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Leibniz Gymnasium Pirmasens Luisenstraße 2 66953 Pirmasens Skateboarding As An American Subculture Facharbeit im Leistungskurs Englisch von Jan-Lucca Hennes MSS 12 Schuljahr: 2013/2014 Betreuende Lehrkraft: Eva Kristin Schmitt

Skateboarding As An American Subculture

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Eine Facharbeit von Jan-Lucca Hennes am Leibniz-Gymnasium Pirmasens.

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Page 1: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

Leibniz Gymnasium Pirmasens

Luisenstraße 2

66953 Pirmasens

Skateboarding As An

American Subculture

Facharbeit im Leistungskurs

Englisch

von

Jan-Lucca Hennes

MSS 12

Schuljahr: 2013/2014

Betreuende Lehrkraft: Eva Kristin Schmitt

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1

1. Abstract

This paper investigates whether skateboarding is a subculture or not. To determine

this I made up a questionnaire and conducted interviews. The answers I got through

these interviews were compared and evaluated. With the knowledge I acquired from

literature I related the results of my interviews with the criteria a subculture has to

fulfill. To consider skateboarding a subculture my interviews had to show that it has

unique values, a significant importance of specific niche-media and a global spreading.

Furthermore I needed to show that there is a basic difference between skateboarding

and traditional sports. After evaluating my interviews I came to the conclusion that

skateboarding complies with these criteria and can therefore be classified as a

subculture.

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2. Table of contents

1. Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….…… 1

2. Table of contents…….……………………………………………………………………... 2

3. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………… 3

4. Main body.…………………………………………………………………………………..… 4

4.1. Media………………………………………………………………………………… 5

4.2. Sports………………………………………………………………………………… 7

4.3. Values………………………………………………………………………………… 10

5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………. 12

6. Attachments………………………………………………………………………………… 14

6.1. List of references……………………………………………………….…….. 14

6.2. Questionnaire………………………………………………………………….. 15

6.3. Evaluation of the interviews…………………………………………….. 16

6.4. Erklärung über die selbstständige Anfertigung der Arbeit... 18

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3. Introduction

Skateboarding was developed in the middle of the 1950s in western California where

local surfers looked for an alternative when the waves were flat. Today, more than 50

years later, there are over 50 million1 skateboarders2 around the world. Throughout

these years skateboarding has constantly developed from being a simple pastime for

bored surfers, who cruised with their boards on the sidewalks imitating surfing style

and moves (which gave them the name sidewalk-surfers)3, to the biggest sport-related

youth culture45. To reach this skateboarding has constantly been changing not only

concerning the skateboard itself (for example starting from roller skates attached to a

2x4-inch plank of wood6 to professionally manufactured boards sometimes even with

additional fiberglass or carbon layers, aluminium axes and polyurethane wheels) but

also in its practices. The developments of the skateboard made the tricks possible that

are done with it today, which are the foundation of skateboarding as we know it

nowadays7. Regarding its popularity and the large number of participants

skateboarding is often called a youth culture. But is it right to name something that´s

mostly characterized through a piece of wood with four wheels attached to it a youth

culture or subculture? Looking at its history, skateboarding has always been linked to

other subcultures like punk, hip-hop or hard rock8 but that doesn´t mean it has to be

one itself.

Being a skateboarder myself and having lots of friends who skate, too, it seems natural

to me to call skateboarding a subculture without really thinking about it. According to

Thomas Slee, a subculture is defined as “a group within a larger culture that

differentiates themselves. Subcultures often possess their own belief systems, values,

