Skateboarding and Narrative: A Conversation with Walker Ryan
Skateboarding and Narrative: A Conversation with Walker Ryan
Skateboarding and skateboarders are so interesting, yet so many stories simplify them. Pro skater Walker Ryan wants to change that. And he would know best how to do that.
There’s narrative in skateboarding, whether or not you’re aware of it.
The non-skater might look at skateboarders out on the street, a skate video or a contest as just a series of tricks or, maybe, property destruction.
For those of us who grew up obsessively watching every skate company’s videos (back when you had to get them on VHS or DVD at the local shop), you start to see the beginning, middle and end of it all. In the early days, there was actually a loose plot (see the Bones Brigade “Search for Animal Chin”), but most videos are, on the surface, just long commercials. Look how good Jamie Thomas is. Buy a Zero board.
But in skateboarding, having the last part of a video is a high honor. The “ender” of a video is special. It’s the punctuation mark. It’s the grand finale.
And if there’s a grand finale, it means there is tension that needs to be paid off.
On the other side of skateboarding’s spectrum, the same goes for a contest run. There needs to be a rising action, falling action and finale constructed through rising degree of difficulty, linking tricks together, and saving a strong trick for the finish.
In narrative terms, there are things like callbacks to earlier tricks in videos and contest runs. In-jokes and references using this wholly nonverbal art. Video parts like Mark Suciu’s “Verso” use symmetry of tricks to create a cohesive, mirror effect. The beginning influences the end, and vice versa. It’s not just “I did all of these tricks and put them in no specific order but matched the landing to the beat.”
At the time of its release, Suciu compared similar lines of tricks as akin to a seven-line poem.
"The symmetry became a theme present throughout the part, which now felt like a cohesive whole,” he wrote.
There are a million discussions one could have about the artistic and athletic nature of skateboarding. Is it a sport worthy of the Olympics? Is it an art form? Some museums sure think so, and allow skateboarding on their premises based on that belief.
And despite a history of painting skateboarding as a knuckle dragging endeavor pursued by the kids in detention, skateboarding sure has a lot of deep thinkers and academic bona fides. Guys like Kyle Beachy have written extensively on skateboarding, and is now involved in a program through the University of Chicago to use skateboarding as a lens to view the humanities.
Even quick bites on social media, like the former Feedback TS Instagram account, where a guy named Ted Barrow would analyze skate clips from the point of view of someone with an advanced art degree, educating skate kids on architecture and art history in the process.
And then there’s Walker Ryan, a pro skater who was acutely aware of the way the culture at large depicted skateboarding. The plot lines were limited. Movies like Street Dreams and Grind existed, but basically stuck to common denominator stories of “Kid wants to pursue going pro in skateboarding” condensed into two hours and riddled with cliches.
Ryan, while still actively a pro skater who just put out a new part of his own called “Textures,” has published two books now: “Top of Mason” and “Off Clark,” both fictional stories that use skateboarding to color its protagonists, but eschews the overused plots of movies that have come before.
Instead, “Top of Mason” is a story about the troubles that come for you in your late 20s – breakups, insecurity, the works – but the main character happens to be a skateboarder. His most recent, “Off Clark,” tells the story of a pro skater who goes missing, and a podcaster sets out to find him. As he puts on his website, these are stories set in the world of skateboarding, but not necessarily about skateboarding.
He talked about it recently on the Nine Club podcast.
Skateboarding is, at its core, the interaction with a world not built for it. At its most marketable, those movies that depict skateboarding can use the surface level story of Skateboarding the career, but never fully depict skateboarders as what they are: people. Skateboarding is just one part of their life.
Coming from my point of view of lifelong skateboard obsession as well as writing, I wanted to talk to Ryan about his relationship to writing, the way skateboarding is depicted in narrative fiction, how crafting a video part and writing a novel can influence one another, and more. Here’s our conversation.
How did you first get into writing? Which came first, skating or writing?
