Skateboarding and The City, originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

“The triumph of non-labour, however, does not entail an absence of effort but an even more profound redefinition of what ‘production’ might mean, and it is here too that skateboarding strikes at the heart of the business city. At first sight, skateboarders’ labour produces no ‘products’ beyond the moves skaters make, a ‘commodity’ exchangeable only by means of performative action. Furthermore, skateboarders, like students, offer a potential labour force but they deny this by undertaking seemingly meaningless productions, and so appear to waste effort and time. But that ‘principle of economy’ which sees a ‘waste’ of energy as abnormal is itself a reduction of life to mere survival. Skateboarding, in contrast, undertakes a release of energy that either creates or modifies space, espousing play, art and festival.”

– Prof Iain Boarden, Skateboarding and The City