1Unknown author. 2013. Guinness World Records 2014. England: Guinness World Records Limited. p.109 2 The terms skateboarders and skaters will be used synonymously in the following text 3 National Skateboarding Certification Program. Year unknown. History and popular culture of skateboarding. Toronto: Leisure Information Network. p.1 4 Klub Konkret, EinsPlus. Von Titus bis zum Anarcho-Skateshop – Lebenslauf einer Subkultur. Youtube. May 13, 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGcgIxdVx6Y#t=331>. 5 Making out whether skateboarding really is something like a youth- or subcultre is one of the purposes of this paper and will be discussed later 6 Borden, Iain. 2001. Skateboarding, Space and the City. Oxford: Berg. p. 13 7 Slee, Thomas. 2011. Skate for Life: An Analysis of the Skateboarding Subculture. Tampa: University of South Florida. p.2 8 UCLA Center. Year unknown. About Surfing and Skateboarding Youth Subcultures. Los Angeles: University of California. p.2

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and practices.”(Slee 2011: 3) The purpose of this paper is to find out whether

skateboarding can be called a subculture or not. Therefore several skateboarders from

both the United States and Germany were interviewed to get an impression of their

state of mind. To enable me to answer this question I compared their answers and

interpreted them based on the knowledge I acquired during my research. Having read

lots of literature about subcultures and youth culture I found many different

definitions for those. Mike Brake for example describes them like this: “Subcultures

exist where there is some form of organized and recognized constellation of values,

behavior and actions which is responded to as differing from the prevailing set of

norms”9. With all those definitions and the resulting criteria a real subculture has to

fulfill I made up my questionnaire.

4. Main body

While trying to find skateboarders who were willing to be interviewed about this topic

I tried to get as much of a variety of ethnicities, ages and social standings as I could get

to make my research as varied as possible. Unfortunately I was not able to find any

female skateboarders for my interviews which affirms the image of skateboarding

being a male-dominated sport10. In the end I had interviewed nine people, which are

all active skateboarders, mostly amateurs, a few of them professionals. Four of them

were German and five American aged 18 to 31. Every single one of them would fit into

Slee´s definition of a lifer (“Members of this group are extremely dedicated to

skateboarding and will continue to skateboard for their entire lives no matter what

factors get in the way of it”(Slee 2011: 15)) so they appear to be the best group to

investigate for this research. According to Borden “Skateboarding, like other

subcultures, attempts to separate itself from groups such as the family, to be

oppositional, appropriative of the city, irrational in organization, ambiguous in

constitution, independently creative, and exploitative of its marginal or sub-status”

9 Brake, Mike. 1985. Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures

in America, Britain, and Canada. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p.8 10 Buckingham, David. 2009. Skate perception: self-representation, identity and visual style in a youth subculture. London: Institute of Education, London University. p.3

Page 6: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

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(Borden 2001: 137), so the goal of this research is to find out if all those attributes

which would establish it as a subculture coincide with the answers I got from my

interviewees.

4.1. Media

Skateboarding is “in constant conversation […] with a wide array of mainstream, niche,

and local media forms and finds various affinities […] with these forms´ ideologies”

which makes communication, magazines and photography crucial factors (Borden

2001: 127, 119) for its dissemination.

So the first thing I wanted to know was how each of my interviewees got into

skateboarding. Almost every one of them stated something similar as a reason. The

most frequent answer to this question was that they started because at least one of

their friends was already skating or had started to skate with them. Only two skaters

mentioned other ways of contact, one of them getting into it through magazines and

the other one receiving a skateboard as a present when he was a kid. This shows that

both the communication between potential beginners and skaters and the contact to

skateboarding-related media like magazines, photography, and videos are the easiest

ways to make skateboarding accessible. This goes along with the theory that

magazines and the associated photography and videos are “means of community

building”(Buckingham 2009: 8) and “ensure that skateboarding subculture is as global

as well as local activity” (Borden 2001: 142). Especially through the help of internet,

videos are much better available for skaters and beginners nowadays (Buckingham,

p.7) than they used to be earlier.

