Respect Authority

Pursuing skateboarding isn’t exactly the same as embracing an activity like soccer. For one thing, it’s not like you’re going to get a scholarship for being really awesome at it. Plus, all the drugs you’re supposed to do while skateboarding are illegal. Meanwhile, every suburban town has 5% of its land federally mandated to be soccer fields (the other 95%? Reserved for Starbucks); whereas finding a skatepark in your town at all is a lucky break, finding one without its ramps buried beneath a swarm of Ripstiks and Razor scooters is basically no more than urban myth at this point. And instead of being proud of your accomplishments, your parents loathe your hobby and treat you like some kind of hooligan (note: because you are one).

But hey, let’s think of the the relative benefits of skating in a developed nation, like being able to drink clean Mountain Dew when you’ve worked up an xtreme thirst. You also don’t have to worry about getting blown up by terrorists on the way to your favorite spot, which is pretty convenient. And in America, we have MTV to turn you into a skater if you’ve always been more of a sexy princess, while your Afghan counterparts are getting their legs whipped with wires for even stepping on a board.

The skate scene in Kabul, Afghanistan is, understandably, a struggling minority to say the least. After all, the Taliban probably puts skateboarding up there with “Jewish High Holy Days” on their list of reasons to get out of bed in the morning and continue the jihad. Nonetheless, 34-year-old Oliver Percovich is attempting to start a skateboarding school there called Skateistan when, to be honest, if I were stuck in Kabul with only a skateboard, I’d be using it to skate the fuck out of Kabul.

And I’m pretty sure Skateistan was the name of the country I imagined in high school, where skateboarding would be the nation’s official means of transport (fucking stupid idea) and all the fountains would spew cheap beer instead of water (slightly less stupid).

Nonetheless, Percovich describes his motivation, saying, “Teenagers are trying to dissociate from old mentalities, and I’m their servant,” proving that, perhaps, skateboarding is skateboarding no matter which bombed out crater of a country you’re doing it in. And while I skate to forget about the simple stresses of everyday adult living, those of us fortunate enough to pursue our teenage love affair in somewhat more reasonable areas of the world would do well to remember that those stresses aren’t that you’re going to get married off to your uncle when you’re 13, or shot in the street by the liberating guns of the U.S. Army.

Unfortunately, old mentalities die hard. Hadisa, a 10-year-old girl who has been beaten by her brothers for skateboarding claims, “I’m not upset with my brothers for beating me,” just as, I imagine, she is not upset that in a few years she’ll be forced to cover every inch of her body when she leaves the house because for some reason, in her country, the men are such single-minded fiends that gazing upon even an inch of exposed female flesh sends them into a gang rapey frenzy.

Indeed, generations of cultural brainwashing uphold traditions that make about as much sense as living in Afghanistan in the first place does. Hadisa says she’s not upset about her brothers’ treatment of her because “they have the right.” Hm, just like middle-America “has the right” to assume all people from the Middle East are sexist savages because so many of them respect such abhorrent modes of thinking? It’s hard not to fall into the ethnocentric trap when the people on the other side of the world are so clearly being retarded.

But where there is skateboarding, there is hope. One of Percovich’s most promising charges is Mirwais, a 16-year-old boy who used to wash cars for $4 a day to support his family of eight. Skating has become Mirwais’ dream, though Percovich said the boy is often high from sniffing glue. Well what do you know — the kid is obviously a natural talent. Like I said, skateboarding is skateboarding no matter where you’re from.