SusoSight SusoSight

It's what you do on the skateboard that is a crime.

Number:	28
Date created:	2002-02-12 00:14:34
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I'll never forget what the director of the Glassmen Drum and Bugle corps said in his parting words before we took the finals field in 1994. "If you're going to have sex in public, then make sure you take off your Glassmen jackets first." he said. This is a very important idea to understand if you want to understand a bit more about how society functions. You see, people tend to assocciate what you do with what you represent. That assocciation gets stronger the more cases they can experience.

When the driver of a local company drives his delivery truck around town in an agreesive manner, cutting people off and not being polite, people assocciate that rudeness with the company he works for. When three long haired boys with black leather jackets walk up the street and shout profanities at passers, that assocciation will reflect on other men with long hair with black leather jackets or even those with long hair.

So coming back to the title of this thought, what do skateboarders have to do with all of this. Well, there is this half ripped sticker that I always notice when I walk down to the parking garage across the street from my apartment. It reads "Skateboarding is not a crime". I'm guessing that some rebel skateboarders got tired of the bad rap they were getting just for doing what they liked and decided to get the word out about how they felt about their hobby. The truth of it is that skateboarding is not a crime, it's what you may do on the skateboard that is. Here, we're taking the word crime lightly because they are merely refering to the complaints about them hanging out in groups in local parks or on sidewalks.

Some (not all) of the local skaters like to do stuff like tip over half full trash cans in the parking garage so that they can jump over them. That's fine, as long as they clean up the garbage when they are done. Of course, they never do, and in my mind, that reflects upon the image of all skaters. There are also a handful of skaters that like to do that "ride the rail" trick on a section of a handicap ramp right outside my apartment window. The noise from this annoys me to death and a few times I've asked them to stop. I generally assocciate all skaters in Bloomington with the ones that do this.

So you should now see that the things you do in public can very well reflect upon whatever your brotherhood is. I'm not saying that you should stop doing everything for fear that you'll misrepresent those like you. Just do things in moderation and have some respect for other brotherhoods not like yours.