As already mentioned music has always played a vital role in the history of

skateboarding, not only because of it playing a key role in skate videos (Buckingham,

p.14), but also because of skateboarding being linked to different music-related

subcultures (National Skateboarding Certification Program: 4; UCLA Center: 2). This

importance of music was also shown by my interviewees with most of them giving

music a great credit in their lives and three of them even professionally making music

themselves. None of them stated not listening or only rarely listening to music. After

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being asked whether their strong connection to music had anything to do with

skateboarding the ones who were into making music mentioned that both occupations

complemented each other by for example getting to know new bands or experiencing

new genres through skate videos or other skaters, which again shows the importance

of communication and the skateboarding-inherent niche-media.

Having frequently read about the importance these media have within any

subculture11 it seemed obvious to ask the interviewees if they watched skate videos

and if they did this whether they had an impact on their relatedness to skateboarding

or not. Again every one of them explained that they at least sometimes watched skate

videos with most of them even watching them regularly, thinking of the value the

videos had had for them so far. Furthermore everyone called the videos a huge

inspiration.

Looking at the answers I got from my interviewees, skateboarding-related media and

especially videos are crucial factors for the sport itself by offering any skater around

the world the possibility to see the most recent developments for example of tricks,

hardware and even fashion. Due to this dissemination of media, skate videos from all

over the world don´t differ much12. In the considered videos the trick selection,

clothing, camera angles, hardware and music are quite similar13. As Borden formulates

it: “skateboarding, while being highly localized in its specific manifestations, is part of a

global network of approximately like-minded practitioners" (Borden 2001: 2). Relating

to skate videos this localization is about the people that are in the videos, who often

happen to skate in a group or crew14 without being really organized and mostly using

the same space to skate. Using the example of the Marvs video, all skaters who are

presented in the video are members of the Marvs crew from Munich who all usually

skate in or near Munich. Here the globalization can be seen in the similarity of the trick

selection and the skateboarding-specific language like mentioned before. This

11 Tittley, Mark. Unknown Year. A New Approach To Youth Subculture Theory. Unknown publishing place: Sonlife International. p.6 12 Therefor the German video “Marvs: Wait For It…“ and the American video “Girl and Chocolate Skateboards: Pretty Sweet” were compared 13 As far as they can be due to sponsorship deals 14 Kato, Yuki. 2006. Skating the Burb: The Regulations and the Negotiations of Suburban Teenage Skateboarding. Montreal: ASA Annual Meeting 2006. p.5

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globalization of skateboarding will come up all the way through my interviews and will

be considered later.

Having talked about music already and being aware of the fact that many music-

genres grew to influential subcultures decades ago15, I wanted to know if my

interviewees were into any other subcultures16. Also I read much about skateboarding

being linked to other subcultures, so for me the question came up whether

skateboarding is a subculture itself or if it’s only people who are participants of any

subculture and who randomly like to skate, too. Through the answers I got I was able

to determine that this apprehension was unfounded. The only ones who stated to be

into other subcultures were the ones who also stated to be into making music which

makes their participation in such subcultures natural. Other interviewees denied my

question or articulated that they are only slightly into other subcultures, for example

by having friends who are participating in those subcultures.

4.2. Sports

Skateboarding is often labeled as a sport which is very dedicated to style (Slee, p.10)

and fashion (Buckingham, p.5). Because of visual representation being an important

dimension of youth culture (Buckingham 2009: 1), I wanted to know if my interviewees

watched out for clothes from skateboarding-related brands while shopping and if they

are concerned about the clothes they were wearing. While reading about the value of

fashion in skateboarding I often read Mike Vallely`s quote “I think skateboarding is

more fashion than function”17. This quote would be a clear contradiction to the usual

habits of any sport by taking more care about looking fancy than to wear clothes that

support the necessities of the athlete. All of my interviewees stated that both during

their everyday life and while skating they tried to look fancy by taking care of the

clothes they were wearing and only one of them denied looking out for clothes from

skateboarding-related brands. The majority of them expressed that they wanted to

wear good-looking clothes, preferably from skate brands. Of course, companies

manufacture clothes for a specific target group and try to adjust their products to it

15 Farin, Klaus. 2010. Jugendkulturen heute. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 27/2010. p.4 ff. 16 Because of all my interviewees assuming skateboarding being a subculture I asked for other subcultures 17 Porter, Justin. (Sept. 24 2008). Woosh! Another Shoe Destroyed. The New York Times. G2. Print.

