Harris Lahti of Washingtonville is a former MVP in football and basketball who now skateboards in Washingtonville, Albany and New York City. (Provided photos)
Skateboard competition set for Saturday at Washingtonville Skatepark, By Gary Lahti
Washingtonville - You’ve seen them. Kids, usually boys, dressed in ripped jeans, sneakers, T-shirts, usually black. Long hair. Short hair. In parking lots. On the side walks. Jumping over stairs, sliding down railings. Skateboarders. Scourge of the streets or acrobats of the avenues?
Skaters seem to elicit many emotions in business owners, motorists and the police, reminiscent of another era. I grew up in the sixties and seventies, when wearing jeans, long hair and giving someone a peace gesture could provoke a normally placid citizen into paroxysms of rage.
Skateboarders have an image problem. Some misconceptions:
• They take drugs. Most don’t drink or do drugs at all, especially the most avid enthusiasts who often skate for 8 or 10 hours a day. Drugs inhibit performance. Balance and concentration are essential at all times.
• They’re undisciplined. Most work really hard at improving. I’ve seen skaters work for many hours at a single trick, often to the point of exhaustion. Practice is done independently, with no coaches, no score, no trophy. The process of the sport is emphasized, not the result.
• They create liability risk. According to “The Journal of Trauma” (October 2002 issue), skateboarding injury rates rank below most high school sports including football, soccer, basketball, wrestling, cross country, bicycling, snowboarding, etc. In an informal survey of Orange County skate parks, none had ever had a major claim for injury. Nevertheless, we persist in our fear of skaters lawyers lurking under every skate ramp.
• They have a bad attitude. Most are adolescent boys. That should say it all, but if you’ve never been one or been close to one, adolescence is often a time to separate yourself from your parents, which can lead to that terrible state-rebellion. Relax, it’s natural, it’s healthy. In time, they’ll have jobs, mortgage payments and kids in preschool who are just learning to say “No.”
Be patient, you’ll get your revenge.
• They’re lawbreakers. There are “No Skateboarding” signs everywhere, along with “No Loitering,” “No Bicycles” etc. Most are placed to limit liability in the event of a lawsuit. Usually, the rules are sporadically enforced, if at all.
Unfortunately, the skaters get a double message, that there is indeed a sign, but it’s actually okay to skate a “spot” because nobody actually cares. Besides, nobody ever gets tickets for bicycling or loitering, whatever that is. Skaters think in terms or ollies and nosegrinds not lawsuits. For a glimpse of the relationship between the police and skateboarders, check out “go skateboarding day:cop vs. skater” on YouTube. Be advised, it ain’t pretty.
The police in Washingtonville seem to have an intelligent policy. Two warnings and you lose your board on strike three. The board may be returned at a later date, and the courts are not turning skateboarders into the wrong kind of record holders.
• They should play organized sports. Many do. Many are top athletes in other sports as well. Part of the attraction of skateboarding is the absence of inexperienced coaches, hovering parents and the score. After being involved in youth, high school and college sports, as both athlete and coach for 40 years, I fully understand why skateboarders take “The Road Less Taken.” There is no pressure to “win.” There is no “Dadball,” no favoritism. There are no parents arguing with coaches and other parents. There is no overscheduling of practices and schoolwork.
Certainly, organized athletics can be a valuable educational asset, but our perspective should be wide enough to include extreme sports as well.
• Skateboarding is a fad. I’m a lifelong skier and snowboarders were initially regarded on the slopes with much the same disdain as the skateboarders in your local parking lot. In fact, many ski resorts “banned the boarders,” citing liability, rebellious attitudes, rampant drug use, and reckless behavior. Sound familiar? Now, snowboarding has become a multibillion dollar industry, an Olympic sport, and ski resorts court snowboarders like royalty.
• They’re dirty and smelly. Guilty as charged. Have you ever been in a high school locker room?
• Skateboarders are too wimpy to play sports. Have you ever fallen on the sidewalk or driveway? Skaters eat concrete for breakfast. What they do is analogous to the form and balance of gymnastics, only without the net.
So what is skateboarding? Who are these guys and what exactly are they up to? I decided to ask one and just by coincidence I have one living in my house. My son, Harris, 190 lbs. of muscle and sinew, a former MVP in football and basketball now skateboard nut, put it this way:
“Skateboarding is an urban art form, creating something to have fun with such as a set of stairs, a marble ledge, or an embankment. People would generally just pass by these certain things and not take notice, but a skateboarder would be eager for the chance to skate these objects in the streets.
“Skateboarding started in the streets and it will never lose that aspect of the sport because that is where its roots came from. However, town skate parks have been built to give kids a place to skate where they won’t be hasseled by people who see skateboarding as criminal. The village of Washingtonville has been kind enough to provide it’s community a place to skate in peace and without hassle.”
Gary Lahti is a former professor of Sports Performance at Manhattanville College in Purchase.
interesting insight on the sport. A lot of these acusations have been applied to me personally. I always get crap that i should be doing a more physical activity. My response is what a dumbass. How can somebody be so ignorant. I guarentee our leg muscles are easily as strong as an athletes from pushing, pumping, bending down to do tricks, etc. I bet skaters/ longboarders have much better balance than the average joe also. People just try to create excuses for reasons why skateboarding is bad just because they think it is evil. Sure skaters do get in trouble a lot and "break the laws" but i mean honestly, not picking up your dogs poop is considered a crime
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[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: hey mr bass man
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: uve got that certin somthin
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: for it dont mean a thing
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: when the leaders singing
[savage2424] 2:46 pm: *drum fills*
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: ieeeeee yieeeeee yieeeeeee yieeeeeeee
Last edited by thebassman; 07-29-2007 at 09:12 AM.
And what about skateboarding just being plain fun!
In this world people always have to find a way to mess fun things up. I guess they find it fun
__________________
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: hey mr bass man
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: uve got that certin somthin
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: for it dont mean a thing
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: when the leaders singing
[savage2424] 2:46 pm: *drum fills*
[*demetri*] 2:46 pm: ieeeeee yieeeeee yieeeeeee yieeeeeeee
another cool article on skateboarding...
Harris Lahti of Washingtonville is a former MVP in football and basketball who now skateboards in Washingtonville, Albany and New York City. (Provided photos) 
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