Do Skateboarders use Drugs?
The current (August 19') issue of Thrasher features an article titled "Over It." It's a bunch of interviews of legendary pro skateboarders that went from huge drug users to total sobriety. They tell the story of how and why that transition happened. As I was looking at the article, a young man (about 22) told me that skateboarding is a sport with a lot of drug use.
I immediately tried to explain to him that there is nothing inherently evil about a piece of plywood with four wheels on the bottom. But I didn't say exactly that. Since he had been a football player in high school, I asked him if any of the kids on his team used drugs. He told me that they did. So I asked him whether he that causes him to think that football is a sport for drug users. Since he makes that immediate conclusion when he finds out that a skateboarder uses drugs, then why not draw the same conclusion in football? I also asked him about weightlifting, since it clearly promotes steroid use. But no one wants to ban weights do they?
Nonetheless, I couldn't resist continuing to wonder if he had any sort of point. I did realize there is a big difference between drug use in skateboarding verses other sports. (Is skateboarding a sport?) In the 1980's, baseball suffered a major scandal of cocaine use. Some players even avoided prison time by snitching on their dealers. Where I live, the captain of a high school football team was arrested at school with enough marijuana for intent to distribute. I was told by a teacher at the school that the coach had covered up for the teenager when he would have been caught drinking underage. In other words, they wanted him to keep playing football so they covered up for him. Then worse things happened. If he had been caught drinking underage, then he perhaps would have changed his ways and never been arrested with so much weed. Football literally contributed to his delinquency.
So why don't people want to ban baseball or football? Why aren't these seen as the life wasting activities of a few potheads? On my high school baseball team, one player smoked weed before every practice. Why isn't baseball a pothead activity then? That's exactly what they say about skateboarding. And yet example after example of drug use in other sports could be enumerated. So why are other sports given a pass? Why are skateboarders judged before you even meet them? It's simple. It's the portrayal in the media.
With the exception of chewing Tobacco, Football and Baseball don't celebrate drug use in their media. They just totally use it all the time and keep it quiet. The examples are so numerous that it's about as certain as you could get. But skateboarding will freely speak about drug use. As the Thrasher article demonstrates, skateboarding will also share the anti drug side of the story too.
So team sports use drugs and don't talk about it. Skateboarding uses drugs and talks about it while also talking about opposition to drug use. Skateboarding has more of a method of letting pros say what they think. Skateboarders get to talk about everything. Football is losing it's mind because a few players have different political views and want to kneel for the anthem. I don't remember a skate event ever having the anthem sung. From the skateboarder perspective, the backlash over kneeling is super silly. For example, Lizard King used to literally tell kids to worship Satan with him. I think Lizard was just doing it to be edgy. But don't you think there are football pros out there who would be willing to have an outrageous stance on religion or politics? They don't get to do they? Skateboarding has always had more of a free market of ideas. Team sports have always had more of, well, the opposite. You say what is allowed.
So which do you think is better? Do you want people to be able to have their say or not? Skateboarding is courting controversy in 2020. It will be entering the Olympics for the first time. Will they test for the PED of skateboarding, Alcohol?
I think these different approaches to free speech stem from the fundamental nature of the sports. In football, you have an objective. You are required to score more points than the other team. This alone is already upsetting skateboarders. What are points exactly? Do they even exist? And why must we endlessly pursue them? I think one can go very far in life without points. What do you do with the points once you've got them?
And team sports have so many rules about how you are allowed to complete the goal. You have to get a touchdown in the other team's endzone. Yes that's literally what they call it. There's tons of other rules too. If that wasn't enough, you have this entire other set of rules from the coaches. They plan these things called plays which direct exactly how you will attempt to get the points.
One thing that always fascinated me is the super amount of anger associated with other sports. People always get so mad at everything. What I am wondering is, why though? I mean, why? Why is this the go to response? Pretend you are an alien visiting earth. Would you not be confused to visit a local high school on Friday? You'd see grown men sweating and swearing at teenagers. They even throw their fancy hats on the ground and stomp on them! Isn't it a bit strange? It seems that they have concluded that the anger helps them score more points somehow.
I once read an article written by a girl for other girls on advice for dating skateboarders. One of her main points was that skaters are generally pretty chill. I don't know if that's really true. But compared to the insane levels of anger that are normal in other sports, skateboarding is dead by comparison. Don't get me wrong. There are skaters who get angry and break their boards. I know just such a guy. Some people are just angry people. But it's certainly not the type of anger you find in other sports. This angry skater was once skating with my boss's son. My boss came to work the next day very upset with me about the anger on display. He said that he missed a trick and threw his board and cussed. But doesn't this go on normally in other sports?