Page 9: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

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but it still was interesting for me to find out that, according to my interviewees, skaters

really do not put much effort into trying to wear functional clothes. Most of them

mentioned that the only part of their outfit that needed to be able to bear

skateboarding´s strains were their shoes and two of them added trousers. For shoes

being the direct connection between the body of the skater and the board it is obvious

that at least these have to match the requirements of the sport and especially the

skater himself. When investigating skate videos I noticed that even while jumping

down stairs some skaters prefer to wear tight jeans although they seem impractical.

After these investigations it seems as if Mike Vallely’s quote really conforms to

skateboarders` preferences although seeming illogical from the view of any athlete.

“Skateboarding is not a sport”18 – that´s what some shirts from Consolidated

Skateboards say and even one of my interviewees repeated this phrase. Looking at

skateboarding without regarding its participant’s relationship to it, of course it is a

sport. Reduced to just the act of skateboarding it is all about the skateboarder’s

strength, ability and commitment like any other sport but like Consolidated shows

skaters seem to dissociate themselves from traditional athletes. Being asked about the

difference to other sports all my interviewees’ answers were similar. The most

common answer was that in skateboarding there were much more freedom than in

any other sport. They explained that they appreciated having no training times or

trainers who told them what to do or when to do it. This absence of training in the

broadest sense is followed by a missing of the competitive character, which is typical

of most sports. Even in competition, skaters seem to be more interested in having fun

than in winning. In such situations skaters show no signs of negative emotions towards

other participants and even cheer for their competitors19. This is a fundamental

difference to other sports, which usually work towards success in competitions. The

lack of competitive character in skateboarding might be explained by one of the other

things my interviewees often mentioned: According to them, skateboarding is at first

18Consolidated Skateboards. T-Shirt: Consolidated Skateboards – Skateboarding is not a Sport. Consolidated webshop. June 2, 2014 <http://consolidatedskateboards.mybigcommerce.com/t-shirt-consolidated-skateboards-skateboarding-is-not-a-sport/>. 19 Moore, Linda. (Oct. 5, 2009). An Ethnographic Study of the Skateboarding Culture. The Sports Journal 12: 4.

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an individualistic and creative sport. There are no actual teams so while skating both

for fun and in competition a skater always does it for himself at first. The possibility to

always concentrate on themselves enables skaters to become creative in their

exercise. This creativity has always been an important part of skateboarding both for

the act of skateboarding and for the view on skaters’ environment. Even in the 1970s,

when skaters did not have any skateparks like we know them nowadays, they showed

great creativity by their special use of space (Borden 2001: 29 ff.). Skateboarding

differing that much from traditional sports, one of my interviewees even shared the

opinion of Consolidated and refused to call skateboarding a sport, for him it rather is a

lifestyle.

Mostly having no pressure to succeed in competition, which is an important factor in

most sports, I asked my interviewees what the driving forces to keep them

skateboarding were. The answers I got here partly overlapped the answers I got after

asking what was the difference to other sports, which might point to the following

factors being the reasons for skateboarding’s fascination for my interviewees.

The most repeated answers were fun, freedom and friends. Fun being the most

obvious reason to keep doing something, friends and especially freedom are quite

unusual for sports. The importance of both factors will be investigated in the following

paragraphs. Like most of the answers I got to my questions, all of my interviewees

named similar things, which is really important to mention for my research. The

answers I got to this question differed a lot from my expectations. Mostly the answers

were given on an emotional basis; they spoke of skateboarding as something they

really loved to do. Despite the common answers like fun and friends some skaters also

mentioned more specific things. These factors seem to be individual for every skater

and set skateboarding’s appeal apart from other sports’. For example, one of them

stated that through skateboarding he really felt alive even without doing tricks, just by

the act of riding his board. So both the more usual factors and the factors that are

influenced by each skater’s individual preferences seem to constitute to

skateboarding’s attraction.

