Word: skater
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...decks. Skateboarders speed and rumble all around the Picasso sculpture in downtown Chicago. They come from as far away as Scotland to maneuver Milwaukee's Turf Skateboard Park. Georgia's Savannah Slamma is an annual springtime ritual for boarders to show their stuff. Says Scott Oster, 18, a pro skater out of Los Angeles: "Kids are ripping all over...
...skateboarding remains a pretty straight-ahead endeavor. It has its own magazines (Thrasher and Transworld Skateboarding are the most successful), its own lingo, its own half-mystical lore and its own concepts of < cool. No thrasher excessively applauds another for an especially rad move. Miss a trick, and another skater will say, with offhand censure, "That was totally lame." But get it right, and the same comment or a close variation ("You're such a dweeb for making that") will be offered, but delivered this time with an admiring irony. "Basically, it's a fun thing," smiles Competition Skater...
Powell believes the new boom in boards occurred because everyone recognizes the "legitimacy of the street terrain." Longtime Skateboarder Thatcher speaks to a deeper appeal: "The skater doesn't have to rely on anybody or anything to do his sport. He doesn't need a wave, a ski slope or a team, and he likes it that way." The police, of course, do not, and the buoyant banditry of skateboarding can lead the law a merry chase. "To skateboard you've got to be aggressive, and you've got to be a little crazy," says Roger Mullen, 17, of Ventura...
...comes the part that even an INF negotiator might find confusing. All those 5.4s and 5.8s are not simply totted up to determine the winner. Instead, each skater gets a technical and an artistic score from each judge. These marks are added together and indicate whether a particular judge rates a particular skater first, second or, say, tenth. If a judge is notably stingy, never giving a grade higher than 5.5, the lucky skater who gets that 5.5 would almost certainly win that judge's nod. If two skaters tie on a judge's card, the skater with...
There are limits. Blatant partisanship can lead to a written warning or suspension. But as long as judges assess competitors from their own countries, using their own perspectives, a completely fair judge will be as difficult to find as a 6.0 skater. Or an unbiased spectator...