Searching for a scuff on a stranger’s shoe: I found my people and passion on a skateboard

This is a First Person column by Zev Klymochko, who lives in Calgary. For more information on CBC’s First Person stories, see the FAQ.

The first time I did a kickflip I was amazed. Excited. I was 12 and practicing in the driveway of my family’s house in suburban Winnipeg.

Click on the tail of the board so that it pops up. Kick one foot off the side so that it rotates about its horizontal axis in the air and becomes level. Land on top again.

It’s a very common trick in skateboarding, but much harder than it sounds.

I wanted to make sure I could actually do a kickflip and that my first successful attempt wasn’t just a fluke, so I did it over and over, then ran in breathless and said to my dad, “Come and see! kickflip !”

Like many young children, I was looking for a passion and a place to belong.

Skateboarding is a sport with its own fashion, music and language. My friends and I looked up videos, learned from magazines, and met other skaters in town.

I wanted even more. The first skate park I went to was on a family trip to Vancouver and I fell in love with the graffiti, the feel of the board sliding over the smooth concrete surface and how I felt at home surrounded by kids like me. Kids younger than me performed tricks I’d only seen in videos from professionals. I just knew they had to practice there every day.

So I went back to Winnipeg and wrote a letter to the editor of the Winnipeg free press, urging the city to build skateboard parks there too. I just started high school and was so proud when it was published.

In the media, adults still treated skateboarding as a toy fad or an underground, almost forbidden activity. It was banned in parts of some citiesand the local skateboard shop in Winnipeg was a small, dark and somewhat dingy place with abrasive music, perhaps to fend off anyone who wasn’t inside.

As a kid I loved this. I loved feeling like I was part of something else. I had the baggy pants, the “McSqueeb” haircut—longer bangs on one side, usually covering one eye—popularized by famed skateboarder Tony Hawk in the movie Make the cube shine.

It was rare to meet another skateboarder in Winnipeg in the ’80s, but I checked a stranger’s shoes to see brand names like Vision, Airwalk, and Etnies and found that telltale hole worn through the side before I noticed a telltale gave a nod, or even conspicuously strike up a conversation.

I loved skateboarding so much that I moved to Calgary in 2000 when I was 23, mainly because of the newly opened Millennium Park. It was the largest free outdoor skate park in the world at that time. It was free to use, open 24/7, and it was the hangout – where you knew you’d always see friends. It was amazing.

I signed up as a skate park monitor for the City of Calgary, co-founded a local skateboarding advocacy group, and then helped lobby the city to develop a network of at least 10 skate parks owned by the city as the city grew. We picked up tickets for skateboarding downtown and eventually left changed the bylaws.

Skateboarding gave me purpose and identity. I was often the person called by the media when skateboarding ramps, bans, or parks were being debated in the city council. And I felt most at home in the skate park. That place was – and still is – our own world with its own rules. People adhere to streamlines and an unofficial code of conduct: Take turns, don’t cut people off or try a trick someone else has been working on to discourage them.

It’s normal to hear cries of support when someone has been working on a trick for a while and it lands. And a skate park is one of the few places I can think of where an adult can strike up a conversation with a teenager without it getting weird.

“Hey, where did you get your plate?” or “That was a fun kickflip!”

I’m 45 now. I’ll keep skating as long as I can and if I could talk to the 12 year old me I’d say stick with it. If this is your passion, follow it. You don’t have to be the best in the world to love what you do or to be a positive force. It is something that can inspire others and give you a reason to be.

I lost my McSqueeb haircut years ago and I don’t wear baggy pants anymore, but I can still land a kickflip and grind a ledge at a skate park. And if I’m having a bad day, I grab my board. With the wind in my face, the vibration under my feet, the clicking sound of the sidewalk cracks, it still gives me that satisfaction.

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