Borden mentions that skateboarders are always questioning architecture on its

skateability (Borden 2001: 105) so I wanted to know from my interviewees whether

Page 11: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

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their view on their environment changed after starting to skate. I nearly exclusively got

positive answers with only one of them not agreeing with that, stating that he was

very young when he started to skate so he didn´t remember if his view on things was

different before. I asked the ones who answered positively for examples of this

different view and got predominantly the same answers. As reported by my

interviewees, being a skateboarder changes the way you look at your surroundings.

Skaters seem to always check any form of architecture on whether it is possible to

skate it or not. This is a consistent part of skateboarding. Like mentioned before, in the

1970s skaters used to seek out empty backyard pools, ditches or pipes (Borden 2001:

29 ff.). Today the only thing that has changed over the years is the architecture

skateboarders are interested in. In the last 40 years they turned away from classic pool

skating to skating in the streets now. Today skaters are interested in finding stairs, rails

or benches to skate on, but still they always watch out for spots to skate. According to

my interviewees, their search for spots reaches so far that whatever they see in their

environment they try to estimate if it can be skated or not and which tricks could be

possible. This freedom of being able to exercise your sport wherever you want is one

of skateboarding’s most obvious differences to traditional sports. So pointing out all

those distinctions to other sports I can already say that skateboarding is more than just

another sport both for its participants and for youth in general.

4.3. Values

The most important thing that characterizes a subculture is its unique values. Most

definitions for subcultures include the presence of such values (Slee 2011: 3; Brake

1985: 8; Borden 2001: 137). Needless to say, it was crucial for me to figure out if there

are any accordances in the values of my interviewees. To ascertain whether there is

any connection between their values and being a skateboarder I wanted to know if

their values changed after starting to skate. The answers I got to this question were

predominantly positive but also the hardest ones to interpret correctly.

First I am going to illustrate what I found out by asking about their values: The

majority of the values mentioned had social references. The most common answers

were family and friendship, followed by freedom, tolerance and fun. At least one of

those came up in nearly every interview. This shows that such values that affect social

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interactions are the most important ones for skaters. Transferred to skateboarding this

suggests that its participants are more interested in its social aspects than in the sport

itself. Although still being athletes the usual sporty characteristics like, for example,

the desire to win weren’t mentioned by my interviewees, which indicates that for

skaters skateboarding is not only about the act itself. Asking about their change of

values I had to face unexpected problems: Most of them started really young so they

were not able to give a clear statement. Also a young kid doesn´t have a real

awareness of his values like an older person has. So for the ones who grew up with

skateboarding it was impossible to determine whether their values changed through

skateboarding or if their values developed against the background of skateboarding.

Looking at both the answers from skaters who couldn’t give me a clear answer and the

ones from those who agreed I noticed that regardless of any possible changes after

becoming a skateboarder, their values are similar. Realizing this, I’m able to say that

there is a connection between skateboarding and specific values.

After finishing my interviews and evaluating their results the last thing I wanted to find

out in order to determine whether skateboarding is a subculture or not was if there

are any similarities between the answers I got from American skateboarders and the

ones I got from German skateboarders. Most of the literature I read declares

skateboarding as a worldwide phenomenon with approximately like-minded

participants (e.g. Borden 2001: 2). Subcultures are never purely local phenomenons

(Tittley: 6), so to decide if skateboarding is a subculture I needed to investigate

whether the factors already discussed in this paper, which characterize it as a

subculture, only apply to American skaters or to skateboarders worldwide. Looking at

the interviews I found out that there really aren’t any obvious differences between my

German and my American interviewees. Looking closer at the answers, I saw that the

German skaters are mainly also participating in other subcultures while the ones from

the United States aren’t.

