Skirts and Inverts Pt. 2

As much as I enjoy a good preamble in my blog posts, as those of you keeping score have no doubt noticed, there isn't a whole lot that can be said to precede today's entry. For those of you who may be new ( I think I might see one, way in the back there...), I had written this post about three weeks back, and in spite of the great feedback I received (seriously, all you guys are awesome), I felt there was something left unsaid. Truth be told, what I had really wanted for the first post right off the bat was more of a woman's perspective on the matter, though my efforts to receive such a perspective proved fruitless by my self-imposed deadline, and with no time to develop anything else so as to put my initial idea on the back-burner, I posted, and waited.

the backbone of this second part came to me via my Facebook inbox, in the form of young Jess Speedie. Some of you reading this may have met Jess before, but for those of you who haven't, allow me to offer some insight:

During 2009/2010, due to the fact that I had taken a year off from school, I took a second job as a skateboarding instructor at CJ Skatepark in Toronto. At the start of, I believe, the second week of Holiday camps in December, a young camper asked me if I was able to drop in on the park's twelve-foot tall vert ramp. I happily obliged the camper by proceeding to give all of the campers from that particular week an impromptu demonstration of all six tricks I can actually do on vert. Afterwards, I was approached by a young lady who had enrolled in the camp; she complimented my skating, and asked me if I would help her with her frontside airs. Eighteen months later, and she looks like this:

The young lady, for anyone not paying any attention whatsoever, is Jess Speedie.

When I took it upon myself to query Jess about the nature of women and femininity in skateboarding, she was, unbeknownst to me, spending a week at Woodward further honing her abilities. Still, though, when the questions did eventually get to her, she was more than happy to offer her insight.

BTJ: As a skater, how did/does being surrounded by males affect your personality/interests outside of skating, if at all?

Jess: Frontside Ollie

JS: Well, I have to say, being around males does affect my personality. It inspires me and pushes me to be more out-going, and less finicky about trying new things. And also to be willing to go all out, and be tough and strong all the time. Basically to just stand out, and be proud and aggressive, despite any differences, disadvantages or lack of experience that I may have. In terms of interests though, it doesn't really affect me.

BTJ: Do you feel the majority of female skaters are inherently masculine? Why or why not?

JS: No, I don't think female skaters are inherently masculine. I think they just enjoy flowing around on a skateboard (for me personally, I love the rhythm and freedom of skating, it's kinda like music). They're attracted to the same thing about skateboarding that males are. But that doesn't make them masculine.

BTJ: Is there a place for femininity in skating, or will it always be perceived as a hindrance?

Erin Wolfkiel, potential X-Games Medallist.
Way to blow it, ESPN

JS: I think there is a place for femininity in skating, I just don't think it's that big or popular. It will probably be a bit of a hindrance until a girl comes up who has dialed 720s and can skate strong and aggressively; someone who is as fun to watch as one of the pro male skaters.

For that last question:
While I was at Woodward, I met a female skater, Erin Wolfkiel (she was my counsellor). She was going to compete at the X Games until the women's division got so wonderfully cancelled. During my time with her, we had some really great conversations, and I discovered that she has some super interesting ideas to offer about female skateboarding, the challenges it will face, and its future. She thinks in a really cool way. I think you should get some opinions/answers from her, she really wants to get her message out there and heard, and she honestly has some amazing things to say. If you'd like, I can contact her and ask her your questions and send you her response. I think it would make your blog post even more interesting and thought-provoking. 

I did take Jess up on her offer to gain some more insight from miss Wolfkiel, however at this time Erin has not, for whatever reason, been able to offer her two-cents on the matter. Said lack of communication notwithstanding, however, I do feel inclined to share with you a short documentary featuring Erin, that may, in fact, answer some of my questions inadvertently.

I want to end this post not by offering my own insight, as I feel I did so fairly thoroughly in the first part. Instead, I want to urge those reading this blog to ponder this matter on their own. Form your own opinions based on what you know and what you've seen. To the male readers, maybe use this an encouragement to get your sisters/moms/girlfriends/wives to give skateboarding a try, and to the female readers, use this as a fire to go out, grab a board, and learn how to rip, or rip harder. Who knows, one day you may be doing frontside airs higher than the person you got to teach you them in the first place.

