Welcome to the 216th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we trace the history of society’s love-hate relationship with skateboarding, explaining how drought, murder and underfunding led to a hatred for skaters worldwide.
The year was 1976 - VHS had just made its debut, the Olympics were to be held in Montreal and California was entering what would soon be known as “the driest year in state history”. In Flordia, an unknown skater named Alan “Ollie” Gelfand, had just performed a world first, jumping off the ground while riding a skateboard to invent the namesake ‘Ollie’. Bringing the trick up to California, a paradigm shift would occur in the skate community, as individuals like Tony Alva, Steve Olson, and the late Jay Adams saw an opportunity in the midst of crisis.
While driving down back alleys in Santa Monica, Ocean Park and Venice, these eager youthful skaters leveraged the abundance of dried-up pools for personal use, dropping in on unsuspecting homeowners by hopping alleyway fences. Inventing bowl skating while simultaneously catching a newsworthy reputation for the destruction of property and trespassing, skating’s negative stigma would not only be birthed, but embraced by many.
However, this negative connotation only set fire to the flame, igniting rebellious youth to try their hand at the street-centric sport. By the 80s, skate culture was in full effect, pushed by the founding of Thrasher in ‘81, among film staples like ‘Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol’ and ‘Thrashin’. Despite a few mishaps here and there, skateboarding was surging through contemporary mainstream media, until Mark Anthony “Gator” Rogowski, a famed skater, spiralled out of control and publicly murdered model Jessica Bergsten.
The case was all over the news, and with the decline of vert skating, the hatred for skaters grew harmoniously with a surge in street skating. With underfunded or non-existent parks, property damage sky-rocketed and so did the stigma, prompting generations of misunderstood, unjustified hatred.
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