I guess part of the issue is that team sports require teamwork to succeed. Plus they have defined objectives. Honestly they can be a ton of fun too. But it's necessary to get everyone to cooperate. Although anger doesn't really seem like a successful long term method to me. Skateboarding is an inherently free activity. You can ride it upside down with your shoes on your hands if you like. One guy used to ride ironing boards or something. The funny thing is that it's also very athletic. And it has plenty of drama regarding who or what happens to be cool. It has strong appeal to the excessively impulsive and risk loving nature of teenage males. And then girls can do exactly what they want on their boards too. Most importantly, if you fail, then there's nobody else to get angry with. Just try again or get mad at yourself. I had one friend who would blame his shoes. He would take them off and throw them in the bushes when he couldn't land a trick.
So since it's a free activity, then it's very prone to attracting people that value freedom. Thus the media will have a free market of ideas. I always wondered why being treated like a little soldier and obeying barked out orders was anyone's idea of fun. Because that's very much what many sports are. I used to wonder this quite a bit. Why does anyone think this is fun? It isn't fun. It's obedience. I get plenty of exercises in obedience from my job and my education. Whatever happened to taking a break from all of that?
I once remember doing a church youth retreat. I was on a frisbee team with all middle school boys as their supervising adult. I hucked a few long range passes and botched them terribly. Everyone else on my team got beyond angry. They didn't only get mad a me. They got mad a each other too. It's just so weird. I missed like 3 or 4 passes. As a skateboarder, you react differently. If you try something difficult and fail, then everyone gets excited and yells for you to try it again. These kids screamed that I should never be allowed to touch the frisbee again.
Their reasons are so obvious though. Team sports push you to win in the most boring way possible. If you try something hard and fail, then the other team wins. Your win is only exciting because the other team made it difficult for you Skateboarding only cares about what is exciting in some way. And yet I think skateboarding is closer to the heart of what all sports are really about. Why do you tune in on Sunday to see the NFL monsters obliterate each other? It's because you want to see something exciting. Skateboarding sort of eliminates the middle man of the other team and the points thing. Just go for it. Nobody is stopping you.
I immediately tried to explain to him that there is nothing inherently evil about a piece of plywood with four wheels on the bottom. But I didn't say exactly that. Since he had been a football player in high school, I asked him if any of the kids on his team used drugs. He told me that they did. So I asked him whether he that causes him to think that football is a sport for drug users. Since he makes that immediate conclusion when he finds out that a skateboarder uses drugs, then why not draw the same conclusion in football? I also asked him about weightlifting, since it clearly promotes steroid use. But no one wants to ban weights do they?
Nonetheless, I couldn't resist continuing to wonder if he had any sort of point. I did realize there is a big difference between drug use in skateboarding verses other sports. (Is skateboarding a sport?) In the 1980's, baseball suffered a major scandal of cocaine use. Some players even avoided prison time by snitching on their dealers. Where I live, the captain of a high school football team was arrested at school with enough marijuana for intent to distribute. I was told by a teacher at the school that the coach had covered up for the teenager when he would have been caught drinking underage. In other words, they wanted him to keep playing football so they covered up for him. Then worse things happened. If he had been caught drinking underage, then he perhaps would have changed his ways and never been arrested with so much weed. Football literally contributed to his delinquency.
So why don't people want to ban baseball or football? Why aren't these seen as the life wasting activities of a few potheads? On my high school baseball team, one player smoked weed before every practice. Why isn't baseball a pothead activity then? That's exactly what they say about skateboarding. And yet example after example of drug use in other sports could be enumerated. So why are other sports given a pass? Why are skateboarders judged before you even meet them? It's simple. It's the portrayal in the media.
With the exception of chewing Tobacco, Football and Baseball don't celebrate drug use in their media. They just totally use it all the time and keep it quiet. The examples are so numerous that it's about as certain as you could get. But skateboarding will freely speak about drug use. As the Thrasher article demonstrates, skateboarding will also share the anti drug side of the story too.
