Tony Hawk Tops Slate of Surf/Skate Legends, Scholars at 色情视频's Stoke Sessions
Critical reflection on the culture, politics, and history of surfing and skateboarding is the subject of four-day conference.
conference, April 20-23 at 色情视频, will bring together surf/skate legends and scholars for panel discussions highlighting the social, political, and historical context of the two subcultures.
鈥淲e鈥檝e tapped into a global community,鈥 said David Cline, professor of history and director of the Center for Public and Oral History.
Cline, co-author of a forthcoming book on skateboarding and social justice, helped plan the conference for scholars to integrate their research with their passions. He interviewed the founders of Rolling for Rights, a San Diego organization whose members coordinated 2,000 skateboarders to roll down Sixth Avenue for a 2020 Black Lives Matter rally.
鈥淚nterestingly they combine BLM with skateboarder rights.鈥 he said, citing the community鈥檚 longtime slogan that 鈥渟kateboarding is not a crime.鈥
A 2021 supports the idea that skateboarding has societal value and makes an impact in the community. 鈥淪kateboarding has often been seen as this fringe, if not outright sort of criminal activity, but we now have actual proof that it's the opposite,鈥 Cline said.
Cline has been skateboarding since the age of 10. 鈥淢y friends and I all looked up to Tony Hawk,鈥 he said. 鈥淗e was on the cover of Thrasher Magazine all the time and we all wanted to be Tony Hawk.鈥
San Diego native Tony Hawk, professional skateboarder, entrepreneur and founder of , will deliver the first keynote address with his brother Steve Hawk, former editor of Surfer magazine, at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 20 in Montezuma Hall. The conference is free and open to the public.
The discussion will tap into how Tony first got into skating. 鈥淥ur dad flew torpedo bombers off of aircraft carriers in World War II and ended up being stationed in San Diego, where he fell in love with bodysurfing and where we grew up,鈥 Steve Hawk said in an email. 鈥淭hat's why I became a surfer, and through surfing became a skater, and then ended up giving Tony one of my old skateboards, which is .鈥
The Hawk brothers will explore the differences between the surf and skate cultures, especially when it comes to DEI issues, and will talk about the global aspect of both sports.
Sociology professor Mike Roberts, who teaches Cultural Origins of Surfing, said the conference is a 鈥渃ulmination of what we have been doing curriculum-wise for 10 years. We鈥檝e created a curriculum that focuses on surf and skate cultures and we have five courses on those topics now.鈥
He hopes 色情视频 will be a worldwide leader in surf and skateboard studies at the academic level. 鈥淚t makes sense that 色情视频 is a hub 鈥 part of the cosmos of surf and skate 鈥 an academic center for this, especially since Southern California is historically seen as an originator of the lifestyle,鈥 he said.
Conference highlights
. Friday and Saturday keynotes include Selema Masekela, who calls himself an action sports evangelist and will be in conversation with scholar Neftalie Williams to discuss diversity and inclusion in surfing. Williams, a principal investigator on the USC study, will join the sociology department in fall. Another speaker is Dian Hadiani, author of the surfing book 鈥淭he Chronicles of G-Land,鈥 whose talk focuses on sustainability and surf communities in Alas Purwo National Park in Java.
Two of the more than 25 panels feature surfer Shaun Tomson (Surfing as an Intervention to Create Organizational Engagement) and local legend Richard Kenvin (California: The Formation of Mainland Surf Culture).
鈥淲e are interested in how surfing and skateboarding subcultures are linked up to social movements like Black Lives Matter or the LGBTQ+ and women鈥檚 movements,鈥 Roberts said.
Rachel Bilchak, a first-year anthropology graduate student, served on the conference planning committee. Despite only skateboarding once in her life, she enrolled in professor David Kamper鈥檚 Histories and Cultures of Skateboarding course. 鈥淚 didn't realize there was such a cultural shift from it being an activity to it becoming a lifestyle,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t is interesting to see that for so many people it becomes the whole aspect of their life, like a religion.鈥
One of the panels she plans to attend is 鈥淕endered Surfing Through Embodiment and Language,鈥 mainly because within her area of study, she is focused on bringing more women into the archaeological record. 鈥淗aving women represented in these fields is something that I am very passionate about,鈥 she said.
Aidan Skillingstad, a fourth-year urban studies student who is in the Cultures and Histories class this semester said, 鈥淪kateboarding is massive right now. So using that power to do something good is a no-brainer.鈥
Learning the history of skateboarding (pre-鈥90s) and incorporating a framework of sociology and anthropology has been the most interesting aspect of the course for Skillingstad, who grew up playing the Tony Hawk video game with his older brother and was inspired to pick up a board as a youngster.
The conference is hosted by the and , and sponsored in part by the and the.