I used to be a skateboarder who worked for a magazine, but it seems more and more that I've become a magazine employee who works in the skateboard industry. Most days I sit in an air-conditioned building in Oceanside, California, where my fellow blotchy-faced slaves also toil away on a magazine that grows by the hour. The days of skating at lunch, and traveling to far-off cities on a whim to go skateboarding, and seeing movies on slow afternoons are long gone, replaced by a seemingly endless succession of meetings, hour-long phone conversations with members of the mainstream media, and the news that it won't be slowing down anytime soon.
Not before 2010, anyway, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which sadistically sends us infrequent updates on the youth explosion that will keep us busy for the next dozen years or so. As the total number of young people grows, so does our magazine. Trust us, we wish we could take personal credit for the fact that the weight of this magazine is reminiscent of the Sears Catalog rather than a skateboard magazine, but it's all about the numbers.
But we're not complaining–quite the contrary, actually–because each time the advertising department tells us we picked up another Dairy Association ad, we secretly know we'll get another page to run a skate photo on. And isn't that what's it's really about?
We think so, and that's why we continue to show up to work every day for more toiling. That's why it was music to the ears of the staff to learn that we were all going to Vancouver for the Slam City Jam contest. TransWorld flew us all there, put us up in a fancy hotel on the water, and let us do as we pleased. I went to the contest every day, while the rest of the staff did quite a bit of driving around to the skateparks that Vancouver and surrounding areas are so famous for. I was very happy for them, really. They had a great time, and each night I heard about it.
"The park was sooo fun."
"The bowls were perfect."
"We skated with Chris Miller."
Blah, blah, blah. I said I was happy for them, not with them.
And for a long weekend at the end of April it kind of felt like it did back when skateboarding was magically somehow part of making a magazine. And vice versa.
To stay sane and happy, find a job in a field you love.
