But since the 1980s, skateboarding has taken on a more aggressive, and more political identity and space. After the closure of many of the skateparks, skaters were forced into the streets and here they now create on a daily basis a radical subversion of the intended use of the city and its buildings. Around 1984, skaters began radically extending skateboarding onto the most quotidian and conventional elements of the urban landscape. Using as their basic move, the ollie, in which the skater unweights the front of the skateboard to make it pop up into the air, they ride up onto walls of buildings, steps and street furniture. Skaters across the world now skate not just on the sidewalk but over fire hydrants, onto bus benches and planters, across curbs and down handrails.
Skateboarders are antagonistic towards the urban environment.
Skaters produce an overtly political space, a pleasure ground carved out of the city as a kind of continuous reaffirmation of the notion that beneath the pavement, lies the beach. Nor is this by any means confined to America. Beside famous skateboarding cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco, just about every developed capitalist city now has its own band of skaters. And skaters also increasingly communicate globally on the Internet, offering interviews, product reviews, video clips, still images, skateable locations and music. Unsurprisingly, this kind of activity does not go unchallenged.