Respect Authority

At this point in our country’s mad dash to the great big finish line in the sky, you’ve probably been forced to sell your car and are now effectively living out of your iPhone, so you might as well make your completely gratuitous fashion accessory as functional as possible. And for those of us who already spend a good portion of our time on the street, Peter Fahey, founder of Sneaker Pimps, has developed the iSkateboard application. It’s sure to be almost as popular as 2008’s fiendish iMLookingForADealer app.

iSkateboard harnesses the daunting, mystical powers of Google Maps for a purpose even more useful than trying to look in your ex-girlfriend’s apartment window with Street View. The application currently boasts a directory of 30,000 skate spots, skate parks and skate shops worldwide, with more listings being added every day. So much for that secret spot you and your buddies used to never get kicked out of.

Additionally, iSkateboard has a streaming news feed that pulls content from Thrasher, The Skateboard Mag and Transworld, amongst others, making it even easier to, you know, not support the industry by actually paying for the magazines.

While this font of information is certainly awesome to behold, clearly I have a few reservations about it. It’s a little bit like when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. My face is kind of getting melted off here, but not in a good way.

Naturally, having explicit directions to hundreds of incredible (and no doubt many less than incredible) skate spots in any given city is a seriously valuable resource, to say nothing about the exponentially increased potential for fun it provides. Nonetheless, iSkateboard simultaneously helps the skateboarding community and takes a cleaver to it, by dissecting a core element of the culture.

It takes away from the joy of stumbling upon a new spot, or one you had always heard of but hadn’t found yet, either through the simple act of skating around the city or by word of mouth. And if smelly, unkempt dudes in skater bars can’t exchange skate spots anymore, what will they talk about? Girls and drugs, and everything they used to talk about except for giving directions to skate spots, I guess.

Not to mention, 200 bucks is a lot of money for something that’s just going to break your numerous falls during any given session. Probably best to leave the iPhone in the car around the block — don’t worry, the crack heads on the stoop will keep an eye on it.