Growing up, most of my family members were big writers, so writing was always encouraged. My grandmother, who I've always been very close with, is a very accomplished novelist. So writing was always appealing to me. I remember as a kid – first, second grade –I loved the free writing sections, and the stories I wrote were always obnoxiously long. I started skating around that same time and skateboarding as a passion definitely took over. I didn't get into writing fiction seriously until I was in my twenties. I always journaled and stuff, and I liked to write blogs and articles related to skateboarding once I started traveling a lot. But the first piece of fiction I tried writing seriously was Top of Mason.
Did the process of putting out work as a professional skateboarder – stacking clips, editing, releasing the final video/part, and waiting for reception – influence the way that you went about writing your books? Conversely, did writing change the way you approached putting together parts?
My experience working as a professional skateboarder definitely influenced my approach to writing a novel. Filming video parts is all about patience and delayed gratification. When you're working on a video part, there might be weeks or months that go by that don't actually move you forward. Months where you're skating all the time, but not getting the necessary clips. So there's a long game always being played. I'm always thinking about the tricks I want to do, piecing it all together in my head constantly. With writing novels, it's a lot like that. I'm constantly putting it all together in my head, sneaking in chunks of time to actually write it. But patience and long-delayed gratification are vital for both skating and writing.
From the outside point of view, there is a great bit of “narrative” in skateboarding. When you’re putting together a part, there is an arc or structure to it, with a beginning, middle and end. Even contest runs have that “narrative” so to speak. Or, you also have something like Suciu’s “Verso” part where the structure is everything. Do you agree with that? If so, how do you view that connection between a part and a work of narrative fiction or nonfiction?
I definitely see video parts as similar to a work of narrative in some ways. With a video part the skater is telling a story of how good/creative they are, or how they interpreted their environment during a certain time. I look at a video part like, you want something in the beginning that hopefully grabs the attention of the viewer, then you slow it down and build things out, showing style, flow and fun. But by the last quarter you want to pack it with excitement, ending hopefully with something shocking or at least completely satisfying. A novel works in much the same way – or at least the novels I like to read and write.
There are so many stories about or at least around skateboarding. Why do you think the world of skateboarding and characters who are skateboarders lend itself so well to stories like movies or TV?
To be honest, I kind of disagree with this. I don't think there are very many stories in TV and film that have captured characters who are skateboarders well. There are some great documentaries, for sure. Real stories of professional skateboarders are great because most skateboarders are weird and interesting people. They're artists who are athletic and usually have had to brave through such a bizarre industry and subculture to make themselves successful. But I don't really think there are any good movies or TV shows that capture skateboarders in an interesting or not cringey way. They tend to lean so heavily on the traditional sports hero narrative, and I don't think that works for skateboarders. Or it could in theory, but it hasn't yet.
Your books obviously are closely tied to skateboarding, but they seem to evolve the skateboarding narrative piece beyond the story of just “kid wants to get sponsored, tries to go pro, etc.” of things like Grind or Street Dreams or even “Tony Hawk’s Underground” into something where it’s a more relatable story, but told through the lens of skateboarding, like your novels or things like Mid90s. How do you think we’ve gotten to the point where the view of skateboarding in media has sort of matured to this point? Or, if you don’t feel like that at all, why do you think stories like this have caught on like they have?
I'm not sure why film/TV tries so hard to put skateboarding stories into such a predictable narrative box. My frustrations with that are what motivated me to start writing these novels in the first place. My guess is that to most skateboarders and people who want to depict skateboarding in story form, their main goal is to explain the mechanics of a professional skateboarding career. An interesting plot is secondary. And since it is technically a sport, "going pro" or "getting sponsored," is the sports equivalent to winning. So it's not surprising that most stories follow that arc, since it's trusted to work for all other sports. My goal is to tell a unique story that happens to involve skateboarders, and maybe the reader will glean details about the industry or professional skateboarding along the journey.
You can order “Off Clark” and “Top of Mason” here.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Wednesday.