What do you think of when you hear the word skateboarding?
He details the costs skateboarding has exacted on his marriage and his body, but also manages to tie in literature and philosophy. He cites David Foster Wallace on tennis and the hard-to-quantify-or-define concept of fun. For that is one of Beachy’s goals, to articulate and give gravity to a thing that few take seriously. His twin passions of writing and skateboarding sometimes meld, other times chafe on one another throughout.
Reading this book did not change my views on skateboarding, much less make me want to personally teeter onto one. There’s a difference between proselytizing and communicating a passion. I came away with an understanding of a thing I knew little about. Beachy has written a book about skateboarding unlike any before it. The trick of defining a thing one loves to people to whom it means little, is finding a layman’s language—a way in for those on the outside. What’s plain as day to an acolyte is obscured to the unbeliever without the right words, “How sacred this obviousness.” v
