Heaven is the absence of a half-pipe, or that difficult second blog...

For me, the summer of 2001 was all about skateboarding. I never actually got on one of the things, nor have I since, but they signified everything that was cool about the world to an impressionable 13 year old: There was the slightly edgy but non-threatening slacker-stoner appeal (not that I knew what a stoner was, mind you); then there was the sun-drenched Southern Californian whine-pop of Blink 182 and OPM; the baggy T shirts with the obscure logos of skateboard manufacturers on; and finally there were the endless hours devoted to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. In short, to be a professional skateboarder was the single most awesomely radical thing any one could ever be. Dude.

Of course, much like the American Pie films, organized youth activities and wet dreams, skateboarding is one of those things which really should remain peculiar to that strange period of early teens: the intoxicating mix of grown men and women behaving so utterly childishly - with blissful earnestness - captures perfectly the almost-pubescent desire to appear grown up, while safely clinging on to everything that makes childhood so comfortable. Unfortunately, like 'American Pie: The Naked Mile', the Scouting movement and nocturnal emissions, there are isolated pockets where skateboarding has left the realm of squeaky-voiced innocence, and permeated into the unrelentingly real world of everyday, adult life.

It is with these verbose and somewhat self-indulgent thoughts in mind that I sharpened my satirical typing finger in readiness for a precision dissection of the skateboarding students of Southern California. The sight of a philosophy major breezing past my designedly bedraggled form (finely sculpted to say "Approachable, British and literary") on a wooden plank with 4 rubber wheels loosely attached, Plato's Republic under one arm, and a total ignorance of just how ridiculous this sight might look to an opinionated European had become so common that I felt a civic duty to tell the rational world about it (or at least the three readers of Flown the Coop).

But when I actually sat down to lay into these Jean-Paul Satre/Bucky Lasek mongrel breeds, I found myself with (uncharacteristically) very little to say. Pondering on it for a moment, I realized that what I actually dislike about skateboarding is not the act itself: it's just standing on a plank with wheels, but the whole culture of idiocy that appears to come freely packaged and delivered alongside it. If you are not quite sure what I mean, I suggest an hour-and-a half's viewing of MTV: this should give ample opportunity for the enjoyment of several TV episodes devoted entirely to idiots fracturing fibulae and tearing cruciate ligaments as they (proudly) describe their heroic efforts to achieve 'sick air' off the roof of the public toilets at their local playground. It is this pathetic attempt to reconcile a vague notion of 'extreme sports' with the mediocrity of suburban middle class youth that I feel draws my spite more than anything else: The essentially immature and artificial belief that being able to perform a kickflip outside a municipal leisure centre somehow signifies someone as a member of a radical underclass who live by no-one's rules (but still make it home for tea, lovingly prepared by doting mothers across the Western world). While we should bear it in mind that Avril Lavigne's evident dyslexia and outright tunelessness made it difficult to pen her lyrics coherently, her claim that "He was a sk8er boi, she said see you later boy", and as such was rejected by a prim and proper girl, is ultimately misleading: In fact, most likely, he was a boy who owned a skateboard, and was probably more concerned with the correct angle at which to rip his outrageously baggy jeans, than to pay the girl in question any attention.

But the Southern Californian, Plato-reading skateboarder is a different breed. He or she has no claims to the culture of idiocy: the notion of a student-skateboarder evidently undermines this. Instead, the skateboard proves a quick and cost effective means of making one's way around the expanses of concrete and pedestrian-unfriendly street layouts of Orange County. Unlike a bike, a skateboard is portable (and crucially less nickable), and traveling from A to B on one actually looks quite fun.

I am almost tempted to get one myself. But then I realized that the one thing more ridiculous than a sk8er boi at his local park is a clueless English boy trying to balance on a skateboard in a public place.

Until later Duuudes...