can feel like watching the rebellion we identified with become another lifestyle product.

The image of a legendary skateboarder behind the wheel of a black Lamborghini is almost symbolic of that transformation.

There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with making money. Skateboarders deserve to make money. They deserve successful businesses, good houses, nice cars and financial security.

The contradiction isn't wealth itself. The contradiction is what happens when the culture that once rejected the machine becomes part of the machine. What did we fight against? What did we reject? And what did we ultimately become? Those are uncomfortable questions.

We Didn't Fight to Become Another Version of Everyone Else

The skateboarding culture of the 1980s and early 1990s wasn't perfect. It had its problems. There were assholes. There were cliques. There was gatekeeping. There were people who were excluded. Nostalgia shouldn't blind us to that.

But there was something fundamentally different about the social contract. If you were skating, you were usually accepted because you were skating. The community wasn't perfect, but the idea of community mattered.

Today, the technology has advanced while the social environment can sometimes feel like it has regressed.

A beginner can watch a professional-quality skate video on their phone before they've even learned to ollie. They can see tricks that took decades to develop. They can access tutorials from around the world. They can buy almost any component imaginable. They have more information than any previous generation.

And yet they can still be terrified of walking into a skatepark because somebody might laugh at them. That's progress?

Every Step Forward Can Cost Something

Perhaps this is what hurts most for those of us who remember another version of skateboarding.

For every step forward, something seems to have been left behind. The technology improved. The tricks improved. The coverage improved. The money improved. The accessibility improved. But somewhere in that process, the innocence disappeared.

The idea that you could walk into a spot anywhere in the world and immediately find people who spoke the same language—even if you couldn't speak their actual language—was incredibly powerful.

A skateboard was enough. You didn't need a personal brand. You didn't need a camera. You didn't need followers. You didn't need to prove anything. You just needed a board. And maybe a friend.

Skateboarding Doesn't Need More Gatekeepers

If there is one thing today's generation of skateboarders should understand, it's this: you don't make skateboarding stronger by deciding who isn't a skateboarder. You make it stronger by helping the person who is struggling.

Teach them. Encourage them. Film their first trick. Give them advice. Let them have your spot. Celebrate their progression. Remember what it felt like when you couldn't do it.

Because eventually, every skateboarder reaches the same point. You get older. You get slower. Your knees hurt. Your tricks disappear. And one day you realise that the tricks weren't actually the most important part.

The people were. The sessions. The friendships. The spots. The travelling. The stupid conversations. The injuries. The victories. The failures. The feeling of belonging to something that existed outside the ordinary rules of society.

That's what we were protecting. That's what the culture was.

Maybe We Need to Remember What We Were Fighting For

Skateboarding doesn't need to go backwards. It doesn't need to reject technology. It doesn't need to reject professional skating. It doesn't need to reject money. It doesn't need to reject progress.

It simply needs to remember that progress and culture aren't the same thing.

A bigger industry doesn't necessarily mean a stronger community. More followers don't necessarily mean more friends. Better tricks don't necessarily mean better skateboarding. And telling somebody they're not a "real skater" certainly doesn't make you one.

For those of us who came up skating in the 1980s and early 1990s, watching this transformation can be genuinely sad. We watched skateboarding grow from something that society barely understood into a global phenomenon. We should be proud of that. But we should also be honest about what was lost along the way.

Because skateboarding was never supposed to be about who was the best person in the room. It was about everyone being in the room.

And perhaps the greatest way today's generation can honour the culture isn't by copying the tricks, clothes or brands of the past. It's by bringing back the attitude.

Help the beginner. Respect the session. Share the spot. Celebrate somebody else's progression. Stop telling people they're not real skaters.

And remember that the person struggling to land their first ollie today is not an outsider. They're the future of skateboarding.

And if we make them feel like they don't belong, eventually they may stop skating altogether.

Then we haven't protected skateboarding. We've simply protected our own egos.