According to writer and skateboarder Kyle Beachy “Forty years after Stecyk wrote the foundations of skateboarding legend, the big question is this: is skateboarding a primitive force, or is it a progressive one? Or more than that: will skateboarding continue to perpetuate the old American power dynamics of few and many, of white supremacy and brown otherness, or will it work to dismantle them? Does it PMA its way into cozy selfishness or play a more difficult and labor-intensive role in the world beyond itself ?”Even in skateboarding’s earliest days, non-white skaters were claiming space within a predominantly white culture. West Coast pioneers like Steve Caballero, who is Japanese and Mexican American, Peggy Oki (Japanese-American ), Tommy Gurrero ( Filipino-Ohlone-Native-Chilean-Portuguese-American), Salman Agah (Azerbaijani and Iranian descent) and African Americans Marty Grimes and Ray Barbee reveal the thriving diversity of identities that challenge the “straight, white, male” convention. In the fifth installment of Heavy Discussion, panelists will be peeling back layers of racism and bigotry in skateboarding on both a personal and collective level. •
Panelists | Kyle Beachy | Kava Garcia Vasquez | Van Nguyen | Steve Rodriguez | Lee Smith •

Recorded Friday Sept 6, 2019
at KCDC Skateshop
85 N.3rd St. #118
Brooklyn, NY. 11249

Update: Kava Garcia Vasquez ' was not able to make the original conversation , but a supplementary conversation can now be found via Quell Skate AFTER PARTY #3 – HEAVY DISCUSSION IN CONVERSATION WITH KAVA GARCIA VASQUEZ link: https://www.quellskate.com/podcast/2019/5/19/after-party-2-coffee-amp-conversations-industry-panel-6s36j

Heavy Discussion Presents: Racism + Skateboarding

x DJ Fake Jilleen 7.11.2020
Mixed by OKNY