All of the Craziest Things 'Vogue' Said About Skateboarding This Week

Image via Complex Original

“What draws a person to skate?” Maybe the desire to sell a product to the elusive youth demographic. Skateboarders like skateboarding. Or skating. No actual skater has ever said he or she is into “skate,” a word that describes a marketing category, not an activity.

Skate style has a long, storied history, one that begins with the surf-inspired looks of the ‘60s and spans the five decades that follow. Ben Nordberg, while both a skater and a model, is 27 years old. Which means he started skating in the late ‘90s, at the earliest. So let’s chalk the phrase about no one getting “the evolution of skate style quite like Ben Nordberg” up to hyperbole.

Those who came of age at the turn of the millennium might remember OPM’s “Heaven Is a Halfpipe,” an apparent ode to skateboarding in which the band noted that “heaven”—which would presumably boast a halfpipe—”would be just kicking back/With Jesus packing my bong.” Nonetheless, as Vogue points out, in 2000, Matthew Meschery (stage name: Shakey Lo the Creation Kid) told Spin that skateboarding has “become a very technical sport. You can’t do a lot of drugs and be really good at it these days,” a statement that ignored the preceding 30 or so years of skating’s progress altogether.

In the eyes of Vogue, skateboarding proudly thumbs its nose at authority at every turn. (Which at times may be true.) But, in saying that skating “has certainly drawn its fair share of unruly testosterone,” it offers, among others, Tony Hawk and the Lords of Dogtown as examples. For what it’s worth, Hawk, 48, isn't spitting at cops as he drives his children to school. And Lords of Dogtown is a movie. It came out in 2005.

Skateboarding has always drawn kids of diverse ethnic backgrounds. But to hear Vogue tell it, in a post bearing the headline “An Ode to Great Skater Hair, From Stacy Peralta to Leticia Bufoni,” flowing flaxen hair is what skating is all about. “Male or female, so many of history’s best sidewalk surfers have been crowned with twinning cascades of bleached strands—the precise fade of pigment acting as a visual marker of hours clocked in abandoned pools, sloping skate parks, and especially daring staircases.” Sorry, everyone else.

As Willy Staley once wrote, “the longboard takes skateboarding back to a past that never quite existed.” That fact hasn’t deterred legions of people from riding oversized skateboards through our cities, though, and from turning Ko Hyojoo into a viral “longboarding sensation.” In two years of skating, a term we use loosely, she’s been able to attract some 270,000 Instagram followers. Longboarding, she says, is “more amusing” and “more stylish” than actual skateboarding. Duly noted.

Yes, skateboarding can cause injury, usually to your limbs. Depending what you’re skating, you might also hit your head. Vogue sees things otherwise. While model and “Skate Dolly” Sif Agustsdottir’s “high cheekbones and delicate complexion make her an unlikely candidate for a sport in which split lips and broken noses are common occurrences, she’s eager to persuade you otherwise.” Maybe she’s boxing people at the spot.

In Tbilisi, Georgia, there lives a guy named Sandro Popkhadze. He wears stylish secondhand clothes, and he skates for the apparent enjoyment of children attending a birthday party. The 18-year-old is said to resemble “nothing so much as a beautiful, bony pirate, complete with hair pulled into a ponytail and a hoop earring.” Truly, he is “Tbilisi’s Coolest Skaterboarder.”

Hey, look: Some of the highest-profile celebrities on the planet skateboard, including Blake Lively. When they’re not doing famous-people things, they’re out there, like your average skate bro, “trying to nail their ollies and flip kicks everywhere from New York City to Sydney.”