Shredding the streets of Toronto
Female longboarders gain momentum in a sport normally dominated by men
There’s a short road in Greektown wedged between beautiful homes and big trees. On Tuesday, a bright evening, rubber wheels skidding down the pavement produced a cacophony on the normally peaceful hill.
Four Toronto Girl Longboarders and their friend Eric had found the perfect evening warm-up, in an extreme sport that’s something like a cross between snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing.
When the Toronto Girls Longboarding group first started in 2011, its monthly gatherings would garner two to three — sometimes one — female boarder.
These days, the meetings are sporadic, but more and more women are showing up to the coed events, organizer Si Si Zhou says, adding that if the trend continues weekly meetings may resume. One of those events is the “night sessions,” where a gaggle of longboarders glide Toronto streets at night, going from one indoor parking garage to the next to “bomb” down the curved cement floors.
Over the years, Toronto’s female longboarders have carved themselves a niche in a sport that, while inclusive, is maledominated. And they’re gaining momentum.
“It can be pretty intimidating to get to a hill and there’s a slide competition going on and you’re like the only girl there,” said Si Si Zhou, who is spearheading the group since founder Cindy Zhou (no relation), moved to Portland, Ore., over the summer to pursue professional longboarding and a position at Adidas.
The Saturday before, Zhou found herself out of breath after riding down Yonge St. from David A. Balfour Park with 1,000 other longboarders, including men.
“It just feels like — it feels like I’m super f---ing cool. I don’t know, it’s just like this super awesome feeling,” Zhou, 23, said of the sport’s appeal that day.
The Tuesday gathering in Greektown displayed the camaraderie women enjoy in the sport, as the four women cheered and pushed one another to try one more “slide.”
They were practising “downhill” and “sliding” — going fast downhill and stopping abruptly sideways, the way snowboarders do.
She’s organizing another of Cindy Zhou’s initiatives: FUBU, a “For us by us” beginner-friendly race in October that draws about a hundred female longboarders from all over.
Si Si Zhou was hesitant to take on the role because of the time commitment and energy organizing it would take: “One girl would show up (to weekly meetings) and then you’d get to know her and show her tricks, but wouldn’t see her the week after.” Every week was like starting over. But then, suddenly, things changed and “all the girls that wanted to skate kept coming out.”
“I think women are really comfortable learning from other women,” Cindy Zhou, who continues to mentor Si Si from afar, told the Star by phone. “I very much believe in that connection, you know. If you see someone who’s kin to you or similar to you do it, you’re like, ‘All right, well, this isn’t impossible.’ ”
Like many in the longboarding community, Si Si Zhou says there’s no lack of support. It’s how she met her best friend, Hannah Winters, and boyfriend, Eric Mroz, who were both on the small hill Tuesday.
Winters is the one who fashioned a sweater into a sling for Zhou’s arm when they’d both taken a fall at the beginning of the summer and Zhou broke her wrist.
“I fell behind her and she looked back to see if I was OK and then she fell and got hurt worse than me,” Winters said, laughing, as she watched out for cars at the bottom of the hill. “I still feel bad about that.”
Aubrey Iwaniw, who started the city’s first female longboarding sessions in 2005, says it felt like a sisterhood.
The goal was defy the image people had of female longboarders and skateboarders, which she says can be “cutesy.”
“When guys get together, I notice that sometimes they’re really competitive. But when women get together, they’re all really helping each other.” The FUBU race will take place Oct. 3, 5 p.m. at Canoe Landing Park.