David Langley wrote this article portraying the skateboarders’ situation in an urban city life. Being a skateboarder himself, Langley expresses his opinion in the piece by asking for the fair treatment of skateboarders in the urban society. In his view, “People in general, eye most of the skateboarders as misfit or delinquents, adult think of them as criminal types or associate skateboarding with anti-social behavior “(141). This irrational thinking about skateboarders needs to be changed, the city dwellers should keep in mind that skateboarding is just like another form of sport for the urban environment, as natural as riding a bike or ice-skating, Langley claims. There are two reasons for skateboarders to feel mistreated in the urban society that Langley talks about in the article. Firstly, there is never legitimate space for skateboarders to practice their sports. Secondly, the laws that regulate skateboarding are either highly restrictive or never clear enough. So, as Langley offers, first, the city needs to make room for the skateboarders by building more skate parks. Second, the rules and laws should be clearer and more specific so that the cop’s behavior towards the skaters to target them for tickets stops.
Furthermore, Langley does not deny the fact that the cities have tried to treat skateboarders fairly before by building parks, but he complains it still does not solve the problem because most of them are made by non-skaters. Also, Langley argued against the general people's thinking of skateboarding being the reasons for urban environment to get dirty and vandalized. He rather thinks, skaters help to keep it clean since they need smooth surfaces to skate, and they never have to deal with healing ozone, which means they are not polluting the environment.
In my opinion, there is no environmental harm from skateboarding and the skateboarders should be as admired as any other athletes. But, it’s also true that skateboarding can cause accidents by flying skateboards to windows, cars or rolling into traffic in a everyday urban-city life. So, is it really just about the image of skateboarders being rebellious, drug-users, “hooligans”, Or it’s about the safety and keeping the roads less dangerous and less occupied?
