This is a rebuttal to Part 1, posted previously.
The growth in off-board training and professionalism in action sports is a sign of maturity, rather than of a culture losing its way. Recall that no sport begins its life as an established institution; basketball wasn’t born as the NBA, golf wasn’t invented for the Masters. Both rose from obscurity to inspire Nike shoes and committed cable packages and kids’ leagues worldwide. Board sports are simply following an age-old trajectory.
Everything we include under the term “conventional athletics” was once just a makeshift diversion from daily labor, or else some form of military practice, and skateboarding (for instance) is no different. There’s nothing unique about a board as compared to a ball or a track or a court; every sport (every subculture, in fact) undergoes changes and growing pains as it becomes more widely adopted. Action sports’ evolution from fringe counter-culture to global phenomenon mirrors that of yoga, or internet use, or upscale coffeehouse patronage.
The current friction in surf/skate/snow communities over this unwelcome jockiness arises from a basic branding trick. Boarding is sold to its practitioners — both literally (through product marketing) and figuratively (as a cool tribe of which to be part) — as something special, slightly off-center, and protected from the ravages of the hated mainstream. Other subcultures sell out, but we don’t; it’s in our nature to quit the team, dodge the draft, call in sick, question everything.
But we haven’t been rebels for a couple of generations now; the notion that we are has survived only because we badly want to imagine ourselves the masters of our own lives and decisions, un-beholden to The Man. Rebels! If we can achieve that sense of control with the swipe of a credit card — a board = an image — then that’s much easier and more fun than actually behaving like individuals, which is risky and difficult.
Being an individual hasn’t much to do with how hard other people work to excel at something you enjoy — but this seems to be the premise of our disdain for professionalism in action sports (How dare they try?!).
In truth, being an individual hasn’t much to do with other people at all; that’s why it’s called being an individual. Get over it and go ride.
— Stuart
