team, Emerica Skate

Posted: May 8, 2008

Wild in the Streets: A Manifesto

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Wild in the Streets: a Manifesto

Wild in the Streets is the attempt to gather skateboarders of every age, color and creed to converge on city streets around the globe in the celebration of pure skateboarding.

We declare that skateboarding is no longer a spectator sport. We believe in demolishing the invisible barriers that separate pro skaters from the rest of us. Wild in the Streets is comprised of all equal participants.

We also contend that conventional organized skateboarding competitions and events are, in effect, a misrepresentation of skateboarding, safely and conveniently re-packaged for mainstream corporate consumption. Wild in the Streets is about challenging conformity.

And we acknowledge that the very society that has marginalized us as skateboarders is now formally engaged in the penetration and misappropriation of our original and distinct skate culture. They, in turn, feed it back to us as more mind-polluting product propaganda. Wild in the Streets is about reclaiming ownership.

Wild in the Streets asserts that the pure essence of skateboarding is in the ability of skateboarders to successfully reinterpret their existing environments to create fun. We are about taking skateboarding back to where it was born — in the streets.

Together, we can defy convention and reject skateboarding's image factories and the trends marketers use to divide and categorize us based off the length of our hair, or the cut of our pants. Wild in the Streets is about transcending these petty, trend-based diversions.

Together, we can be our own representatives to the world and bring awareness to our own collective needs. The spectacle of hundreds of skateboarders converging on city streets around the globe has an impact that cannot be denied. Wild in the Streets is about doing it ourselves.

But Wild in the Streets does not seek to gather to solve the world's problems. We know we couldn't, even if we tried. The primary purpose of Wild in the Streets is pure and simple: fun. This is, and always will be, first and foremost, for this is skateboarding.

Defy!