Economies of Scale

I skate a lot of small shit. That's not really anything I intended to make happen. Much like this dumbass blog, it just kind of happened in and of itself due to the circumstances in which I find myself. I figure, if I'm gonna write regularly, why not do it about complete bullshit? Same with skating. I'd rather skate some bullshit than not skate at all, especially since to me the bullshit tends to be where the depth of the matter really lies. Much like this blog, there's usually nobody there to skate the small shit with me, for example. And, when it's just you doing your own thing, there's just something more satisfying about the whole experience. If you can make some bullshit work, then you've really accomplished something, as far as I can tell.

Growing up skating, we never seemed to be at the center of anything. We were literally outcast to the geographic periphery of society. We skated out of the way places... places no one would ever have frequented if it weren't for skating or some other completely marginalized behavior: shooting heroin, smoking crack, etc. I guess it's not surprising that a lot of us started doing those things, too. It was all bullshit. But that was what made it all so profoundly interesting, strange, and fun. I guess we understood that everything else was bullshit too, except that you had to sit in an office to do "proper" bullshit: Schmooz with a bunch of tools long enough and you can convince yourself that what you're doing--wasting your life following orders--isn't bullshit at all, but somehow legitimate, responsible, and worthwhile activity.

No matter how much I embrace the idea that skating is just the good kind of bullshit, the fact remains that the small stuff just isn't the big stuff. However satisfying it may be, there's always a sense that the small stuff could be bigger, maybe even better, more important or more meaningful. But that line of reasoning can be dangerous. It often degenerates into an egotistical rationale like "more people will see" or worse, "maybe more people will watch if I do it bigger."

I don't know. I've always been skeptical of anything big. Maybe I'm just genuinely afraid of big things, but I can't help think that looking to do something on a larger scale is usually meant to prove something to someone else, not to yourself as it should be. But then there are those out of the way peripheries again. Those de-centered locations that make skating what it is. Those places that take small, large, and everything in between, hide it behind a fence and challenge you to challenge yourself. Those DIY spots that just got it right. Big is good in those places. Real good. It's that kind of place that makes small seem like bulllshit, and makes you resent what you're riding because you know for a fact that there's something bigger and better out there.