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I'm gonna wax poetic about skating as a community and a creed and break some stuff down for folks that don't know. Yes I've been given shit for calling it a creed.

I was an early to mid 90s-2000s skateboarder. Still am but that's when I was in my prime. I was making it there getting letters about sponsor me tapes from Think and others. Really put me off frankly. I didn't want my life to turn into going to spots and producing and getting let go because it didn't work. Wasn't for me. Had a buddy riding for Osiris shoes til he blew his ACL.

Anyway the creed was:

Don't he a cunt. Calling someone a poser for trying was considered highly offensive. We all started somewhere. Teach them! Help them learn.

Race and religion were not considered. You'd have guys from Brooklyn representing Zoo York black as night hanging with pasty white boys representing Foundation wearing skinny jeans and leather jackets. Jet black dyed hair. They'd mesh together properly.

Chocolate was another diversified company. Largely sponsoring blacks and Hispanics and a few whites. But riding a chocolate deck wouldn't get you hate or cultural appropriation.

We had a common bond. Also a lot of skaters that got good came from a bit of money and a nuclear family. Decks weren't cheap even back then and I'd go through them about every week or two. Snapped noses or tails. Landing wrong in the middle. Mushing out and concave flattening due to use. Heavy pressure cracks and so on. Busting a bearing was the worst.

Lemme get to the point. Most skateboarders of my era despised modern consumption and capitalism. Try as they might Nike couldn't get a hold on the group to the point they'd mask their product with a different name. A insider would publish in Thrasher how such brand was actually Nike. Sales would extinguish and they would go away.

Therein your sponsors would show your creed. Riding for a whole lot of reputable and smaller brands? Good. Riding for Monster, Nike and so on? Extremely bad.

We actively hated competitions in the sense where it was who is better. We didn't want it to go to the Olympics. It went against everything we knew. Watching a dude try their trick for days and finally nailing it would be met by applause and smacking of wheels on pavement. Even if those watching had already mastered it. We all benefitted and the bond deepened.

We were inclined to not trust main stream media and popular products. We smelled the scent of rot from it. We didn't care for the video games and for a while Tony Hawk was vilified for THPS. It caused a bubble we all could see coming. I'm working on a fakie cab heelflip into a bs crooked grind and kids are asking me if I can do a benihana? I'd laugh tell em no. I'm not that advanced.

That game caused such a huge devastating bubble. We wrote letters to the company. Lol. They weren't gonna listen to shit.

We lived in our time. The streets were ours.

My mom would make homemade pizzas every Friday for the crew. A whole foyer of shoes. Watching skate videos on my old CRT 20" and playing GTA2.

I've lost the plot and started meandering. Point is most skaters hate Thrasher shirts being sold in the mall.