Skateboarding: From Urban Spaces to Subcultural Olympians

Skateboarding or ‘sidewalk surfing’ emerged in the late 1950’s southern California, whereby surfers were not in the sea. The aim of this special issue is to benchmark critical research on skateboarding, youth and subculture on an international basis to contribute to the field of research which explores contemporary skateboarding focusing on young people’s everyday lives from a cultural perspective. Skateboarding is a very individual thing; it is about balance, and it is also about how you hold yourself in a collective subculture within local communities and global media where ‘living side ways’ as Friedel (2016) calls it, is a type of philosophy of the everyday. Skateboarding has evolved from a creative urban activity with a legendary past meshed with subcultural values into an Olympic sport and a platform for multinational industry and global enterprises. On this basis there are tensions between subcultural authenticity within skateboarding and the pursuit of instrumental profit sought by corporate companies who are at some distance from the young people themselves. (Introduction