Skateboarding is a cool sport at the professional level. Seeing guys drop off a nearly vertical ramp and accelerate to high speeds, only to go straight up and whirl through the air before landing smoothly, is endlessly entertaining. One of the few books I’ve actually enjoyed reading was Tony Hawk’s biography, because he was very much a child star, but instead of doing every drug he could get his hands on (Drew Barrymore), becoming a fat, bearded douchebag, making sex tapes and starring on the worst reality TV shows ever to be green-lit (Dustin Diamond) or dating the ugliest “woman” alive while simultaneously giving credence to the idea that redheads are the spawn of Satan (Lindsay Lohan—kioli!), he skateboarded his ass off and made the sport what it is today. And not to toot my own horn here, but I was a God among other prepubescent kids men at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
If your name is Tony Hawk, I wish you a lifetime of excellent skateboarding. If your voice still cracks when you say your name, I wish you a life of infertility.
However, the pro level of skateboarding contains, what, 100 people? Maybe 200 at most? For the rest of the ‘boarding world, I hold absolutely no restraint when I say I hope each and every one of you do what the kid in this video does—crush your nuts on a steel rail (no room under those skinny jeans for a cup anyway). Surely there have been hundreds of these videos put on the Internet, and I hope for every one on YouTube there’s been thousands of undocumented incidents. There are way too many tight jeans wearing, world hating, spoiled skateboarding idiots today, but knowing they won’t be able to reproduce is a very reaffirming idea.
There’s a family that lives a few houses down from me, and they have two sons, ages 11 and 9, let’s say. They like to skateboard in the street—whatever, not my problem they’re wasting their youth on a dream they’ll never achieve. But they do it in the middle of the road. On one occasion, I had to stop and wait for them to move out of the way. Their response? The middle finger. Now I won’t even start to dissect what that says about the kids, their sorry excuse for parents or the state of Dix Hills as a whole. But it says a lot about the culture of skateboarding in the 21st century. Who decided that to plant both feet on a board and kick, push around, you had to have a level of disdain for everything under the sun? Life is so hard, 11-year-old two houses down the street from me. Does the cute girl at school not notice you? What does she know! Don’t have enough allowance money for another $300 hoodie? The world is out to get you, dude! Mom wouldn’t buy you the new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for PS3? Don’t worry, I’d kick your ass at it anyway.
UPDATE (By Brad Pareso):
It seems the majority of the 172 (and counting) comments to my blurb have been from first-time visitors to the Press site and first-time readers of my column. So: Hi. I’m 23 years old, and I get paid to be snarky, petulant and poke fun at everything, from celebrities to trends and all the crap on the Internet. Am I funny? Some people think so, most people don’t. Everyone gets an opinion.
Roughly 10 percent of everything I write is actually true; the other 90 is total farce, completely distorted truth and utter nonsense. In the past, I’ve claimed to find Larry the Cable Guy hilarious, that I have multiple illegitimate children who are forced into labor and I have a tendency to commit suicide when someone talks about their marriage proposal. And for every time I trashtalk on something else, it’s closely followed by self-deprecation. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at, right?
In the case of the “If You Like To Skateboard, I Hope You Never Have Children” blurb, a bunch of the comments were funny. Very funny. But, as most things on the Internet do, they started to drift to unnecessary areas. Maybe a disclaimer is warranted with my column. But if anyone sincerely thinks I wish infertility on the skateboarding community, I’m at a loss for words. Like I said before, maybe 10 percent of my column is actually true. In this case, two things were: That I used to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater and that two kids live a few houses down from me. Do I hope every skateboarder crushes their genitalia on a steel rail? As funny as they are, it’s certainly not something I’d want to experience. Do I hate those kids? I play wiffleball with them during the summer. The sport of skateboarding isn’t something that appeals to me, but what does that matter? If you can get back on the board after failing over and over at a kickflip, power to you. There’s far too many lazy adolescent kids, and doing any sort of physical activity is a much better outlet than sitting on the couch. I think a few people mentioned that skateboarding keeps kids away from doing drugs and getting involved with bad groups—obviously a very positive thing—and skateparks are often the nicest parts of a town.
So to Geoff Schweigert, SkateDaily.net and anybody else who read this and though it was just another blatant stereotyping of skateboarding culture—it was, and that was the joke. If you took it as anything other than a stupid, ridiculous, un-researched and flat-out incorrect read, I’m sorry. In my world, that’s how it reads. The intent was for people to laugh and move along, but instead a chunk of a community took it to heart. And for that, my sincerest apologies.
