The Worm

If I had to compare how skateboarding was when I grew up to a political philosophy, it would obviously be anarchism. Highly individualized, exploratory, unregulated, lacking regimentation, hidden in the margins of everyday life, skating took place almost completely out of view of the mainstream. Skating was peopled by a hodgepodge of unique characters, none of whom thought much alike but all of whom agreed to let skating be what it was. Skating didn't appeal to people who could live within normal boundaries. Free spirited, contemptuous of authority, skaters blurred the distinctions between art and diversion and didn't really ask why. They already knew. There was no formality, no routine, nothing preordained, rehearsed, or staged, not in the everyday lives of everyday skaters where I grew up. Things progressed quickly in those days; boundaries were surpassed apparently because no one noticed them to begin with.

Clearly, somewhere--and I don't care where--things changed to the extent that much of skateboarding today has more in common with fascism than with anarchism. The isolated silhouette that once lurked in the most remote social periphery, locked into a lap-over grind under a serpentine freeway overpass in wasted desertopia all but forgotten. In its place, the heirs of an entirely new landscape: the centralized, safe, governable skate park, home to confused but calculating skateboard in-breds huddled under the billboard placed there to remind us who's responsible for all this, though no one bothers to notice.

If it's true that you know you've bought into the system when you think things aren't the way they're supposed to be, then we're all fucked. More often than not, it seems, I experience skating through the corporate aperture of multimedia rather than through an evening session in a drainage ditch with a half dozen friends or so. Sure, a lot of that is due to the logistics of age, work, family. But the fact is, no one skates there anymore. At some point, parks were built, billboards erected, and helmet rules enforced. But we're the ones who stopped skating the Worm, or whatever your local spot was called. We can hit it up this weekend, if you want to.