the berrics

• By cyril on
• Sat Oct 20, 02:59 PM

A New York Times article said recently this business we’re in,
skateboarding, is a $5 billion a year industry. This astounding
figure brings two questions to mind: how is there so much money being
poured into something that’s totally illegal everywhere you go? And
where the hell is all the money going? Two things for sure; not in my
pocket and certainly not into building adequate places where
skateboarders can actually do the one thing that continues to keep
skateboarding alive. And that’s to skateboard.

So why has it continued to thrive? Well, by our very nature we’re a
creative group, a persistent group and a somewhat lawless one. If
we’ve been told not to skate, we leave and come back only in the
middle of the night with lights and generators. If a rail’s been
knobbed, we de-knob. If a ledge has been skate-proofed, we unskate-
proof it. If there are cracks in the concrete, we bondo them. If
there’s a kink on the end of an otherwise perfect rail, we cut it
off. It’s what we have to do.

Two years ago I came across some pretty heavy criticism for making
skatespots. My position was always, I’d rather make spots skateable
than not skate at all. Nowadays, there isn’t a single issue of a magazine or a
video where I don’t see a spot that’s been tinkered with to make
better or completely manufactured altogether. Why? Because
skateboarding is illegal everywhere you go and to those who would
like to see it stay alive do what they have to do to keep it alive.
It’s the natural order of survival, it’s the evolution of things.
When swimming pools were becoming harder and harder to skate, the
first vert ramp was born. When vert ramps weren’t readily
available for every kid on a skateboard, those kids took it to the street
and they did this because they’d rather have places to skate than not skate at all.
It’s called change.

As you know, things change. Boards change, shoes change, tricks
change, skaters change. Change is the manifestation of time and time
has shown us that skateboarding is here for as long as we, as
individuals and as a community, create it into existence. Although
not nearly enough of the $5 billion a year being made in this
industry is being appropriated to building places where we can do it,
there are enough rogue individuals out there continuing to make it
happen. Whether it be by building ledges at a remote spot just east
of downtown like Jason Hernandez, constructing mini-ramps in our
backyards like Mikey Taylor, concreting pole jams into the ground
like Emmanuel Guzman=, or buying buildings and putting
skateparks inside them like Eric Koston and myself, we continue to
grow because our will to skate and our will to survive is just that
strong and because the only alternative is to quit and die. But life
was made to live out of, not die out of. There’s nothing special
about death. Anyone can do that. – steve berra