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The February issue included an anonymous letter from Albany, N-Y, concerning Hawk's recent Boom Boom Huck Jam and the insidious guise of greed UGG Short Boot Factory Outlet. The letter inspired me to dabble into the politics of skateboarding, if only to fire off a couple of questions about another frequently mishandled skate issue. I wonder; can a skateboarder really even sell out to the industry with the inherent lack of values that the lifestyle implies? If my experiences are wrong, then I need to find some new heroes, but isn't "bad" good in this culture? Isn't that what makes skateboarding cutting edge Wholesale Buy Lebron 11 Shoes? I would like to examine a highly charged product as an example of this possible paradox. Let us say that there is a major opinion amongst skateboarders that getting a paycheck from Nike is a detestable offense; essentially it's the epitome of "selling out." In this opinion, one can see that the rider lacks a sense of cultural pride and mortality. They are committed to the buck, regardless of any of the connotations surrounding the mega-conglomerate victory shoe companyTop Lebron XII For Sale. But wait, this is a good thing. This skateboarder has thus denounced the purity of skateboarding for a much nobler code, that of brash, gritty apathy. The Nike rider has become a model of the dialectic between weighty opinions and assumed morals. This is similar to how Hunter S Thompson addressed the confusing behavior of the Hell's Angels: how exactly can a person be a hypocrite if they are consumed by a culture that reflects nothing moral? I'd like to think this is why Nike has become successful. Not the fetishism of the swoosh, but the subversive idea that wearing Nike shoes is actually like saying, "I cashed in and I could care less about staying true to any unspoken skate ethics." It's skaters wanting to look good looking bad, and it is a terribly good marketing ploy. It's something I'd like to call the Eminem factor: screw you, love me, pay up. It works because all of today's skateboarding morals are externally driven and they're so manipulated by a very cunning marketing department. And they must be the ones that got us confused in the first place. Do I really even care if someone is out skating in Nikes? Isn't that unethical? Should I even have ethics?
