 Alright guys, what's up? It's me again. Down in San Diego today, gonna meet up with Doughty in a little bit. Question of the video is, is skateboarding still worth getting into in 2021? As someone that's been skateboarding for a long time, I'm always interested to why people get into skating. Like if someone says they've been skating for like a year or two, I often ask them like, what got you into skateboarding? And it's quite interesting what they come back with. Sometimes it can be like friends or family that skate or they've seen something on TV about skateboarding and they've seen a movie that had a little bit of skateboarding in it. Or like, I've even heard TikTok. People get into skateboarding from TikTok, which is a positive, I guess, but yeah. So Doughty and I are rolling out from City Heights to here's our little slab spot, the DIY spot that's still going. Pretty keen to check it out, having to be down there. Looks like there's some more stuff to skate, so yeah. I'm having a bit of trouble skating. Like, you know when you skate, you have that mind-body kind of connection, which allows you to skate and like you can just, you're like one. I feel like my mind and my body are like two different things. And I'm like, my mind knows how to do the trick, but my body is like, I haven't skated for a minute there. So hopefully at this next spot, I can get some more clips. So I just googled it and it's brain fog. My brain feels foggy, kind of a weird description, but yeah. My brain feels foggy. Hope it goes away because I want to be able to skate today. It's my first proper skate since like a few weeks ago. So my ankle still hurts a little bit. I'm just trying to push through for you guys. And plus I want to skate today. It's nice weather outside. It's not like 40 degrees outside. It's not a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, I should say. But it's like 40 degrees Celsius up here. So yeah. But back to the topic of the video. So I feel like skateboarding has never before had this amount of exposure with it being in the Olympics and everything now. I mean, the second biggest amount of exposure. I think skateboarding has had was like the X Games when Tony Hawke landed the 900. So I feel like with more eyes on skateboarding, people are going to take more interest in skating. They're going to want to fall down that rabbit hole per se. And then you'll have more people wanting to buy setups and like learn new tricks and just generally learn about the skateboarding lifestyle and culture and sport. I don't know if you can call skateboarding a sport. Can you call skateboarding a sport? No, it's been in the Olympics. I don't know. I feel weird calling it a sport. I feel like it's more of a lifestyle, I guess. Like if I didn't skateboard, I don't know. I feel like I wouldn't know who I am. All right. We've got some vegan cookies and a brisk to fight this brain fog. Hopefully this gives me a boost feeling tired today. You find the weirdest stuff at DIYs. Look at this bag full of donuts that have been tossed because they're expired or something from like 7-Eleven. I reckon they've come from 7-Eleven because they got to chuck their donuts out like at the end of the day and they've gone in the dumpster and just pulled them out. Check them out, it's gnarly. You can still smell them, but yeah, they look nasty. You guys haven't seen this spot before. Really cool little DIY down here in San Diego. Doughty and a few other guys did majority of the work, I think. I know he put in that quarter pipe and this little cool kerb spine thing behind me. Looks like some other people have like brought some other random stuff down. This bench is really sick. A few more kerbs. I don't think Doughty did this one. I think someone else might have done this, but it is solid. Really nice manual pad slash ledge combo here. There's a sick pole jam. Someone's just grabbed a pole and literally just jammed it into the ground. It's pretty sick. Doughty and I have been skating this little DIY here for a little while now. I was just curious to hear your point of view about people coming into skating via different mediums. Like, how long have you been skating now? Man, it's always hard, but I think I've been skating probably for all of my now. I just turned 35, so probably like realistically like 25 years. Yeah, that's like a lot. But like for like a good amount of time. But to be honest, my dad had a skateboard. Skateboards were always around me. I was very fortunate and very privileged to have access to that. But at the same time, I didn't really care for it because it was there. So like it didn't intrigue me as much as like other people were like, maybe however people discover skateboarding. Sometimes it can intrigue you so much more because it's something that you don't see so often. So for me, it was like very common that it was just there. I've been skating pretty much my whole life. