Apate and Skateparks

Apate and Skateparks
By: Jason Lee

Skateparks have offered a sort of enclosed bubble from the outside world that allows the occasional onlooker to peer into what they perceive the skateboarding world to be. In that world, they see more often than not, teenagers, likely in high school, taking up space in the park. Besides the occasional wrinkled older skater that seems to always have a reason for taking his shirt off, skateparks for the most part consist of kids who are either too young to work or are actively avoiding it.

Possibly due to social media and the culture it has bred, a new species of skater has seemingly emerged from the 5 foot transitions hollow coping. I have deemed this species the "LW Skater" or the "Light Work Skater". For those who have fortunately not noticed the recent spike in ridiculous "high fashion" outfits and unnecessary slow motion. The instagram page dubbed, "teamlightwork" on Instagram, is the reason you see kids in colored camo pants,  pants that have clearly gone out of style, and angry and occasionally violent conversations with their filmer about how they should have zoomed in on their Ralph Lauren underwear, and how they should have kept filming when they fell on the ground and their gold chain "fell out".

Admittedly, this type of skating was seemingly refreshing at first but as the year has gone on, it is blatantly obvious that this style of skating and filming is oversaturated. In fact, an article on this should not even be necessary due to how painfully obvious it is that this trend needs to die.

The qualm with this style of skating is not based on the fact that the "LW Skater" develops an ego, or that he/she thinks they run the park, but the fact that they are always at the park. Skating at the park undoubtedly makes one a better skater but when the "LW Skater" is always at the park it becomes minutely annoying and one starts to think, "If I were their age and had that free time, why would I be at the park when I could be skating street." In a "jock" sense, the skatepark is a training ground where people go to learn tricks but it really comes into question, "Why train if you never do the real thing?" By staying at the park all the time the "LW Skater " breeds reason for the annoyingly upstanding citizen to say, "Well Jimmy is always at the park why can't you guys be like him and go there to skate?" In a sense, pink camo Jimmy is adhering to the upstanding citizen's desires, the same citizen he incessantly flips off to increase his "edginess".

On another note, making an Instagram video to a trendy trap song with 30 seconds of bails and slow-mo's of one's face and one's single "clip" does not bring anything refreshing to the internet. With that, push your painfully dressed park local to get out of the park, and go skate somewhere else, so you can  try your trick after you stretch for 10 minutes because you're pushing 40, and bones start to creak now.

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