I have a story in the New York Times today about skateboarding. Specifically, it is about vert (big-air) skating, which nearly died out in the years immediately following Tony Hawk landing the 900 at the X-Games. Now, kids across the world have discovered the joy of aerials, and Hawk is on a crusade to get vert added to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The story is available online here. It is also in the print edition of the Sunday issue of the Times. You can find it in the Styles section.
This piece is special to me because skateboarding is incredibly special to me.
I can’t land an ollie or a kickflip but skateboarding and its offshoots — music that is played loud and fast, general dipshittery that was played constantly on MTV, seminal skate videos and shitty ones made by my friends — informed my cultural lens for the world around me.
I remember watching that 1999 X-Games live, a firm before and after moment in my life — and in the trajectory of skateboarding. It is incredibly satisfying for me to get a story about vert skateboarding into the biggest newspaper in the United States.
Thanks for reading.