The SLS Tempe Takeover
I spent my Sunday morning watching this Skateboarding tournament seeing as the weather was fairly glum and overcast.
I thought I’d give a review of the SLS Skateboarding Championships in Arizona. This was billed as the Tempe Takeover in Mullet Arena, in the city of Tempe, Arizona, US.
What a name for a stadium.
Competitor names that came up on my screen:
Ladies:
Peige Heyn (pronounced “highnnn”)
Coco Yoshizawa
Liz Akama
Miyu Ito
Maria Lucia
Yumeka Oda
Mens:
Dashawn Jordan
Lazer Crawford
Jake Ilardi
Bradon Hoban
Kyran Itsuki
Nyjah Huston
Tyson Bowerbank
Jagger Eaton
Kairi Netsuke
Filipe Mota
Matt Berger
That is some list. Mostly Americans, but there was a strong Japanese contingent as well as a Canadian and a couple of Brazilians.
Results are here.
This event captivated me for the full transmission on Rumble. The ladies suprisingly presented as neat and more ladylike than your standard western instagram/antifa trash. As though they are actually normal people who socialise with normal guys and spend sufficient time outside in the real world. Of course four of them were Japanese and one was Brazilian, with Peige Heyn being the sole english-speaking westerner (and she looked good). I’m impressed that this sub-culture has managed to survive all these years and managed to be organised enough to hold an international competition for the last 16 years without jettisoning its underlying ethos and aesthetic. One of the male competitors had a neck tattoo and a Motley Crue t-shirt. Every guy stacked in the last round but I think the winner deserved it. The online chat was full of good-natured banter and the cameradrie among competitors, support staff, media, comp personell and fans all looked pretty genuine. This is how sports looks when its done well. The grassroots enthusiasm, corporate money and civic support all work together with each other and not against each other.
What happened to the skateboarders of the general population though? They all seem to be gone now. In my day they were everywhere and I had a couple of good mates who were in the park all the time. I had a go at skateboarding but wasn’t very good. I liked snowboarding more, where I had the certainty of being strapped in and some possibility of a soft landing. The skills can be transferable but they are fundamentally different sports and diverge in quite different ways, to the extent that you will tend to become highly proficient in one or the other, but not often both. A snowboarder will treat their skateboard like a snowboard, and a skateboarder will treat their snowboard like a skateboard. You even learn to tell them apart if you hang around the terrain parks and resorts well enough. Different animals with different behavioural patterns,