After much anticipation and fanfare, street skateboarding made its Olympic debut. As a spectator and fan of the sport, there were many exhilarating moments. However, there was no shortage of weaknesses revealed on this grand stage that I feel must be addressed if skateboarding is going to continue to thrive both as an Olympic sport, and as an art outside of competition. Fortunately, I already know a huge part of the solution, and it’s called Freestyle.
Before I continue, it’s important to define these terms and go over a bit of history.
Street skating is a style of skating that emerged during the late 80’s/early 90’s, as a direct result of the invention of the flatground ollie by Rodney Mullen:
Before this monumental innovation, skateboarding was largely tethered to the earth, with the exception of those skaters who rode special-made wooden half pipes or concrete bowls, if you were lucky enough to have access to such a thing at the time. The concept of performing tricks in and around typical urban environments was not considered, because it was not yet possible in any meaningful way. With the invention of the ollie, skaters now had a way to quickly propel themselves over obstacles, down sets of stairs, onto handrails- the entire world became a skatepark. This form of skating is what most people now think of when skateboarding is mentioned.
Freestyle skating predates this innovation and is characterized by combinations of tricks performed in a flat, confined space- more akin to a gymnastics routine.
Aside from the arena in which it’s performed, freestyle is distinguished by a deep well of technical tricks involving quickly shuffling the feet, spinning, balancing, and using non-traditional parts of the board, such as standing on the trucks, wheels, or on the underside of the board:
In the early days of skateboarding, freestyle was the dominant style, with large professional competitions being the primary way in which a skateboarder made themselves known. As soon as street skating took off, freestyle all but completely died away. There was one well-known exception to this, and ironically it was the man who himself was responsible for the advent of street.
If you mention the word freestyle to any street skater today, their first (and likely only) thought will be “Rodney Mullen.”
In the 90’s, when street skateboarding took over the sport, Rodney was one of the only skaters who adapted freestyle tricks for this new urban style, seamlessly weaving it into more typical street contexts.
It is shockingly typical to see a Rodney Mullen video from this era consisting almost entirely of tricks that have still to this day not been done by anyone else. This fact alone speaks to Mullen’s one-of-a-kind ingenuity, creativity, and technical ability- but it also speaks to a major weakness of modern street skateboarding.
Street skaters today are all-too-often not concerned with progressing the sport with creative new tricks, instead preferring to fixate on who can look the “coolest” doing the same familiar tricks of decades past, or simply who can jump over the most amount of stairs.
When I decided to learn how to freestyle skateboard, I expected there to be a large community massed over the last couple decades, made up of people who grew up playing the Tony Hawk games, seeing Rodney Mullen, and thinking his style was by far the coolest and most exciting. What I found instead is one of the most niche communities you could imagine. I’m talking well under 1000 people across the entire world, and more like 200-300 who are active online. I didn’t understand- skating was massively popular when I was growing up in the 2000’s, and recently has undergone a bit of a resurgence. How could such an exciting form of skating be almost completely ignored?
Well, via comments online and discussions with other freestyle skaters, particularly women, it turns out the answer is pretty simple- street skating is still overwhelmed by a macho culture, even homophobic, and extremely sexist. And it’s not just from typical immature teenagers- there are many professional grown adult male skaters who are shockingly judgmental and toxic, sometimes in subtle ways, other times not so subtle.
It’s this attitude that I think has made street skating stagnant. Are there talented new skaters doing impressive things? Sure. But almost no one is truly innovating and pushing skateboarding forward in an exciting way, no one is thinking outside the box. And here’s the thing- they don’t even have to think outside the box. There is already a decades-long well of tricks to pull from that they could integrate into their skating that would instantly set them apart, but instead they dismiss them because when they hear “freestyle” they think it’s just not cool enough for them.
Here’s a few tricks that the top street skaters could learn right now- are these really too uncool?
The last three clips are done by a skater named Andy Anderson- currently the only major professional skater who embraces freestyle and integrates it into his street skating. He also always wears a helmet- something he decided to do simply out of defiance for all his peers who were telling him (his words from a recent interview) “you can’t turn 18 and wear a helmet, you can’t wear a helmet and get a sponsor.”
Well, cut to now, and his pro model board is one of the best-selling boards in the world if not the best, frequently sold out everywhere. His popularity has exploded in recent years, and he is an Olympian competing in the Park category this year. Why is he becoming so popular? Because he’s the only one who has brought true creativity to his skating and made people go “whoa, that’s new.” He’s embraced the elements of freestyle that make it great, and understood how it can merge with street skating and push it forward in ways only Rodney Mullen attempted in the 90’s. It is truly baffling how it took nearly three decades from skateboarding’s peak popularity, to now, for someone like him to emerge.
The hope is that his influence is strong enough to open the minds of a new generation of street skaters who don’t carry the same toxic baggage of the previous crop; to make it “cool” to try things other than a kickflip down a giant set of stairs. Keep an eye on the sport- because in a few years, because of this one eccentric Canadian kid, street skating may look very, very different, for the better.
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As a parting gift- here is one of the only things Rodney Mullen has put out in recent decades. It is probably the coolest skateboarding video I’ve ever seen.