The Eternal Variable

When considering what to write about for the Monday's post, part of me wanted to assume that there were going to be hoards of skate bloggers out there who were no doubt going to recap this weekend's X-Games, and that perhaps ESPN's annual Hawk and pony show would, by the time this post goes live, be flogged to death worse than crailslides were in the mid 2000s. Then, of course, the thought occurred to me that "wait a minute, this is the X-Games... No one is going to blog about them because no one cares enough to watch them anymore!" To be fair, I stopped watching the X-Games on TV probably about five or six years ago. When I was younger, I remember being upset because TSN (Canada's equivalent to ESPN, for those of you not living here) would never show the street contests on TV. I mean, yes, vert was cool to watch, but at that point I didn't skate transitions, and street was my deal. Eventually, I got tired of being disappointed by one of the two or three Canadian simulcasts of the contest being motocross, BMX, or Rally Racing, and truth be

"Street" Obstacle, 2010.

told, even if I had the opportunity to watch skating, I found the vert and big air contests had become formulaic (whoever does the most rotations wins), and the street contests were predicable and boring, with horrendous layouts that looked like neither street nor skatepark, but rather some manner of oversized modern art gallery. Like most skaters, I scoffed at the redundancy of the contest, and if I really wanted to watch the footage, I knew it would be online in a matter of days.

Street obstacle, 2011.

Oddly enough, something broke me this year. Something within me compelled me to set me PVR to record whatever X-Games coverage was being simulcast up north, without having any knowledge of what said coverage would be, and proceed to watch it at my nearest possible convenience. Truth be told, I think a large part of it had to do with this year's frankly astonishing street course, though I believe a lot of it could be attributed to the fact that in the last few years, someone slapped ESPN good and hard. Perhaps it was on account of the whole cancelling vert debacle a few years back, though I can only really speculate. Point is, it seems as if the coordinators of the X-Games may have finally realized that, in spite of their admittedly impressive seventeen year tenure as an annual multi-discipline contest, and in spite of making for a good payday for the competitors, the contest had become the butt of ninety-eight percent of the jokes told by its bread and butter, skateboarders (the other two percent consisting of Jeremey Rogers jokes).

Of the four days and plethora of different events that made up this year's contest, for some reason TSN only allotted two hours of coverage on Friday and two on Sunday, meaning that of the four days and plethora of events, Canadian TV coverage was made up of two hours of skate street preliminaries, and two hours of rally racing finals. Needless to say I forwent the rally cars. The street prelims were held on the Friday, though in a house with six people and fewer TVs, the PVR proved to be a godsend.

Saturday morning I made a point to wake up early enough to watch the street prelims before the TV would be commandeered in the name of sports to which I hold no interest, only to have something very interesting happen. As I was in the midst of watching the end of the third of four heats, my dad walks into the room to take care of a few things for work. As I was preparing myself to turn over the remote control, I hear a comment from my dad about Ryan Decenzo:

"Hey, he looks kinda like you!"

"Yeah, I guess. Maybe it's because he's Canadian. He's in first right now."

"No kidding! Good for him!"

As the fourth and final heat carried out on TV, I found my dad making more and more comments about what he saw:

"Aw, man, that was cool." (In response to a number of David Gravette's more unconventional tricks).

"Huh. So he is human." (After seeing Nyjah Huston miss a trick).

Being the only person in my immediate family to ever have any real interest in skateboarding, it was strange to be sitting, having that kind of a moment with the same man who, as I was a young teenager, assured me that I would eventually stop skating. I talked about the whole experience with Deanna over the weekend, and it got me thinking; maybe there's a reason that, even though the X-Games have had a history of being maligned by skateboarders, they have managed to persevere for nearly two decades now. Maybe the secret to the X-Games' success lies in their ability to make the sports it covers relative to those who don't actually participate in them.

Tony Hawk RIDE tried, but couldn't hack it...

I can understand why most skaters would rally against such a thing, and I may take a modicum of flack for saying this, but I, for one, see no problem in being able to try and share skateboarding with non-skaters. If the coordinators of the X-Games have somehow figured out a way to make a televised skateboarding event that people who don't skate can watch, and relate to, than I, for one, am all for the idea of skaters being able to sit down in front of the TV for four days in July with their families, friends, and significant others, and have a moment in which the joys of the activity they love can, to a degree, be shared with the people around them. Provided the contest coordinators continue their recent trend of listening to actual skateboarders before making decisions (cancellation of women's vert notwithstanding), the future looks surprisingly bright, and I will set my PVR to record the contest next year, in the hopes that I will be treated to some more actual skateboarding, anyway.