Over the Coping: A look at Skateboarding Media and Subculture

Hi, my name is Elliot's weary.

Um The title of my project is over the coping.

Um I'll kind of explain what that means as this

project presentation goes along.

Um So a bit of background info was that this

project was a continued work on two independent studies that

I did the last two semesters looking at skateboarding media.

Um with this project, I wanted to um kind of

look at skateboarding subculture, a bit more of the like

psychoanalysis type stuff there in the in skateboarding media.

Um And something that happened while working on this project

was that skateboarding was in the olympics for the first

time. Um So my question kind of was how did

skateboarding um start at such a small thing uh and

end up being in the olympics and being watched by,

you know, potentially billions of people during the olympics.

Um And so the suspect the success of skateboarding really

comes down to accessibility of skateboarding media and then the

marketability of the skateboarding subculture.

And so it's better to find what subculture is and

what I mean here, I wanted to look at a

different subculture that I think all right, had a lot

of parallels with skateboarding, and that's punk rock music.

And so that's where we're kind of going to start

out here.

Um What is subculture?

So to do that, I looked at punk rock music.

Um Here's a shot of one of the films I

watched called decline of Western civilization.

It's a documentary that follows um a bunch of punk

rockers and uh kind of gives an idea of what

it's like to be punk rock.

Um So some of the things that I thought were

similar between skateboarding and punk or is the D.

I. Y.

Aspect and punk rock um And skateboarding, It's a lot

of like going to thrift stores and finding stuff and

you know, kind of uh just making do with what

you have and so um skateboarding for example, it's like

going and finding a swimming pool in someone's backyard and

skating it uh punk rock, it's like, you know, finding

old instruments are, you know, clothing at thrift stores of

sort of repurposing them.

Um Another big part of subculture is having tensions between

the dominant culture and so that means um I guess

also a reflection of society to kind of explain that

a bit better is that it in order for it

to be a subculture, it needs to uh to branch

off from the dominant culture.

Um And I think skateboarding and punk rock bolt did

that sort of when they both are starting to come

around. People were, I don't know if afraid is the

right word to use, but people uh weren't quite sure

how to how to react to that.

Yeah. And so revolting in style is a concept that

came that was came up with by dick heritage.

Um And that sort of is just about self expression

by means of, you know, what you wear or what

you what kind of music you listen to or you

know, what kind of music you play.

Um, I sort of touched on the repurposing cultural objects,

but more on.

So I guess like punk rock would be like using,

you know, safety pins or something like that and their

clothing for reasons and what they originally designed and intended

for. Yeah, the sidewalk surfboard.

So when skateboarding first debuted, it was referred to as

a sidewalk surfboard.

Um, it was used.

Uh, and I thought this picture was cool because it

totally looks like this guy is riding a wave, but

he's, um, he's not, he's on a sidewalk surfboard later

to be called a skateboard.

Um, and so, uh huh.

And so I kind of started off the project by

looking at, you know, the lifetime span of skateboarding and

how it evolved and sort of the unique design innovations.

Um, so in 1965 frank master, they debuted the urethane

wheels and before that skateboards were using clay wheels, which

are really hard to ride around on.

If you hit a little pebble, you go flying and

break your teeth or something crazy.

So, um, those urethane wheels were huge.

And then in 69 larry Stevenson creates the kick tail.

Kick tail is what made all modern day skateboarding possible.

Um, you know, being able to get off the ground

actually or, you know, like maneuver your board in a

more efficient way.

So I saw those as being too early innovations that

really helped propel the sport forward.

Yeah. Um, and then, so Stacy Peralta uh, was instrumental

in, I think skateboarding's evolution in that.

He was one of the original uh, Zephyr team skateboarders

and those guys were kind of um, the poster Children

for skateboarding subculture at the time in the seventies.

And um, and so yeah, I wanted to talk about

Stacy Peralta, his team, he formed a company with George

Powell called Powell Peralta and they formed a team called

the Bones Brigade and Bones Brigade had all of the

hugest skaters like that you've ever heard of on there.

It was Tony Hawk, uh, Rodney mullen steve caballero, Lance

Mountain, Anne McGill and others and I think eventually the

teams, over 30 people, but some of the most influential

skateboarders skated for the Power throughout the Bones Brigade team

um in 2000 and one, Stacy Peralta directed the Dog

Town and Z Boys documentary.

Um, I brought that up because when I was a

kid, I saw that and that's really, ever since then,

I've been interested in um skateboarding and skateboarding media and

so that's, that's kind of part of the inspiration for

this project.

So I wanted to bring it up.

Okay, um, here's a really cool shot of Stacy Peralta

to uh, it might actually be jay Adams, who was

another part of this effort team.

Um, and all of these images at least the last

to the sidewalk surfing and this one were taken by

a guy named craig statistic.

