A Skate Library

Books & Studies

• The most fun thing by Kyle Beachy. (literature, philosophy, culture, identity)
  
  This memoir in essays follows one man's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding, and explores how this search led unexpectedly to insights on marriage, love, loss, American invention, and growing old.
  
  What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married?
  
  Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime—often overlooked, regularly maligned—whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy—and what it continues to teach him as he struggles to find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.
  
  
• Space and why it matters by Long Live Southbank. (urban planning, space ownership, community, cultural heritage)
  
  Thoughts from the Long Live Southbank community and independent projects concerning creative space.
  
  
• The Next Wave: The History of Skateboarding: 1999 - 2020 by Daniel Fedkenheuer.
  (History, Photography, Book)
  
  The Next Wave is a new skateboarding history book that details 1999-2020. Propelled by dozens of exclusive features and interviews with skateboarding’s most prominent riders, company owners and industry members, the text provides a comprehensive look into the highlights of the past several decades. With the support of several noted photographers, the book also serves as a visual testament to skateboarding’s recent developments.
  
  ➝ For more info: here
  ➝ To purchase the book: here
  
  

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• One more push, to clear the last step. Planning for Skateboarding by Jamie Edwards for the MA in Planning, Policy and Practice of London Southbank University School of Law and Social Sciences Division of Urban, Environment and Leisure Studies, September 2020.
  (The city, public places, play)
  
  The objective of this paper is to move away from the perceived negatives of skateboarding in the public realm and ascertain what are the overarching benefits that skateboarding can offer to public space and how they can be harnessed and implemented by planning.
  
  

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• A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic Right to the City Through Play by Penelope Carroll, Octavia Calder-Dawe, Karen Witten, and Lanuola Asiasiga
  (The city, public places, play)
  
  This journal article critically engages with urban cities as sites devoid of play built for motor vehicles, business and functionality. By outlining the exclusion of children into ‘designated spaces’, the authors argue that children are marginalised within public spaces- a poignant argument in favour of skateable cities and against neoliberal spaces of discrimination of other groups such as the homeless. Children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces born from “playful imaginings” are presented as the reclamation of a democratic right to the city, arguing for a more equal, child-friendly and playful city. Echoes of “Everybody can play” - graffiti on the wall of 7Hills Skatepark in Downtown Amman.
  
  

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• Grand Wild by Maxime Brousse
  (French, Freedom, Community, Public space)
  
  Inspired by people such as Ocean Howell, William Finnegan and Raphaël Zarka, among others, this uncommon essay is mixing on the ground journalism, travel diary and essay on themes such as freedom, community and reclaiming public space.
  
  

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• Colour in the lines: The Racial Politics and Possibilities of US Skateboarding Culture by Neftalie Williams
  (Race, culture, media)
  
  Neftalie Williams’ thesis examines skateboarding as a contested site of racial politics in the USA. Whereas previous research has presented the ‘whiteness’ of skateboarding, Williams presents an account for the creation of space for the voices of people of colour (POC) within the practice. Underpinned by Critical Race Theory (CRT), the project centralises unheard voices of POC skateboarders revealing previously unexplored challenges, strategies and successes of POC within elite skateboarding.
  
  

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• Conflict, Exclusion, Relocation: Skateboarding and Public Space by Jeremy Nemeth
  (Public spaces, performance, identity, LOVE)
  
  This influential essay was one of the first academic articles to take on policy makers who mark skateboarders using public spaces as a threat to public order. Within the contest of the 2002 skateboarding ban at LOVE Park, Jeremy Nemeth shows how the city defined skateboarders a deviant and unruly as a means to ban the practice, yet presents a powerful argument for skateboarder’s exclusion from the Center City denying a fundamental right to a space for performance, identity formation and representation in the public that has a longterm influence on skateboarding a public spaces in cases such as Long Live Southbank and beyond. A must read.
  
  

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• The Sound of Skateboarding: Aspects of Transcultural Anthropology by Carla J Maier
  (Sound, urban critique, gendered approaches)
  
  Carla Maier explores the transcultural anthropology of sound in skateboarding, combining sensual aspects of the practice with cultural and urban discourses providing a thorough account for the relationships between sound, knowledge and space. The author pays particular attention to female skaters in London, exploring the sound of skateboarding as a tool for transcultural intervention into gendered urban space for exploring alternative social realities within urban contexts.
  
