The Bygone Days of Skateboarding
NEIRAD enilno edition
The X Games may be hot, but the skateboarding trend has cooled off at DHS. What ever happened to the days when you and all of your friends were boarding? Where has this pastime gone? Although most Darien High School students have grown out of the skateboarding phase, there are still a few who still can’t get enough of it. “Skateboarding is a lost art in this town.” said junior Louie Rawden. “All of my friends used to skateboard and now, only a few of them do. I miss the days when I could call any of my friends and they would want to skate.”
While when many of us used to skate in our driveways or on our streets and used our Factor X ramps, the kids who have stuck with skating have found spots to skate in almost every part of town, but with the spots they have found has come some trouble.“Darien is one of the only towns in Fairfield County that doesn’t have a skate park, so we have to find other places to skate at around town, which we get kicked out,” senior Alex Granata said.“My favorite spot to skate is ‘The Fleet, (a.k.a the parking garage under the Bank of America)” sophomore Graham Maybell said. “The only problem is that a lot times when I skate there I get kicked out by the bank’s general manager.”
Others echo Maybell in their common struggle to find a place they won't get booted. “Just this past weekend, we got kicked out of two spots consecutively in town, skaters get a bad rep in this town because we are considered ‘hoodlums’ who are just causing trouble” Granata said. It’s bad enough that skaters get stereotyped outside of school, but some of the worst critics that they’ve faced are part of the DHS student body that make fun of them for their Habitat Hoodies, DC t-shirts, and Nike SB skate shoes and their overall skater appearance.“I’ve made fun of skaters before” said an anonymous student. “I don’t know why I do; I just think that they’re ‘funny’.”
Although skateboarding used to the “in” thing to do, many people have strayed from their former skateboarding glory days.
“I quit skateboarding because I had too much hockey stuff to do, if I had the time I would definitely go back to it though” senior J.D Juterbock said. While some quit because of disinterest, others left the sport behind for different reasons.
“I quit real (skateboarding) because I realized that I could never be as good as I am at the videogame SKATE,” senior Jake Seymour said. “But when SKATE 2 comes out I’ll probably try skateboarding again, fail miserably, and go back to playing the videogame…again.”
Although in the minority, kids continue to skate have multiple motives for sticking with it.“Skateboarding is unique and different than other forms of athletics” Granata said. “There are no coaches and you progress at your own rate.”
Sophomore Graham Hotchkiss added that he keeps skating “because I get to hang out with my friends and I have a lot of fun doing it.”
While skateboarding is a dying art too many, for a select group of DHS students, skateboarding isn’t just an ideal pastime, it’s a very important part of their life.
