The one with the helmet

August 6, 2021 8:35 PM

"Hello, ground. It sounds weird, but there's something to that mindset where you're just saying hello to everything." Skateboarder Andy Anderson makes friends with everyone (and everything).
posted by clawsoon (11 comments total)

I caught Andy Anderson a couple days ago in the Olympics; he didn't do particularly well, but what impressed me was that when his final run was over, he just kept doing little tricks and having fun. About 23 minutes in (if you have a Canadian IP address at least).
posted by Superilla at 9:44 PM on August 6, 2021

Hi, floor. Make me a sammich!
posted by praemunire at 9:57 PM on August 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

What a wonderful bodhisattva of skate. Love it, thank you for sharing!
posted by Balthamos at 12:21 AM on August 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

"Hello, ground"

"...I wonder if it'll be friends with me?"
posted by The Tensor at 1:34 AM on August 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

The figure skating-like spin at the end of Anderson’s third attempt in the CBC Olympics coverage that Suprilla linked is very fun and just joyfull. Side note from that video, hoping not to detract from the main thread topic but worth noting: skateboarding seems like it can very much be a white activity. It’s already looked down upon by lots of folks (eg. Anderson noting that skateboarding is illegal in his home town in the FPP video), so when you add being a youth of colour to that, I imagine it’s very difficult to get into. So that one of the top guys (I didn’t watch the full competition, but first place in the part that I did watch from the CBC coverage) at the Olympics is a young Black man, Zion Wright, is notable and will hopefully have a positive influence both on non-white kids who think skateboarding looks fun but aren’t sure if they’d be welcome, and on people who would tend to negatively judge kids, but especially Black kids, skateboarding.
posted by eviemath at 6:11 AM on August 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless but it is right; for all is like the ocean, all things flow and touch each other; a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world.

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
posted by dobbs at 6:20 AM on August 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

eviemath: skateboarding seems like it can very much be a white activity.

I get most of my impression of skateboarding from Braille Skateboarding, which is maybe why my impression is that it's more multicultural than that. Here, for example, is a video I watched last night with Andy Anderson playing SKATE against Vinnie Banh.

However, I recognize that that's a very narrow (and perhaps unusually diverse) window that I'm looking through.
posted by clawsoon at 6:30 AM on August 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Firefox highlights this is a visited link and I couldn't remember having watched it. This is, until this moment almost ten minutes in which I honestly couldn't tell the first time whether it happened on accident or purpose. Such a great, weird way to get on the board again.
posted by bigendian at 6:45 AM on August 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

I just love watching kids skateboard and fortunately there’s a skatepark 4 blocks from my house. They try and fail, try and fail, over and over until they get it. Then step up to harder tricks and try and fail again and again, constantly improving as they go. It’s one of life’s most important lessons, right behind “be kind,” and it’s inspiring to watch it in action.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:11 AM on August 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

(Also, there’s a board shop right around the corner (these facts locate me within 100 meters :) ), and the kids who hang out there are a very diverse bunch. More diverse, in fact, than my immediate neighborhood. Happy to see that the shop survived lockdown; it was boarded up for a while there.)
posted by sjswitzer at 7:16 AM on August 7, 2021

I used to work in Little Five Points in Atlanta. The skater crew was probably the second most diverse group, behind the WRFG crowd.
posted by donpardo at 8:46 AM on August 7, 2021 [2 favorites]