Skating in America

Visiting a skate park that has been a part of your whole life since you were born never hits you so hard until you see that vast differences among the children that are present there. I was at Renette Skate Park observing for an ethnographic project, and I noticed the total change in style, gender, and racism as well as discrimination at the skate park. Since being in a culture shock since the last time I was there was only 5 years ago, I noticed a lot of change in the children's attitudes. For one, they constantly swore and they only seemed to be 13 or 14 years old. Another difference was how they treated each other. When I used to skate at Renette, if we would fall or not be able to land a trick, others will tell you to get up and keep trying cause they never looked down on you, they looked at you as a total equal. I noticed one particular kid who seemed to have something that gleamed in his eye when he skated and powerslided around. He seemed different then all the others because he wasn’t like them cause he didn’t take part in their discrimination. He wasn’t the best, but he wasn’t the worst either. He was about 14, and was probably the youngest out of his group, which contained about 6. I noticed that he fell a lot more then the rest of his friends did, and he scraped himself a lot cause he was wearing shorts instead of jeans. But every time he fell it was a totally different experience for him then everyone else. I was super interested in him cause every time he totally ate concrete, he would take a couple seconds and check for cuts and bruises, wipe off the dirt and gravel, and the sawed concrete, and then grab his skateboard and just look at it. Every time he did this his friends would make fun of him and say, “Looking at the board isn’t going to make you any better!” But I knew exactly what he was thinking and trying to accomplish in his mind. He was looking at the skateboard from a different angle then everyone else was looking at it.