Being and Boarding

Longboarding started in the 1950s. Surfers in Hawaii, an island state of the United States in the Pacific ocean, wanted to practice their sport when the waves were flat. As time went on, all forms of skating developed a reputation as sports for outsiders and rebels willing to take dangerous risks while also becoming one of the largest commercial industries to date. By the late 90s, longboarding had developed a complex vocabulary of style, including downhill, freeriding, freestyle, slalom, cruising, and carving. Skaters have reshaped the classic longboard, essentially surfboard on wheels, to fit these different styles and push the boundaries for new ones. The board you will hear throughout this walk is the product of such innovation, with a board shape that allows for the length of the board to change and wheels which are square.

On this campus, most skaters use their boards for transportation. Their style is cruising and carving, a safe and simple style meant for maintaining speed and minimizing effort over long distances. The boards most people use are either tiny boards, called penny boards, or simple longboards. A few of us, though, prefer freeriding, a version of downhill which breaks up the momentum of the ride with slides and simple tricks that add flair to keeping speed under control. For us, cruising across campus is a daily intermission to the thrill of bombing the smooth hills behind the buildings on the Northeast side of campus.

Have you ever noticed the texture under your feet, the bumps created by the trapezoid tiles? Every outdoor walking space on this campus is covered with either square or trapezoidal tiles, creating a surface over which a board can ride while making that ride incredibly bumping. To navigate these tiles, skaters have to pick out certain micropaths, called lines, that will not leave their joints exhausted from the vibrations. For instance, skating in parallel to any of the lines creating by these trapezoid tiles is much smoother than skating across them. This pattern also creates much less sound.

Longboarding started in the 1950s. Surfers in Hawaii, an island state of the United States in the Pacific ocean, wanted to practice their sport when the waves were flat. As time went on, all forms of skating developed a reputation as sports for outsiders and rebels willing to take dangerous risks while also becoming one of the largest commercial industries to date. By the late 90s, longboarding had developed a complex vocabulary of style, including downhill, freeriding, freestyle, slalom, cruising, and carving. Skaters have reshaped the classic longboard, essentially surfboard on wheels, to fit these different styles and push the boundaries for new ones. The board you will hear throughout this walk is the product of such innovation, with a board shape that allows for the length of the board to change and wheels which are square.

On this campus, most skaters use their boards for transportation. Their style is cruising and carving, a safe and simple style meant for maintaining speed and minimizing effort over long distances. The boards most people use are either tiny boards, called penny boards, or simple longboards. A few of us, though, prefer freeriding, a version of downhill which breaks up the momentum of the ride with slides and simple tricks that add flair to keeping speed under control. For us, cruising across campus is a daily intermission to the thrill of bombing the smooth hills behind the buildings on the Northeast side of campus.

Have you ever noticed the texture under your feet, the bumps created by the trapezoid tiles? Every outdoor walking space on this campus is covered with either square or trapezoidal tiles, creating a surface over which a board can ride while making that ride incredibly bumping. To navigate these tiles, skaters have to pick out certain micropaths, called lines, that will not leave their joints exhausted from the vibrations. For instance, skating in parallel to any of the lines creating by these trapezoid tiles is much smoother than skating across them. This pattern also creates much less sound.

Congratulations, you’ve reached the palm trees without being hit by a skater. Please, take a seat or lie down.

This courtyard is an intersection. Birdsong intersects with the reflective thoughts, small talk, and silence that take place underneath the palm trees rustled by the wind. Students, faculty, staff, visitors, and administrators all commute through the space and congregate for events held here. In this social atmosphere, the sound of a skater crashes through, echoing off the buildings and overwhelming the sounds of society. Ironically, the person who experiences this the most is the skater, as the board and the patterns of this environment reverberate up through their body and out around them, enveloping them in sound.

Many hear these as sounds as noise, dismissing it or becoming aggravated by it, and skaters know this. As mentioned before, we do try to find the smoothest line. This line not only is more comfortable for us, but does not overwhelm the soundscape so much.

Nevertheless, skaters disrupt this environment, and they should. While skate parks do exists, and more and more are adding spaces for longboarders, the nature of skating has always been to push the boundaries of the possible, to do what we are not supposed to because that is where people might listen. We might listen to how these campus paths work best for able-bodied persons wearing traditionally comfortable shoes and walking only a short distance. We might listen to how easy it is to disrupt this social space under the palm trees, a reflection of the tenuousness of this social sphere. We might even listen to the style of the skater, emerging from the interaction of the body of the skater, the board, and the ground, and carrying all of the traumas and the joys each experience. If nothing else, we are forced to hear these things, and, as a result, must acknowledge that we participate in them. With this in mind, listen to the noise one more time.