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, cause a lot of a lot of younger kids, a lot of younger kids are getting into skating via like Gowdy said fashion and then there's like TikTok, Instagram. You ever see those movie clips and then there's like skateboarding in the movie? Or like mid 90s even? Yes, that's a big one. Like cause it's like the camaraderie. I think also it's like the culture, right? Like I think a big part of why people gravitate towards skateboarding in general is not even the act of skateboarding, but it's the culture of skateboarding. It's like people enjoy the idea of having friends to go out and do stuff with and kind of like be in their own social bubble and create their own identities and ways. So I mean the act of skateboarding is obviously the core of it. But at the same time, I think people gravitate to just like the culture of skateboarding in general. For sure, for sure. What would you, what advice would you offer to anyone that's like trying to, cause people are intimidated to start skating. Yeah, it's an intimidating thing. Yeah. What would you, what advice would you give to someone like wanting to get into skating but they're kind of hesitant? Well, I think the first thing I would say is just find your comfort zone and find like what resonates with you most like I skate more transition Sean skates more street. But I think that was because like when I saw a transition when I was younger I resonated with that and it made sense to me. And I was really intimidated by the street section. Like I was just so scared to go over there and to me at the skate park there was no one skating the bull. So it's easy for me to like just go over there and kind of like mess around with the bull and get comfortable there. So I think it's like finding a comfort zone and finding also like what resonates with you, you know, like you might not want to hook downstairs. You might like freestyle. You can freestyle in a parking lot. So that's cool. You might like flat ground. You can just find like a parking garage and learn flat ground. But like skating alone and progressing alone can be hard. Luckily we have the internet these days. So there's Facebook groups. There's YouTube channels, you know, they're sort of different like resources as far as like progressing. But yeah, what's your original question? Hopefully I didn't go too far on a tangent there. I mean, that was pretty good advice. Like find your comfort zone. Find your comfort zone. Yeah. And if you're just getting into it, like I think the most important thing when you're just getting into it is realize that there are no rules with skateboarding. Like there's no rules. I try to say like in every video and like every trick and everyone's going to try to push their own agenda onto you. Like here's how you trade flip. Here's how you should look when you skateboard. Here's the right board to ride. Here's where you should skate, who you shouldn't skate with. Things like that. So like don't listen to any of that. I think it would be good also to realize that because they're just trying to make you fit into there. So I guess the point that I'm saying, getting at is like whatever you like, just do it. Just try it out. And even if it's not cool, just keep trying it because I don't know. You're better off being a big fish in a small pond at some point or another. Yeah. And what Doughty just raised to my attention right now is getting into skating for the right reasons. Like you can get into skating because you're generally interested and you want to progress and you're having fun doing it. Or you can like there's other paths of like trying to get into it to be cool or to impress your your crush or like stuff like that, which is fine. I guess, but it won't, it won't last long stick to it. And I think like if you really want, if you really think like skateboarding is cool and you really want to try it, you have to do it for yourself. Yeah. You can't do it so that like just so people think you're cool. Like you could do it to have friends. That's not what I'm saying. But like don't do it just to like have like social gain. Do it because you feel like it's something that you will get a good mental exercise and physical exercise. Yeah. Don't like don't let other people's skating kind of put you off. Like I know sometimes when you're all up to the park and there's people like throwing down, it's super intimidating to like want to like try stuff. But at the end of the day, everyone's there skating and having fun and they're not going to care what you're doing, you know, as long as you're respectful and you're not kind of like snaking anyone or anything like that. Everyone's going to be cool nine times out of 10. So don't let other people's skating ability put you off your own and like don't let it kind of discredit you as well. Like if you just learned how to do an Oli or you've learned how to like kickflip that's rad. Like I remember learning my first kickflip. I was 14 and it was on the street in front of my house and I was like so hyped like just because you're skating isn't at the same level as someone else that's been skating for, you know, five years or six years or whatever. Don't let it put you off something else. Like if you are intimidated by the skate park or by the idea of going and out and skating in public or even going to the skate shop and getting a skateboard. Yeah, I think what I'll say with that is like a lot of the times if you're if you're going for it and you're being authentic most of the time people want to support you like if I see someone like slamming at the skate park and they fall normally I want to go help them and like tell them how to do it because like it gets me excited because I know what that process is like. So a lot of times like experienced skaters almost like good but like experienced skaters a lot of times want to help and like get excited seeing someone else kind of like their fire is getting lit. So they want to like sort of like get a little bit of that fire as well selfishly be a part of your journey. You know like I guess what I'm saying is like skaters are normally pretty supportive individuals of each other like especially if like you're authentically they're trying to learn it and like you're falling and you're just trying it like it might sound embarrassing but the reality is you're probably going to look like the coolest person at that park to most of the legit skateboarders like what Doughty just said about other skaters wanting to help you if you guys haven't seen that video when I hit my first street hand rail Dan was there and he