Boy Scouts get hip new badges, worst design ever.

We’ve covered the one percenters today, so in the interest of being fair and balanced, let’s talk about Boy Scouts. While there is a history of skateboarding and Scouting in the USA, BBC News reports on “a revamp of the scout movement will allow boys and girls to earn badges for skills such as skateboarding, making a fruit salad and racing quad bikes.”

The official requirements for the Street Sports merit activity badge requires a six month investment in the activity if you’re a regular scout (ages 10-14), but they actually get easier if you are an Explorer. Looks like you just have to skate for 25 hours and show improvement. Maybe they should make you skate for 25 hours straight, or 25 spots in 25 days.

– Thanks to Guy Duncan for the tip.

Street Sports Scouting activity badge

What are street sports? For Explorers it’s defined as “roller-skating, skateboarding, BMXing or any other street sport as agreed by the leadership team.” According to this video (don’t watch it, just take our word) street sports also include something called zorbing, which is rolling down a hill in a giant inflated ball.

Man these are some ugly looking patches. The Scouts version is just plain bad, but the horrid color scheme of the Explorer version seems to be designed to make sure nobody wants to actually Join the Explorers organization. On the plus side, they added a couple lines so it looks like the guy is actually skating in the street.

If you don’t think you can hack it, the corporately responsible folks at Fruit Shoot have put together a helpful brochure of how to tips that looks like they got a 10 year old kid to do the layout for. I’d say they used a Graphic Design activity badge candidate, but they don’t seem to have one for that. The best part is where they try and explain how to get kids to wear safety gear:

Play it safe. Yes your Scouts may think this is the boring bit, but it’s essential so make sure they take note. They should always wear their safety gear, if it’s cool enough for the likes of the professionals such as Tony Hawke, Mat Hoffman and Fabio Da Silva, then it’s cool enough for them. Stress the importance of gaining a good grasp of the basics first – there’s nothing wrong with being a beginner, even the professionals were beginners at one time.

Fabio Da Silva? Errr… wha?

When I was a kid in Cub Scouts in Michigan, we went to summer camp out in the woods the same summer my best friend and I had just gotten our first plastic banana boards. Were so into skateboarding that we almost didn’t want to go to camp. We satisfied our jones by scavenging the forest for large sticks that had a slight bend in them, like a kicktail on a skateboard. Then we cut them to size and practiced our tick-tacks, sans wheels. True story. Gary Wang, where are you? His folks were from Taiwan, and whenever they returned from visiting family, Gary would have all these exotic pairs of Adidas shoes direct from the factory. Apparently, some Cub Scouts still have a hard time separating their scouting activities from skateboarding. An article in the Foster Daily Democrat talks about a ten year old kid named Gregory Doane who made his pinewood derby car look like a Baker skateboard. Unfortunately, there is no picture.