Um, I think he was really instrumental in skateboarding media

to just in the fact that his imagery really, yeah,

I mean, helped to define subculture of skateboarding.

Um, there's a skateboarder magazine article that came out in

1975 called the aspects of the downhill slide and that

just sort of highlighted the Zephyr team and um, southern

California skateboarding and that, you know, was in the magazines

and that's how people were exposed to it.

At first moving forward.

He also worked with the Bones Brigade team.

Um, and he did these really interesting adds that like

weren't necessarily about skateboarding, but they were about a skateboarding

team and promoted skateboarding.

So here's an image of steve caballero holding his board

and they just lit a car on fire in the

background, Pretty unique that it's not just a guy on

a skateboard.

Um, they did a lot of weird stuff too.

So here's Lance Mountain.

This is a crazy picture, just like this taxidermy Fox

or whatever that is.

Um, and then, so I think another innovation here, um,

in 1992 Big Brother magazine began publication and the reason

I bring up Big Brother instead of other magazines is

because they sort of started this new trend of using

video still images to show tricks.

Um, and so I can kind of show what I

mean by that here.

This is a spread of Big Brother magazine and you'll

see these pictures along the side here, on the bottom

and on the, on the sides here is uh it's

a it's a video of someone doing a trick, but

they then they would go in and take frames from

that video in order to show that trick in the

magazine and that's common.

That's super common now in magazines, but Big Brother is

really started that.

Thanks. Um and so I thought, I thought that was

an important piece of skateboarding media, um skateboarding and MTV.

I think this is another parallel between punk rock and

skateboarding, is that MTV really, you know, kind of pushed

it to the forefront, so people were watching MTV and

experiencing skateboarding and punk rock music, a lot of people

for the first time.

Um and so I think the main person that was

in that whole MTV kind of on skateboarding on MTV

movement is bam Margera.

He originally got popular working with Big Brother magazine and

so that it was a logical step to move on

to him after that section.

Um He started by making the escape films C.

K. Y, which were just him and his buddies doing

crazy stuff with a little bit of skateboarding thrown in

and I think now that's kind of where skateboard skate

videos have moved to and they really adopted kind of

bam's formula there.

Um In 2002, the Jackass movie came out, there was

a Jackass series that was on MTV for a long

time and they're now making the fourth movie, it's coming

out soon.

Um, ironically bam is not allowed to be in the

new movie for reasons I won't get into um, 2003

people that I am debuts on MTV viva la bam

was crazy.

Like I remember as a kid, it was just popular.

It was super crazy to me how, how popular it

was and how many kids around me and just like

wanted to be bam there's kids at the mall with

Obamacare skateboards and you know, hard to grams and all

of that.

Um, and I guess so the next, the next step

I saw just because, you know, I knew I was

gonna be running out of time because there's so much

here, uh, was so now, you know, fast forward all

these years and skateboarding is in the olympics.

Um, so I think there's a sentiment with old school

skateboarders that kind of say like, you know, the olympics

are all about money.

It's rich people getting rich, poor people getting part and

you know, it's not about the athletes at all.

It's about corporate bigwigs and so I think there's that

sentiment that um, it's moving away from the roots of

what skateboarding was when it first started.

Um, I do see some positives in, you know, the

fact that for a long time skateboarding was kind of

like a boys club and you know, in the olympics

that, you know, the men and women competed and I

think that's a great thing.

Um and so I guess that's kind of where we're

at from the begining of skateboarding up until the olympics,

which happened while I was doing this research project.

And so I guess we're moving into the conclusion here.

Um one thing I see about the way skateboarding media

has developed and how people react to it is that

now with all of the accessibility to skateboarding media on

instagram or wherever you are, um there there's much more

inclusion and I think that is really fantastic.

I think um you know, all of the women skaters

that got on the podium at the olympics had a

combined age of 42 so they're all really young and

I think for, you know, young women around the world

to be able to see that on such a large

scale, I think is really important.

Um and you know, and like, yeah, all around the

world, and so I think that's a really great thing,

but so the other part of this conclusion that I

kind of just came up with another question too, and

so that question would be if skateboarding is absorbed by

the dominant culture as it has been, you know, I

think the fact that it's in the olympics uh reinforces

that sentiment then, is it a subculture anymore, and I'm

not quite sure on that um this research is going

to be continuing uh for my capstone project and me

making a documentary about all of this, and that's sort

of what this project over the summer was preparing me

to do, and hopefully I'll be able to answer that

question. But sometimes, you know, there's just questions that can't

be answered and that's okay.

I think it's worth thinking about still.

Um so that's everything I got for you guys.

Thanks for taking the time to watch this presentation, and

if you have any questions then please feel free to

ask. Thanks.

Over the Coping: A look at Skateboarding Media and Subculture

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