was helping me throughout the whole process like I had a mental breakdown. I was like I know I could do it but there was that that gap between where you throw down and just about when you're popping there's like a wall and he helped me like push through that wall and I was able to get the rail that day and it was sick but just him seeing that kind of fired him up as well. So that's like another big thing in skateboarding. I think that's just like the culture comes with it. So like skating alone is like a whole separate conversation than like what we're saying sort of because what we're saying is like more if you're intimidated just if you can puncture that barrier I mean it comes with confidence. I don't know it can be you can find it from other ways not skateboarding but essentially you know just remembering that not everyone's there looking at you talking about you or judging you they're there like on their own mission as well most of the time. We're at the third spot of the day. This little DIY spot that Doughty had built and then it got ripped out and then someone else fixed it. I don't think we know who who do you know who fixed this spot because you built it first right. Yeah. So quick little story on this spot. It's crazy. It's like the mystery DIY spot. So originally me my buddy Al we built a ledge that you can see it's kind of getting it iterated. Then we built two banks. It's exactly what it was but it was a lot harder because more simple is just in the block and then someone destroyed it within like a week after I posted a video of it and then I sat on it for a while. I was like I'm not going to do anything. It just sat there. Someone destroyed it. It was crumbled so they didn't clean it up. It wasn't the city. They just left it there. And then months later all of a sudden I saw a picture of someone skating and it was this. So I have no idea who fixed it and someone came along and used the forums basically. Yeah, it looks smooth. Slowly destroying it. I can give you a video. I don't know if you want it but the other day I came over here in the morning and this guy was slowly destroying it and I filmed him and he was like oh you front it. Yeah, I confronted him. This is like me just getting here. Look at him. Look at him. He's taking all the stuff and putting his little bucket. Elbow deep. Trying to pull out a spot. A harmless little spot. Harmless spot. Taken hours out of his day to come and do this. And then like here he is. So he had like a full line of arms. Right there is when he's like oh shit I gotta like pretend like I'm nice. Crazy. But yeah there's these two banks here. You can war right over. I don't think I'm going to be able to war right over but daddy can do it. There was a ledge in the middle. There's their daddy forever. And there's also a up ledge. Krusty Krusty East Coast Pacific Northwest style spot here. You got a curb. And then yeah it's a pretty good flat gap here too. Down this way. Hit Olly. And then land here and then roll onto the car park there. It's a decent sized gap. Yeah. Yeah he went into a manual. That's so sick. You got out really smooth though. Thanks G. To summarize on the topic of the video. I think it's rad if you're wanting to get into skateboarding this year. Or even next year or last year you know. The more people getting into skateboarding. I keep trying to say like the sport. Do you feel like it's a sport or a lifestyle? I feel like you know that's like such like that's a topic for another video right. Yeah that's a. Is skateboarding a sport or is it a lifestyle? Yeah. Or is it an art form? I mean it's so subjective. It's like whatever you want to make it like. If it's a contest probably more of a sport term. But if it's like a street part it's probably more on the art side. Yeah. It can like range. That's what's beautiful about skateboarding. Yeah it's different realms of skateboarding within skateboarding. But to touch base with the topic. I think it's rad because um. Well if you guys are watching from Australia. There's a chain of skate stores. Skate shops sorry called Fast Times. A little bit of research and Fast Times is actually owned by Zoomies. So Zoomies have invested money down under to open up these shops. And a few of my friends applied to work there. A couple of my friends are on the team. Not a couple. One of my friends on the team sorry. And he works there as well. Shouts out to Watsie who works at Fast Times. And it's sick because it's giving more of a community sense to skateboarding. Like my local mall in my old hometown now has a big skate shop. And it's going to bring more kids in that are buying completes around their birthday around Christmas. They're walking by it every day. They're going to say oh I wonder what that thing is on the wall there mommy. Can we go and have a look? You know ski parks. Yeah. And it's just it's raising more skate awareness. So I think that's the biggest part is like skate awareness. And I think the Olympics is like the biggest amount of exposure. Yeah. There's been in history you know. So it's definitely a good thing. Don't let don't let it be like oh no. Don't get into skating because you miss that bus. Like it's already been like don't listen to people that talk like that. Like you want to get into skating like get into it. You know anything like skating for sure like that's the topic of this video. But it's like in general if you enjoy doing something just because it's saturated or desaturated doesn't mean you have to like not do it based off like the market market or whatever. You know like just skateboarding is sick and it's always going to be here and it's always going to be something very special. So you know if it's something that excites you try it out. Yeah definitely. You have our blessing.