Skate Girls

April 27, 2015 12:50 PM

"Forbidden from riding bikes, fearless Afghan girls are skateboarding around Kabul." The creation of Oliver Percovich, Skateistan is a grassroots project that connects youth and education through skateboarding in Afghanistan, and over 40% of their students are girls. "I realised skateboarding was a loophole. It was so new that nobody had a chance to say that girls couldn't do it yet."
posted by billiebee (16 comments total)

\m/
posted by Fizz at 12:59 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Previous shreddings.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:05 PM on April 27, 2015

That is insanely cute.
posted by latkes at 1:14 PM on April 27, 2015

Depressingly, the first cutie and several of her friends died in a suicide bombing.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:14 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Girls are forbidden from riding bikes in Afghanistan!?

That is downright evil.
posted by sour cream at 1:36 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

We were just talking about this (my daughters and I) and then worrying that the loophole that allows this little freedom will be closed now that attention has been drawn.

I did not know about some of the girls being dead and I think I won't share that followup with my kids, the last few days have already totally overwhelmed them with how crappy the world can be.
posted by padraigin at 1:38 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hadn't realised that before the post. Here is the Skateistan blog entry about it. It's so sad and I was wondering if I would have made the post if I'd known because it changes the tone a lot - I thought it was an uplifting story. But actually it just underlines how important it is for kids to have some kind of normality and fun in a life that is precarious. I'm glad they got to have some kind of freedom while they were alive.
posted by billiebee at 1:43 PM on April 27, 2015 [9 favorites]

Here is a music video from a Norwegian punk band called honningbarna that was filmed in skateistan and around Kabul late last year.

It's pretty joyous.
posted by knapah at 2:16 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

There's also Skateistan Cambodia.
posted by Tesseractive at 2:18 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love that video knapah, thanks for the link!
posted by billiebee at 2:35 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

"It was so new that nobody had a chance to say that girls couldn't do it yet."

The utter falsehood of fundamentalism laid bare. What a line!
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:44 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

Whoa, that was moving and awesome. Thanks for posting, billibee.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:06 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here is the Skateistan blog entry about it.

I was loving this FPP and then reading this straight up made me burst into tears. The world is so wrong and unfair sometimes.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:43 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Even though it's a sad story, Dip Flash, no pile of rubbish, no pool of infested human relations and interactions were able to take away what little these kids had and they maximized these little crumbs to brighten the day. Uplifting spirits can't be killed, they are ideas.

I think I finally found myself a favorite NGO.
posted by stthspl at 9:32 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is why security people recommend whitelists.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:07 PM on April 27, 2015

> We were just talking about this (my daughters and I) and then worrying that the loophole that allows this little freedom will be closed now that attention has been drawn.

This is maybe the second or third time Skateistan has got attention outside of the skate-blogosphere. So as to closing the freedom, i doubt it will happen: skaters gonna skate.

(They released an excellent book a couple of years ago, which is still available on their website and highly recommended.)
posted by lawrencium at 1:56 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]