Straight Kooks

It's as inevitable as death, taxes and the piles. If you're into skateboarding, eventually you'll be called a kook. It happens to everybody. No matter how long you've been at it, how many proverbial dues you've paid, what you've built, skated, or accomplished, someone out there's gonna think you're a kook. Generally speaking, a dash of kookiness in one's personality is actually a good thing: it's an attribute of most skateboarders that distinguishes us from everyone else. No doubt about it, skating has always claimed among its eclectic membership the type of people who rank highly on non-skaters' kook lists. We're all obviously proud to be that type of kook. Or, at least we should be.

Kookiness is one thing, but full-blown kookdom is a problem. While I firmly believe that there are no rules to skateboarding and that whoever skates is down just by virtue of that fact, it remains that there are some people who just don't fucking get it. I'd hate to venture some definition of what skating "is," which would be down-right kooky in and of itself, but there are nevertheless people out there who truly merit the description of straight kook because, I repeat, they just do not fucking get "it," whatever the hell that may be.

In skateboarding, you don't wanna be called a "straight kook." You can be any sort of kook but that... though fucking kook is never good, either. Come to think of it, any time someone bothers to add an adjective to "kook" you know there's real antipathy there. For example, "I ran into so and so yesterday: he's a kook" might not mean anything bad at all, but throw "god-damned" or "mutha-fucking" in the mix and you know there's a problem. That dude's probably a serious kook.

It all comes down to getting "it," after all, which is a real shame because, when you stop to think about it, there really isn't any "it" to get. I think genuine skaters always have and always will basically understood that. So, when people have to stop and try to explain "it" to some total fucking douche bag, an adjective like "straight" is bound to describe "kook" shortly thereafter.

I've always found most skaters, even the kookiest of kooks, to be pretty tolerable in comparison to non-skaters. The really suspicious kooks, in my mind, are the ones who try to make something out of skating when it's not necessary... you know, the dudes always making a big deal out of shit. Would this make money? Could I be pro? Does this look right? In effect, kooks try to make an "it" out of skating where none previously existed; they take skating seriously. It's interesting that when skaters become pros and start making money off of skating they're usually described as having made "it." Good for them, I guess. But, while I'd never begrudge a skateboarder a living, there are certainly better ways to do it than others... You can tell, too, cuz all the pro dudes who do it suspiciously seem to start acting like straight fucking kooks, as inevitably as death, taxes and the piles.