As Pro Skaters Age is it Better to Burn Out or Fade Away?
The second decade of the 2000’s has a very high percentage of aging pros lurking around the skateboard industry. Some in their 30, others 40’s, and even 50’s. Skateboarding is known to be a young mans game where the usual skater is considered washed up by their mid-20’s. For every Heath Kirchart that self-imposed his retirement during his prime there is a Mark Gonzales or Tony Hawk who just keeps ticking onto the farther side of a half-decade. Typically (not using Gonz as an example) the older the skater gets the more jaded they get on the young mans lifestyle. In a recent interview with Playboy the one-and-only Jason Dill crossed over to sound a little bitter. At least that’s what this Boil The Ocean is making it seem with words like, “… Jason Dill’s prodding of old sores is an exercise in discomfort matched only by grouchy grandmothers’ bitter questions over the fate of hand-knitted blankets long ago vomited upon, washed and relegated to life’s basement closets.”
The article continues in the meandering, large word fashion that the site has become known for. Boil looks into the age old question for any sporting industry… is it better to burn out or fade away, but in a more skateboard industry specific:
“Can pros turned board company proprietors be relied upon to serve as judges and executioners weighing the street cred of their own enterprises? Should company owners freely discuss the concept of forced euthanasia, for will this only perplex the Dutch?”
Get into it…
“Aging may be the great skate industry adventure of the ’10s, as grizzled pros test the tolerance of weathered ligaments and brittling bones in an ongoing quest to avoid that unholy wyrm, the Real World, and its most loathsome prison, the Day Job. There are a few who two decades ago may have seemed obvious candidates if one were to choose a moon-shotter capable of stretching a pro career into a third decade, like Eric Koston or Daewon Song or Marc Johnson. There are are others whose misadventures with substances and the US legal system made them less obvious picks, such as Jeff Grosso and Fred Gall and Guy Mariano. Yet here we are.”
Click over to BOIL THE OCEAN for the full article.
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