  

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• Authenticity in the Skateboarding World by Becky Beal and Lisa Weidman
  (Skateboarding culture, history, identity)
  
  Beck Beal and Lisa Weidman draw from their historical involvement in the 1980s and 1990s US skateboarding scene, providing an indepth account of the values and norms that constitute legitimacy and authenticity of skateboarding. Using an extensive ethnographic modal, both authors explore historical interactions with skateboarding individuals and experiences with the skateboarding industry.
  
  

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• SMOOTHING SPACE IN PALESTINE: Building a skatepark and a socio-political forum with the SkatePal charity by Danielle Abulhawa
  (skatepark, social project, playfulness, peace)
  
  The fluidity and adaptability is echoed in scholarly and populist discourse, which tends to discuss skateboarders’ abilities to be resourceful and playful within environments available to them, to adopt simulation alongside innovative DIY approaches when building their own environments and to form supportive networks across cultural boundaries. There has also been much growth in recent years of skateboarding development projects, particularly in areas of conflict and political unrest. This article focuses on the author experiences with the SkatePal charity.
  
  

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• SKATEBOARD & RELIGION by Paul O’Connor
  (culture, lifestyle, cult, philosophy, spirituality)
  
  This book explores the ways in which religion is observed, performed, and organised in skateboard culture.
  
  

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• THE ART OF LIVING SIDEWAYS - Skateboarding, Peace and Elicitive Conflict Transformation by Sophie Friedel
  (peace, education, social change)
  
  Sophie Friedel explores the action of skateboarding in her book as a way to escape cycles of despair, not only in war torn environments and regions affected by poverty. The author critically reflects on her involvements of teaching skateboarding in Afghanistan within the context of youth empowerment and peace work. By way of personal experiences, Friedel illustrates how skateboarding can be understood as an elicitive approach to peace work and conflict transformation that unfolds the extraordinary human potential inherent to all of us.
  
  

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• URBAN PAMPHLETEER - Series of articles
  (urbanism, social change, activism, community)
  
  Skateboardings gathers together activists, artists, and educators who show nuance on the effect skateboarding can have to positively influence social and urban change.
  
  

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• SKATEBOARDING AND THE CITY by Ian Borden
  (history, culture, lifestyle, architecture)
  
  Skateboarding and the City presents the only complete history of the sport, exploring the story of skate culture from the surf-beaches of ‘60s California to the latest developments in street-skating today. Written by a life-long skater who also happens to be an architectural historian.
  
  

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• ON A DAY WITH NO WAVES: A chronicle of skateboarding, 1779 - 2009 by Raphaël Zarka
  (history, lifestyle, culture)
  
  On A Day With No Waves makes all the more apparent the various lines that traverse skateboarding, and links it to a whole aspect of contemporary thought on the transmigration of forms and their uses.
  
  

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• THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION by Raphaël Zarka
  (play, games, culture, lifestyle, architecture, creativity)
  
  Using the tools set up by Roger Caillois in his essay Man, Play and Games (1961), Raphaël Zarka attempted to describe skateboarding by trying to define its place among the diversity of games and ways of playing.
  
  

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• FREE RIDE - SKATEBOARD, MÉCANIQUE GALILÉENNE ET FORMES SIMPLES by Raphaël Zarka
  (volumes, spaces, shapes, forms, architecture, sculpture)
  
  A guided visit through skateboarding spaces.
  
  

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• RIDING MODERN ART by Raphaël Zarka
  (architecture, sculptures, art)
  
  Through his study of the process of appropriation and reuse of works of art in public places, used by skateboarders as further challenges for their sport, Raphaël Zarka offers a way of approaching a work of art that underlines the dynamism of modern sculpture, casting a critical light on the idea of movement in these often abstract and geometric works, inspired by Cubist, Futurist or Constructivist art.
  
  

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• SKATEBOARDING AND FEMINITY by Dani Abulhawa
  (Gender, social norms, power dynamics)
  
  This book examines skateboarding’s relationship to gender politics through a consideration of the personal politics connected to individual skateboarders, the social-spatial arenas in which skateboarding takes place, and by understanding the performance of tricks and symbolic movements as part of gender-based power dynamics.
  
  

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• SKATEBOARD STUDIES by Konstantin Butz & Christian Peters
  (architecture, gender, urbanism, race, history, culture, public space appropriation)
  
  Skateboarding is first and foremost a physical activity, and no scholarly approach can substitute for the empirical knowledge gained through the act of skateboarding itself—the movement of the body with and on a skateboard. The theoretical implications of this movement and its spatial, cultural, and social settings are ripe for exploration within a number of different academic disciplines. The publication provides a comprehensive insight into these discourses.
  
