“Everyone assumes skaters are bad kids,” said Bobbie Clothier as a gang of longhaired kids circled her, assaulting each other with firecracker poppers Saturday night. “The bad ones are the ones who don’t skate and hangout outside the skateparks. Nothing good happens after midnight or outside a skatepark.”From my own experience, I knew this was true. The kids who are too uncoordinated to skate sit in the bleachers talking shit or taking walks to the woods to smoke. But, judging by how rowdy these skaters were, I’d hate to run into their bad counterparts. Not that these kids were mean-spirited. They just had the kind of energy that makes you dizzy just watching them run around screaming like ballistic missiles.
“I refuse to medicate my kids for ADHD,” Clothier told me as if reading my facial expression. “Skateboarding is the only effective treatment.”
We were at The Market on 7th pizza parlor and pub in Ybor for the after-party of the Skatepark of Tampa’s Back to School Bash Contest.
I made the mistake of arriving at the all-ages show early. I felt like I was reliving my middle school Fridays at the skating rink. DJ Colonic was spinning some Jackson 5. A table of young girls sat by themselves giggling and pointing to boys. Dance lights moved over a polished wood floor that had yet to be filled. I used to be so cool I wouldn’t even bring roller skates to the rink. I’d just sit in a sticky booth bumming off someone else’s junk food, trying to hide braces, impressing girls by exchanging punches and gay jokes with buddies, and fighting the urge to strap on some wheels and chase each other around the floor like the teeny boppers we were. That same awkwardness returned to me.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2008.