Despite this fact I couldn’t find any clear differences between German and American

skateboarders, which makes me agree with Borden’s statement “Skateboarding

subculture is – with some distinct regional variations – a global practice.”(Borden 2001:

141)

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5. Conclusion

When I made up my questionnaire I tried to ask questions which were supposed to

lead to attributes that are characteristic for subcultures. To determine whether

skateboarding is such a subculture or not I compared the answers I got from my

interviewees with the criteria a subculture has to fulfill. These criteria were the

importance of specific niche-media, the presence of unique values and both of these

characteristics being global appearances. Also for skateboarding being a sport in the

first place I wanted to know what separates it from other sports. Another important

aspect was to find out if there is a clear connection between skateboarding and

established subcultures of if it exists independently from them.

Looking at the results of my interviews now I can ascertain beyond doubt that

skateboarding suits all of these criteria. The answers I got from skateboarders both

from the USA and Germany were nearly the same which proves that skateboarding is a

global phenomenon. The question how my interviewees got into the sport showed

that it is highly socialized and gave a hint on the importance of its specific media.

Inquiring about these media directly I found out that especially videos have a huge

value for skateboarders. As opposed to this, investigating the difference to other

sports took much more effort. These differences did not only come up after asking for

them but often also during the whole interview. This turned out to be hard to

generalize. My interviewees mostly did not fit into the image of a classic athlete, which

indicates that skateboarding isn’t only about the physical training. For its practitioners

skateboarding is not about winning or training, it is more about the freedom and the

creativity that comes along with it. I couldn’t find any closer connection between

skateboarding and other subcultures. Approximately half of my interviewees stated to

be members of other subcultures which were mostly music-related ones. Despite

being music-related these subcultures were all different, which makes me conclude

that there is no direct connection between skateboarding and other subcultures. Still I

would admit that music has a huge value for skateboarders. The most important thing

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for me was to find out whether there is any accordance in my interviewees’ values.

Such accordance is vital for skateboarding to be a subculture. Questioning the

influence skateboarding had had for their values I got very different answers but

investigating these values I realized that they were very similar. Summarized for

skateboarding they are family, friendship, freedom, tolerance and fun.

After evaluating my interviews I have come to the result that skateboarding fulfills all

the necessary requirements of being classified as a subculture, by being spread

globally with important niche-media and unique values.

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6. Attachments

6.1. List of references

- Borden, Iain. 2001. Skateboarding, Space and the City. Oxford: Berg.

- Brake, Mike. 1985. Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures

and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain, and Canada. London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul.

- Buckingham, David. 2009. Skate perception: self-representation, identity and

visual style in a youth subculture. London: Institute of Education, London

University.

- Consolidated Skateboards. T-Shirt: Consolidated Skateboards – Skateboarding is

not a Sport. Consolidated webshop. June 2, 2014

<http://consolidatedskateboards.mybigcommerce.com/t-shirt-consolidated-

skateboards-skateboarding-is-not-a-sport/>.

- Farin, Klaus. 2010. Jugendkulturen heute. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte

27/2010: 3–8.

- Klub Konkret, EinsPlus. Von Titus bis zum Anarcho-Skateshop – Lebenslauf einer

Subkultur. Youtube. May 13, 2014

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGcgIxdVx6Y#t=331>.

- Kato, Yuki. 2006. Skating the Burb: The Regulations and the Negotiations of

Suburban Teenage Skateboarding. Montreal: ASA Annual Meeting 2006.

- Moore, Linda. (Oct. 5, 2009). An Ethnographic Study of the Skateboarding

Culture. The Sports Journal 12: 4.

- National Skateboarding Certification Program. Year unknown. History and

popular culture of skateboarding. Toronto: Leisure Information Network.

- Porter, Justin. (Sept. 24 2008). Woosh! Another Shoe Destroyed. The New York

Times. G2. Print.

- Slee, Thomas. 2011. Skate for Life: An Analysis of the Skateboarding Subculture.

