Urban Tribes: SKATERS

Skater is the subculture of many skateboarders. Skaters often are similar to punk and skater punks are common. Skaters are opposed to police, and police action, however this is usually kept in the scope of keeping skaters from being hurt by police. They can be very creative in opposing police oppression, and unneeded skateboard bans. Skaters have sometimes replace "no skateboarding" with "go skateboarding". Skaters skate in streets, or concrete skateparks, as opposed to ramps.

Skateboarding is the act of riding and performing tricks using a skateboard. A person who skateboards is most often referred to as a skateboarder, or just skater.

Skateboarding can be a recreational activity, an artform, a job, or a method of transportation. Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2002 report by American Sports Data found that there were 18.5 million skateboarders in the world. 85 percent of skateboarders polled who had used a board in the last year were under the age of 18, and 74 percent were male.

Skateboarding is relatively modern. A key skateboarding maneuver, the ollie, was developed in the late 1970s by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand as a half-pipe maneuver. Freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen was the first to take it to flat ground and later invented the kickflip and its variations.

DEFENSE MECHANISM

An interesting note is the fact that skaters often carry cameras. They film what goes on while skating in order to shoot some decent footy for a nice video part or just for fun to watch themselves progress, but also often record police action incidents, so a camera is a defense mechanism of sorts.

CONTROVERSY

Skaters often are opposed to business's co-opting of skateboarding, which is one of things that differentiates them from other skateboarders. They often oppose, or do not support pro skateboarding.

Not all skateboarders are skaters. Many skateboarders strongly oppose skaters.

THREATS

The skater subculture is threatned of being eliminated by posers, bros, haters, and people who quit skating to bike. It is also threatened by Hip-Hops assimilation attempts and dangers. PSYCHE!

SKATE PUNK

Skater Punk, or Skate Punk is a subculture combining skater and punk. It is usually someone who dresses like a skater, rides a skateboard, and has some punk and some skater ideas. Due to the assimilation and co-opting attempts by big business and Hip-Hop, it is in danger and many people try to deny it's existence.

CULTURE

Skateboarding was, at first, tied to the culture of surfing. As skateboarding spread across the United States to places unfamiliar with surfing or surfing culture, it developed an image of its own. For example, the classic film short Video Days (1991) portrayed skateboarders as reckless rebels.

The image of the skateboarder as a rebellious, non-conforming youth has faded in recent years Certain cities still oppose the building of skateparks in their neighborhoods, for fear of increased crime and drugs in the area. The rift between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite visible: magazines such as Thrasher portray skateboarding as dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while other publications, Transworld Skateboarding as an example, paint a more diverse and controlled picture of skateboarding. Furthermore, as more professional skaters use hip hop, reggae, or hard rock music accompaniment in their videos, many urban youths, hip-hop fans, reggae fans, and hard rock fans are also drawn to skateboarding, further diluting the sport's punk image.

Films such as Grind and Lords Of Dogtown, have helped improve the reputation of skateboarding youth depicting individuals of this subculture as having a positive outlook on life, prone to poking harmless fun at each other, and engaging in healthy sportsman's competition. According to the film, lack of respect, egotism and hostility towards fellow skateboarders is generally frowned upon, albeit each of the characters (and as such, proxies of the "stereotypical" skateboarder) have a firm disrespect for authority and for rules in general. Group spirit is supposed to heavily influence the members of this community. In presentations of this sort, showcasing of criminal tendencies is absent, and no attempt is made to tie extreme sports to any kind of illegal activity

Gleaming the Cube, a 1989 movie starring Christian Slater as a skateboarding teen investigating the death of his adopted Vietnamese brother was somewhat of an iconic landmark to the skateboarding genre of the era Many well-known skaters had cameos in the film, including Tony Hawk.

Skateboarding video games have also become very popular in skateboarding culture Some of the most popular are the Tony Hawk series, and Skate series for various consoles (Including hand-held) and personal computer.