  

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• THE TALE OF SKATEBOARDING IN AFGHANISTAN by Skateistan
  (Afghanistan, education, social project)
  
  Rare in-depth look into the lives of exceptional young Afghans facing incredible challenges in a city torn by war, but also full of life.
  
  

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• BEYOND BOARDERS by Troy Björkman
  ( skateboarding, skateparks, positive youth development, sport-for-development)
  
  While unique attributes of the lifestyle sport – especially its non-competitive nature and focus on autonomy and creativity – were identified to serve as potentially valuable ‘hooks’ for marginalised youth, the real contribution of this paper is that of identifying skateparks – and particularly activating youth agency and responsibility in creating and managing social value from them.
  
  

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• MEANINGFUL WORK IN THE REALM OF LEISURE: An exploration of unpaid, meaningful work in do-it-yourself skateparks by Finn Regener
  (DIY, community, social )
  
  The study explores reasons why individuals take voluntary action in unpaid, physically challenging labor, i.e. building a DIY skatepark, and tries to discover subjective functions this activity fulfills for the collaborators within leisure.
  
  

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• BEYOND THE BOARD: findings from the field
  
  A groundbreaking study of skateboarding culture that explores the lives of underrepresented young adult skateboarders within a society that isolates them due to their negative misconceptions and preconceived notions.The research team examined skateboarding culture through the skateboarders’ perception of life and reveals how skateboarding shapes and supports them in terms of personal development.
  
  

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• BRIEF REPORT: Using Behavioral Skills Training to Teach Skateboarding Skills to a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder
  (mental health, well being, programs)
  
  The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on the skateboarding skills of an 11-year-old male with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
  
  

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• DO IT YOURSELF OR DO IT TOGETHER? Emergence of Participatory Culture through Co-creating interactive DIY skateboarding spaces
  
  Exploring how the field of Interaction Design might contribute in creating new platforms for engagement and expression, by involving a participatory culture of skateboarders in a Do It Yourself (DIY) project. The objective of the project was to give skaters an opportunity to experience the maker culture by sketching with technology, sharing their ideas within creative making, and participate in envisioning co-created skating spaces. Together with the event that followed the making process, they helped to determine the possibilities for the emergence of DIY culture involved in shaping “activist” spaces in urban environments.
  
  

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• LE SKATEBOARD FAIT PENSER by Elie During
  
  

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• CONTINUUM by Idris Jani
  (architecture, skateboarding and the city)
  
  

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• THE POETICS OF SECURITY by Ocean Howell
  
  

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• FROM CORE TO CONSUMER: The Informal Hierarchyof the Skateboard Scene by Tyler Dupont
  
  

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• HOW DID THE NIKE GET THE SWOOSH INTO SKATEBOARDING by Brandon Gomez
  (A Study of Authenticity and Nike SB)
  
  

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• SKATE LIFE: Re-Imagining White Masculinity by Emily Chivers Yochim
  
  

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Web articles

• Discussing skateboarding with neuroscientist Andrew Huberman
  (academia, inclusion)
  
  
• Skateboarding Is In The Olympics; Now PhD Neftalie Williams Is Bringing It To The Ivy League
  (mental health, neuroscience)
  
  

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• Neuroscience, skateboarding and child trauma
  (mental health)
  
  Benefits of skateboarding were looked at through the lens of neuroscience. Using the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics as a starting point, he studied how certain aspects of skateboarding could have a positive effect on specific parts of these traumatised children’s brain.
  
  

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• Equity and skateboarding
  (industry, equity, ethics)
  
  What happens when you don’t own shit.
  
  

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• Has a free market fucked skateboarding?
  (industry, capitalism, ethics)
  
  Unregulated Capitalism Probably Isn’t a Good System.
  
  

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• Skate and re-generate: skateboarders making a difference to the environment
  (environment, sustainability)
  
  How are we, as skateboarders, directing our level of energy and attention to the larger environment?
  
  

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• One Small Step for Skateboarding is One Giant Step for Diversity
  (inclusion, diversity, social change)
  
  How skateboarding reveals itself to be an amazing tool for social inclusion and global change.
  
  

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• Interview of USC socioligist professor Neftalie Williams(race, identity, inclusion, diversity)

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• Kyle Beachy - Stay core, stay poor

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• Tobias Coughlin-Bogue - Skateboarding is pointless, that's the point

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• Kyle Beachy - Primitive progressivism

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• Will Ascott - Good bye I hope this is the last time we see each other

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• Kyle Beachy - A serious review

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• Anthony Pappalardo - Skateboarding is not progressive

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