“In politics, an organized minority is a political majority."
- JESSE JACKSON
GO SKATEBOARDING DAY 2006
PHOTOS BY SHON CHEN
Skateboarding in most places in the world has been booming like crazy for perhaps the longest stretch in skateboarding’s 60 year-old experience. Those of you who started skating post 1990 may think this is going to last forever and that we are invincible. But for those of us older dogs, we wonder when the next “death” will occur, since, if there is one, it’s long over due. Skateboarding has died four times and each time at the end of what people would call a “golden age".
The International Association of Skateboard Companies (the IASC) doesn’t want to see us struggle through yet another great skate-industry famine, and so in an attempt to ward off the effects of “faddism” and stop skateboarding from ever weaving in and out of popularity again, the IASC chose June 21st, (a day kids usually get out of school for the summer holidays) to simply be that of “Go Skateboarding Day”.
GSD was designed to bring us all together for the sake of skateboarding itself and nothing but, and since the first one 3 three years ago, things have gone as planned. Each year, and increased number of skaters catch wind of this day and each time they are either consciously or unconsciously reminded that skateboarding is not a fad and that skaters will be hitting the streets for as long as there are years on this earth. For the full 24 hour period dubbed in their honor, skaters use this day to let it all hang out and concern them selves only with skateboarding.
Upon closer inspection you might even go as far as to say we’re witnessing the steady raise of skateboarding’s Independence Day. After all, together we are a nation, a leaderless, borderless, underdog kind of nation. We are an international nation whose citizens are found in almost any country that isn’t completely dirt or ice-covered.
I’m not sure any of the Taiwanese skaters knew on June 21st, 2004 that it was in fact “Go Skateboarding Day”. I myself was clueless to it then and must have completely missed it. Then GSD 2005 came but it was still more of a rumor around here than it was a holiday. Ahhh… but not this year… this year we were ready and waiting.
Here in Taiwan, Go Skateboarding Day was a timely gift and has come in very handy indeed. With no solid history to tell them otherwise, skates here have had trouble deciphering just what skateboarding in the western world is all about, and since I arrived in Taiwan 5 or 6 years ago, the Taiwanese participation in skateboarding seemed as though it was ultimately headed steadily downward - not steadily upward like I had expected. Due to an absence of translated magazines and subtitled DVDs, Taiwan has for years been plagued with fashion junkies and overly competitive attitudes both inside and outside their ranks. This has of course helped give rise to a rash of clique-ish attitudes and… the Asian X-Games in full force.
”No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” - ALICE WALKER
Last year’s Go Skateboarding Day was a day when myself and a couple of local skaters decided it was finally time to start the much needed Taiwanese Skateboarders Association. Since then we’ve gone through the motions, had countless meetings with countless skaters focusing on whatever we see holding us down and voting on what should be done to send us in a more natural direction, and in the direction of fun.
Myself and a handful of friends are now up to our necks in various projects related to the survival of grass roots skateboarding in Taiwan. I won’t go into detail as to exactly the state or status of Taiwan’s skate scene (for that you’ll have to read my article in an upcoming issue of THAT magazine this summer about “the Scene” and the TSA) but I will tell you that skateboarding sprung up merely 12 years ago and since then has been in dire need for a skater-run organization like the TSA and “Go Skateboarding Day” was a big help in having it finally take off.
This year, Taiwanese skaters knew full-well what day it was, and it showed. Skaters from all over the city zeroed-in on one of our many common meeting spots and fun quickly ensued. A classic game of S.K.A.T.E., an improvised skate-relay race and scooter-pull session to name but a few activities, both planned and unplanned. One of these kids even made a banner, most likely in a mad hurry and under the heavy influence of something awful, was quite possibly the ugliest banner known to man. It was supposed to read Go Skateboarding Day 2006 but to anyone brave enough to stare at it, looked like the abstract art you often see some artists throw together to shock the world. You know, the art that uses rat’s blood as paint, that kind of art. Apparently next year’s banner is going to be much better. They’re thinking about cat’s blood next time…
…I can’t bloody well wait.
After a while the spot got old and the entire mob (a mob so big it warranted police escort) thundered across our poor unsuspecting town to the next spot, then the next…and the next, all the while holding our hideous banner high, and with great pride.
I don’t think any of us stopped smiling the entire day.
At the close of the evening, lay a nation destroyed. Yet at the same time, another nation, our nation, had just finished remodeling.
The best part about this whole thing is that this happens each and every year and every year were are a year older, a year wiser, and always comparing these GSDs to the previous year’ GSDs and naturally trying to outdo them.
Till next time boys and girls… the fate of skateboarding (and of the entire world it seems these days) rests with you!
“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”
- HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
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