Being a skater in your late 20s sucks

but we stick to it

On a social level

Skateboarding. I’m a skater. I skate. My hobby is skateboarding.

It doesn’t get any more awkward than starting a conversation with this sentence. That’s why I usually keep this part of my hobbies to myself when I’m at a party or talking to strangers, wherever that may be.

More than a few raised eyebrows, “Aren’t you too old for that?” or “Do you smoke weed too?!” are usually the kind of responses you get. But those are just part of the typical reactions. Let’s not forget: “I always wanted to start skating, too.” That’s usually where the conversation stalls for the first time because there’s rarely a response to that which makes you want to keep talking about skateboarding. Probably for the best.

If you manage to dodge comments like these, you often end up dealing with certain stereotypes that tend to repeat themselves and are just as often untrue.

I don’t want to generalize, and even less do I want to reinforce stereotypes, but in my experience, people outside the scene often picture a skater as a unemployed slacker who spends his time hanging out in the dirtiest spots of the city, smoking, drinking, and talking crap with friends who share a similar fate.

Not exactly the best foundation to kick off a conversation, let alone a date, with the words “My hobby is skating.”

The older you get, the weirder it seems to be a skater. But this is a little service for those who also find themselves facing these encounters or have already had similar experiences.

There are ups and downs.

After a long downward trend throughout the 2010s, the 2020s almost saw a skateboarding renaissance.

While the COVID-19 pandemic raged on and everyone largely confined their personal lives to their own four walls or outdoor meetups, “low-barrier” sports like skating experienced a small resurgence. When I think about how many people suddenly started riding longboards around, it makes me sick. But more on that another time.

Social media definitely acted as a catalyst for this positive increase in skateboarding participation. Skateboarding was suddenly everywhere again. From influencers throwing themselves down mini ramps like psychopaths to the Olympic Games' marketing machine, which introduced skateboarding as a new sport in 2021. Even within the scene, more and more formats emerged, like "Red Bull Solus," which I personally thought was sick as hell.

On a physical level

Torn ACL, meniscus, and ligaments.

If you don’t do any other sport besides skateboarding, you'll eventually notice how you're slowly but surely wearing down your body. If, unlike me, you skate hard regularly or are simply unlucky, you’re bound to experience the injuries mentioned above. And not just once.

Fractures aren’t the things you need to be afraid of—fractures heal, and in the best case, leave you with healthy bones after a few months. It’s the joints and ligaments that you end up destroying long-term, and those are what eventually make disability insurance a worthwhile investment.

Even if you don’t often or seriously injure yourself after many years of skating, the fear of getting hurt again—or for the first time—makes sure that your learning curve in “older age” keeps declining. To prevent that, it’s best to shut off your mind and trust in the muscle memory that has hopefully developed and improved over the years.

Why do we still skate?

Like any other hobby or sport, skateboarding helps us stay sane and heals our minds, which are wrecked by social media, work, and the weight of the world.

It’s the mix of social interaction, physical activity, and the balance between failure and success. A skate session can lift you up or bring you down. It’s creative. It’s funny. It’s painful, and it’s rewarding.

I’ve tried many sports, and some I’ve practiced for a long time, but I’ve never been as free in any of them as I am with skating. You can be as good or as bad as possible and still have an incredible amount of fun. Even though the learning curve flattens out as you get older compared to when you’re 15, it never stops rising.

That’s why I’ll keep skating until I physically can’t anymore.