Lawmakers overlook our real state sport
The California poppy, the quail, the coastal redwood — when it comes to selecting official icons, this state has made lots of wise choices.
But Sacramento politicians made a big mistake this week. By designating surfing as the state’s official sport, they tried to steal the creation of another state. They also overlooked the real official sport of California.
Surfing is a spectacular sport, don’t get me wrong. It’s been popular on the California coast for decades, and as an experience, it offers everything you could possibly want: athleticism, grace, visual beauty and the poetic kind of lifestyle that includes a beach.
These are the reasons why people want to be surfers. These are the reasons why the global surfing industry generates billions of dollars every year.
But surfing belongs to Hawaii. For centuries, native Hawaiians practiced and perfected the art of riding waves. The Hawaiian coast, with its warm water and constant waves, remains the sport’s spiritual and social home.
Trying to pretend otherwise is just a bad look for California. For crying out loud, the U.S. overthrew Hawaii’s government and snatched the island for itself. Now some state politicians want to snatch away one of the greatest gifts Hawaii offered to the world?
Meanwhile, California’s actual state sport has never been more exciting.
Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere — children bombing hills in San Francisco, kids massing under freeway overpasses in Fresno, adults successfully lobbying politicians to build the sport’s infrastructure in San Diego. It debuts as an Olympic sport in Tokyo’s 2020 program. Like surfing, it also generates billions of dollars every year.
Unlike surfing, this is a sport that Californians can claim with absolute honesty. Its origins are in the streets, the curbs and the abandoned pools of Southern California. I’m speaking of skateboarding. By overlooking the sport, Sacramento didn’t just insult the skateboarding community, it missed an important opportunity to honor the California spirit in front of the entire world.
“The great irony of this is that there’s no other sport that represents the spirit of California as well as this one,” Stacy Peralta told me. “If you think about the California ethos — going it alone, making it happen yourself — that’s what skateboarding is all about.”
There are few people on the planet who understand the importance of surfing and skateboarding to California’s identity better than Peralta. As he was a teenage surfer in Venice (Los Angeles County), in the early 1970s, he joined the Zephyr team, also known as the Z-Boys.
The Z-Boys were volatile, aggressive young men who are widely acknowledged for inventing what we now call contemporary skateboarding — the speed, the aerials and the tricks. The Z-Boys are legends in the skateboarding community, but their inspiration was all from surfing.
Peralta, now 60, was one of the first professional skateboarders and one of the first to launch a skate gear company.
“It is indigenous to California,” Peralta said. “It could not have been invented and developed anywhere but here.”
With some exceptions, coastal access in California is a luxury of the affluent. So many kids don’t have access to surfing — but it’s pretty easy to get ahold of a skateboard and a sidewalk.
The hassles of team sports evaporate with skateboarding, too. There are no unyielding game times, no expensive uniforms, no agonizing competition, and no adults yelling at you to follow rules you didn’t write.
Skateboarding tends to attract children who need an escape from rigid hierarchies and adult expectations. It’s most appealing to youth who need to try something for themselves. Many adults find this attitude to be threatening in young people. That’s a big part of the reason why skateboarding, for all of its popularity, has never been able to rid itself of a slight stigma.
“It’s subversive, it’s noisy, and it’ll always be partially illegal because skateboarders ride in places where they’re not invited,” Peralta said. “But so many people don’t understand that young people need something that allows them to be civilly disobedient without hurting others. And skateboarding provides them with that.”
What’s interesting is that California prides itself on these kinds of values. The Golden State, originally the land of going your own way to find gold, is more recently the land of personal enrichment via “disruptive” innovation.
Well, we’ve also got a sport that’s given millions of people a chance to develop their own athleticism and create new things. It’s a sport that can be done by kids who don’t have money or highly engaged parents. It can even be done in a concrete jungle.
It is us, California. We should recognize how glorious that is.
We’ve also got a sport that’s given millions of people a chance to develop their own athleticism and create new things.