The photo above was taken when I met Eric Bailey back in 2006 at the Amsterdam IMYTA before everyone found out what I knew as soon as I watched his REJECTS profile. Eric Bailey is the future of rollerblading...Below is one of the first articles I ever had published in a skate magazine back in 2003. Reading it now, it's pretty embarrassing to realise that I am guilty of milking the hell out of my mental thesauraus. Why I felt the need to use complex words and phrases when simple substitutes would have sufficed is beyond me. At least I can appreciate now how pathetic it was for me to try and impress an audience with words that most people will never (and should never have to) encounter in their entire lifetime.
It is also quite funny because the point I was trying to make at the time has no merit now. I was attempting to display that those winning skate competitions are not the icons of our sport because at that time the people winning ASA and X Games events were people like Cesar Mora, Jon Bergeron and Matt Salerno (people who never appeared in magazines of videos). However, this is no longer true because outstanding figures in our sport, such as Chris Haffey, Brian Aragon and Eric Bailey are dominating the competition circuit. Oh well...
Enjoy...
The Academic Dispute
The scholastic system is flawed beyond all logical comprehension. It's not that the teaching method is faulty but rather the way in which its success is weighed. Students are unfairly judged by their performance in trivial exercises such as tests and exams. The scores they receive measure the merit of their knowledge. This harsh injustice means that "good" students are the ones who perform well under the strenuous circumstances of these procedures whereas "bad" students are the ones who do not. The conjecture behind this way of determining a person’s academic merit is defective as a student may possess vast knowledge on the chosen subject they are studying but are merely unable to cope and function well under the strain of examination conditions. Thus, poorer students reap the benefits of composure and are rewarded simply because they are able to focus when faced with distraction. Such methods are terrible ways of measuring someone's intellectual ability.
The exact same problems exist in rollerblading on the part of the ASA and competitions such as the X Games. A skater’s ability is put under intense scrutiny during a 90 second run in which they must display style, creativity, and difficulty as well as consistency. When you are standing at the top of a quarter pipe with the sun bearing down upon you like a large spotlight, knowing that not only do you have the undivided attention of all your peers, but also thousands of spectators who may or may not laugh if you go down on your face, as well as television cameras which broadcast internationally in every home, in every country in the world. Pressure tends to make it ever so slightly difficult to stay focused. Hence, the examination theory intervenes. Good skaters whose vast vocabulary of tricks on handrails, ledges, and large gaps earned them the envy and admiration of skaters everywhere are undermined when they receive poor scores from biased judges who claim they are judging on ability when they are actually judging on composure.
This is why the skaters who win events such as the X Games and the ASA comps are not the best skaters in the world. They are just the best competitors. This is a common misconception on the part of the media and the Aggressive Skaters Association who honestly believe they are awarding first place to the best skater when that is simply not the case. Such events are an insult to our culture as they are
The real innovators of skating, the icons that shape the face of our lifestyle, are the ones who are doing so at inner city sites across the world. In the sole presence of their friends, fellow skaters and maybe one or two cameras. Not thousands of screaming spectators who are ignorant to what they witness, believing that the skaters who do the highest airs and the most flips possess the most ability. These icons I speak of are the ones appearing in videos, magazines and even on the Internet. They are the ones who are earning respect due to their unquestionable talent and commitment to furthering a movement that we can call our own.
There are no spotlights on real street with innumerable cameras blinding our approach to obstacles with their flashes. The ASA has no right to claim they are the voice of skaters as they represent the core of what is wrong with skating. The reason rollerblading is so appealing to so many of us is because of its limitless opportunities. There are no rules, regulations or boundaries. There is no right or wrong way to do something. There is only the way you see fit. Geniuses are not always the ones who perform well in schools. Many of the world's great philosophers never even went to school. Rollerblading is a reflection of this. The people who have helped shape our industry and skating itself are not the ones on the podium receiving the gold medal. They are the ones we encounter every day on our travels in search of new places to skate and see in our favourite videos. If we continue to let such organisations dictate the way OUR culture should represent itself we may as well be like football of any other sport, as we will merely be allowing ourselves to be dictated.
Refrain from drowning in the pool of other people's ignorance.
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