The crack of 2010, and lo and behold, old dudes in St Louis like to skateboard. That’s crazy talk, I can’t believe it. In the words of MC, “Old guys skateboarding? Well, now I’ve heard everything.” Check out Recapturing thrills, spills from St. Louis Today. Still awake? head on over to An Ethnographic Study of the Skateboarding Culture, which is where the title of this post came from. Unbelievably, the data for this scholarly paper was obtained by watching the DVD Planes, Trains and Skateboards, focusing on X Games X in Los Angeles, CA. Are you kidding me? A scientific analysis based on on someone’s video editing bias? I mean, why not choose the movie Thrashin’ instead? Seems just about as valid.
– Thanks to Bob Mechtly and Daddy Yo for the tips.
7 comments
Scott Fadler
I miss the Old Man nights at Ramp Riders http://www.rampriders.net/ I look forward to this winter!
kilwag
Good one. It was actually the headline and subject matter of the article that made me skip reading the caption and article all together. No offense to our St Louis readers of a certain age, but this is about the hundredth time this article has been written, and most of them were written three years ago.
Danimal
the spelling errors in that stltoday photo caption made me not want to read the article, what the fuck happened to proof-reading?
brk
if i read the ethnographic study correctly, the author is one Linda Moore, Senior Director, Business Administration; ESPN Productions Inc. The segment of the video used as the basis of the study was entirely filmed at x-games x. According to wikipedia, “The X Games is a commercial annual sports event, controlled and arranged by US sports broadcaster ESPN…”
using one portion of one source as the basis of a scientific paper, which is actually marketing attempting to disguise itself as ethnography? fuck espn. on all levels.
kc
Why do people try to analyze skateboarding? There are so many types of skating. We all have our reasons why we skate. How can someone that doesn’t skate really understand it?
It’s like trying to explain how water tastes, or explaining to me the need for Twittering.
bk
I personally shot and edited “Planes, Trains and Skateboards” for WCS in 2004 and I claim no responsibility for these findings in this study. They should’ve considered to put some time out there on the streets, parks, pools, ditches, pipes, ramps, to cull “real deal” findings for their study. But then again, are they really skaters? Do contests matter?
Welsh Pete
Finally someone took some precious time to get to know the real us.