Tampa: University of South Florida.

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15

- Tittley, Mark. Unknown Year. A New Approach To Youth Subculture Theory.

Unknown publishing place: Sonlife International.

- UCLA Center. Year unknown. About Surfing and Skateboarding Youth

Subcultures. Los Angeles: University of California.

- Unknown author. 2013. Guinness World Records 2014. England: Guinness

World Records Limited.

- Image source of the Leibniz-Gymnasium Pirmasens logo: Thomas Mohr

6.2. Questionnaire20

1. How did you get into skateboarding? 2. How important is music for you? 3. Do you watch skatevideos?

3.1. Would you say videos were important for you as a skateboarder? 4. Are there any other subcultures that influence you? 5. Do you take care about the clothes you are wearing? (Do they have to be

functional?) 5.1. Do you watch out for skateboarding-related brands while

shopping? 6. In how far does skateboarding differ from other sports? 7. What are the driving forces to keep you skateboarding? 8. Did your view on things change by becoming a skateboarder? 9. Which values are important for you in your life?

9.1. Would you say your values changed after becoming a skateboarder?

20 In some interviews I asked additional questions to react to, for example, imprecise answers.

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r sk

ate

-b

oar

din

g

#4

Ger

man

Fr

ien

ds

Fam

ily,

frie

nd

ship

, fu

n

+ ++

+ ++

+ ++

+ ++

In

div

idu

alit

y,

free

do

m, n

o

rule

s

+ +

Fre

edo

m,

enjo

yin

g lif

e

#5

Am

eri

can

B

roth

er

Rel

igio

n

+ -

+ ++

-

Var

iety

, ad

ven

ture

++

0

Th

rill,

fe

elin

g o

f it

#6

Ger

man

Fr

ien

ds

Fre

edo

m,

fun

, re

spec

t,

tole

ran

ce

++

- ++

+ ++

+ ++

+ N

o t

rain

ing/

te

ams/

co

mp

etet

ive

char

acte

r

+++

+++

Fun

, fr

ien

ds,

ad

dic

tio

n

#7

Am

eri

can

Fr

ien

ds

Fre

edo

m

+ -

+ ++

+

Ain

’t s

po

rt,

lifes

tyle

, re

laxi

ng

++

++

Frie

nd

s,

free

do

m

Page 18: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

17

In

ter-

vie

wee

N

atio

nal

ity

Get

in

to

Val

ues

C

han

ge

of

valu

es

Oth

er

sub

- cu

ltu

res

Val

ue

of

mu

sic

Val

ues

o

f cl

oth

ing

Skat

e-

bra

nd

s D

iffe

ren

ce t

o

oth

er s

po

rts

Vid

eos

Ch

ange

o

f vi

ew

D

rivi

ng

forc

es

#8

Am

eri

can

G

rew

u

p w

ith

it

Enjo

yin

g lif

e ++

+ -

+ ++

++

+ N

o t

rain

ers,

in

div

idu

alit

y ++

++

Fu

n, l

ove

fo

r sk

ate

-b

oar

din

g

#9

Am

eri

can

M

aga-

zin

es

Res

pe

ct,

amb

itio

n

++

+ ++

+ ++

+ ++

A

dve

ntu

re

+ ++

+ P

assi

on

, fa

ns

Page 19: Skateboarding As An American Subculture

18

3.1. Erklärung über die selbstständige Anfertigung der Arbeit

Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die schriftliche Facharbeit selbstständig verfasst und

keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt habe. Die Stellen

meiner Arbeit, die dem Wortlaut oder dem Sinne nach anderen Werken und Quellen,

einschließlich Quellen aus dem Internet, entnommen sind, habe ich in jedem Fall unter

Angabe der Quelle deutlich als Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht. Dasselbe gilt sinngemäß

für Tabellen, Karten und Abbildungen.

………………………….………….. ……………………………………

Ort, Datum Unterschrift