Kent Dahlgren Learns to Skate Street

I just opened the new issue of The Skateboard Mag and I see that Kent Dahlgren is the guest editor of the month. Kent is the executive director of Skaters for Public Skateparks, When I set up this blog a while ago Kent sent me an email. We ended up exchanging a few emails and he invited me to an event at a skatepark up in Boise, or Portland or somewhere which I was unable to attend although I was a bit flattered to be extended a personal invitation rather than just getting the blanket mass email I usually send out to people.

During our brief conversations Kent struck me as being a genuinely nice guy who cares as much about skateboarding as I do, which is quite a bit, although he has succeeded in becoming much more involved and making more of a difference than I have as of yet. His work is aiding skateboarders around the world to get public skateparks built in their cities and get them built the right way.

In addition to the respect I have for Kent based on our limited interactions, I now have a newfound respect for him based on his attempt to relearn how to skate street. Partially motivated by a desire to be in touch with today’s young skateboarders as well as, I’m sure, a pure desire to simply skate more Kent bought a street setup and has started throwing himself down stairs, apparently.

I go to a lot of public parks, and typically what I see is virtually empty bowls and crowded street courses. However, this is different from the days when I saw completely empty bowls and crowded street courses. And the skaters in the bowls aren’t just old guys, there are younger guys too. I like to see the younger skaters in the bowls because I figure they’re skating for the fun of it, rather than trying to fit an image.

The only thing more rare than a young skater in a bowl is an old skater in the street section, and maybe that’s why I get a kick out of reading about Kent’s attempt to skate street more. I’m old, having just turned 31, although I’m not as old as Kent with all his 38 years. I grew up in Southern California but barely missed out on the old skatepark era. Pipeline and Del Mar were torn down before I had a chance to skate them. I have had the luck of having skated the Baldy pipeline, which is my one connection with the old world. I chickened out and didn’t jump the gap though, I just walked across the board that was sitting across it.

During my time street skating was being born as we know it today, pushed by up and coming companies like H-Street and Blind and skaters like Matt Hensley, Brian Lotti, Jason Lee, and Mark Gonzalez. Handrails were a new thing, a kickflip on flatground was considered a pretty good trick for a normal kid, and the only tranny you got to skate was mini-ramp if you were lucky enough to live near one.

I was pretty darned lucky because I had a mini ramp in my backyard. Not only did I learn all the noseslide to crook variations in 1992 but I also was learning frontside rocks, melons to fakie, and back lips. But my mini-ramp got torn down when my sister decided it didn’t fit into her vision of what our backyard should look like for her wedding reception, and it never got rebuilt.

In the past few years I’ve been making a comeback on transitions, much the way that Kent is relearning street. And yesterday I did something I haven’t done in probably 13 or 14 years–a backside rock and roll on a transition higher than three feet. Backside rock and rolls have always been hard for me, I much prefer the frontside version. But after watching the protec pool party video and some footage of the Gonz skating a park I decided I really needed to make this trick again. It took me a few tries just to really try it on a five foot tranny, and I fell a few times when my front foot came off, and the times I made it I felt really awkward, but even with such a simple trick I felt that elation that I only get from skateboarding, the feeling that no matter what else I’m failing at in life, at least I can still go out and skate and learn a new trick. Now I just need to try it in the deep end of the bowl…