So team sports use drugs and don't talk about it. Skateboarding uses drugs and talks about it while also talking about opposition to drug use. Skateboarding has more of a method of letting pros say what they think. Skateboarders get to talk about everything. Football is losing it's mind because a few players have different political views and want to kneel for the anthem. I don't remember a skate event ever having the anthem sung. From the skateboarder perspective, the backlash over kneeling is super silly. For example, Lizard King used to literally tell kids to worship Satan with him. I think Lizard was just doing it to be edgy. But don't you think there are football pros out there who would be willing to have an outrageous stance on religion or politics? They don't get to do they? Skateboarding has always had more of a free market of ideas. Team sports have always had more of, well, the opposite. You say what is allowed.
So which do you think is better? Do you want people to be able to have their say or not? Skateboarding is courting controversy in 2020. It will be entering the Olympics for the first time. Will they test for the PED of skateboarding, Alcohol?
I think these different approaches to free speech stem from the fundamental nature of the sports. In football, you have an objective. You are required to score more points than the other team. This alone is already upsetting skateboarders. What are points exactly? Do they even exist? And why must we endlessly pursue them? I think one can go very far in life without points. What do you do with the points once you've got them?
And team sports have so many rules about how you are allowed to complete the goal. You have to get a touchdown in the other team's endzone. Yes that's literally what they call it. There's tons of other rules too. If that wasn't enough, you have this entire other set of rules from the coaches. They plan these things called plays which direct exactly how you will attempt to get the points.
One thing that always fascinated me is the super amount of anger associated with other sports. People always get so mad at everything. What I am wondering is, why though? I mean, why? Why is this the go to response? Pretend you are an alien visiting earth. Would you not be confused to visit a local high school on Friday? You'd see grown men sweating and swearing at teenagers. They even throw their fancy hats on the ground and stomp on them! Isn't it a bit strange? It seems that they have concluded that the anger helps them score more points somehow.
I once read an article written by a girl for other girls on advice for dating skateboarders. One of her main points was that skaters are generally pretty chill. I don't know if that's really true. But compared to the insane levels of anger that are normal in other sports, skateboarding is dead by comparison. Don't get me wrong. There are skaters who get angry and break their boards. I know just such a guy. Some people are just angry people. But it's certainly not the type of anger you find in other sports. This angry skater was once skating with my boss's son. My boss came to work the next day very upset with me about the anger on display. He said that he missed a trick and threw his board and cussed. But doesn't this go on normally in other sports?
I guess part of the issue is that team sports require teamwork to succeed. Plus they have defined objectives. Honestly they can be a ton of fun too. But it's necessary to get everyone to cooperate. Although anger doesn't really seem like a successful long term method to me. Skateboarding is an inherently free activity. You can ride it upside down with your shoes on your hands if you like. One guy used to ride ironing boards or something. The funny thing is that it's also very athletic. And it has plenty of drama regarding who or what happens to be cool. It has strong appeal to the excessively impulsive and risk loving nature of teenage males. And then girls can do exactly what they want on their boards too. Most importantly, if you fail, then there's nobody else to get angry with. Just try again or get mad at yourself. I had one friend who would blame his shoes. He would take them off and throw them in the bushes when he couldn't land a trick.
So since it's a free activity, then it's very prone to attracting people that value freedom. Thus the media will have a free market of ideas. I always wondered why being treated like a little soldier and obeying barked out orders was anyone's idea of fun. Because that's very much what many sports are. I used to wonder this quite a bit. Why does anyone think this is fun? It isn't fun. It's obedience. I get plenty of exercises in obedience from my job and my education. Whatever happened to taking a break from all of that?
I once remember doing a church youth retreat. I was on a frisbee team with all middle school boys as their supervising adult. I hucked a few long range passes and botched them terribly. Everyone else on my team got beyond angry. They didn't only get mad a me. They got mad a each other too. It's just so weird. I missed like 3 or 4 passes. As a skateboarder, you react differently. If you try something difficult and fail, then everyone gets excited and yells for you to try it again. These kids screamed that I should never be allowed to touch the frisbee again.
Their reasons are so obvious though. Team sports push you to win in the most boring way possible. If you try something hard and fail, then the other team wins. Your win is only exciting because the other team made it difficult for you Skateboarding only cares about what is exciting in some way. And yet I think skateboarding is closer to the heart of what all sports are really about. Why do you tune in on Sunday to see the NFL monsters obliterate each other? It's because you want to see something exciting. Skateboarding sort of eliminates the middle man of the other team and the points thing. Just go for it. Nobody is stopping you.
Comments
Post a Comment