The Answer is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the WorldFrom the hard-ridden half-pipe of a suburban driveway to teens doing boardslides down stairway handrails in Rio de Janeiro, from the bright-light glare of ESPN's X-Games to the groundbreaking street-skating videos of Spike Jonze, skateboarding has taken the world by storm -- and if you can't deal with that, get out of the way. In The Answer Is Never, skating journalist Jocko Weyland tells the rambunctious story of a rebellious sport that began as a wintertime surfing substitute on the streets of Southern California beach towns more than forty years ago and has evolved over the decades to become a fixture of urban youth culture around the world. Merging the historical development of the sport with passages about his own skating adventures in such wide-ranging places as Hawaii, Germany, and Cameroon, Weyland gives a fully realized portrait of a subculture whose love of free-flowing creativity and a distinctive antiauthoritarian worldview has inspired major trends in fashion, music, art, and film. Along the way, Weyland interweaves the stories of skating pioneers like Gregg Weaver and the Dogtown Z-Boys and living legends like Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk. He also charts the course of innovations in deck, truck, and wheel design to show how the changing boards changed the sport itself, enabling new tricks as skaters moved from the freestyle techniques that dominated the early days to the extreme street-skating style of today. Vivid and vibrant, The Answer Is Never is a fascinating book as radical and unique as the sport it chronicles. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Noble Pursuits | 9 |
When the Waves Are Flat | 19 |
The UrethaneFueled Cambrian Explosion | 31 |
Dogtown Rising | 41 |
Play and the Futility of Competition | 55 |
Hot Action | 65 |
Frontier Tales | 87 |
Pflugerville Pilgrimage | 191 |
From Tantalus to Wallos | 205 |
The Future Is Yesterdays Point of Departure | 235 |
Mecca and Beyond | 265 |
We Just Want to Have Some Fun Before We Die | 283 |
The Philosophy Is the Action | 299 |
Awe Against Compromise | 319 |
Afterword History Is Bunk | 327 |
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Andy backside airs band banks beach boneless bowl California carving Chris Christian Hosoi concrete contest coping culture curb Davin ditch Dogtown Doug downhill Duane Peters Estes Park fakie feet flat flying freestyle friends frontside getting going grind hair half-pipe handplant haole hardcore Hawaii Hawaii Kai hill Jay Adams Johnee Kop jump kickturn kids Lance Mountain later living look magazine Manny Mark Gonzales Mike moves movie Neil Blender never night nose wheelies ollie park photographs pipe played pool punk ramp riders riding rock rode Rodney Mullen roller rolling Santa scene sidewalk skat skateboarding skatepark skating skating's skiing slalom slides speed sport Stacy Peralta started Stecyk Steve Caballero street style surfboard surfers surfing teenage terrain thing Thrasher tion Tony Alva Tony Hawk tricks truck turned vertical wall wave wheels Z-Boys zine