Great piece on nytimes.com this morning about Andy Kessler, NYC skateboarding legend, entitled “The End of Falling.”

Such community is why skaters who never met him feel like they’ve lost a friend with whom they used to seek out drained swimming pools. For all of their perceived destructiveness, for all of their purported unthinking and lawless mischief, skateboarders are a creative and compassionate breed. Often, especially when Kessler was nurturing what would become the East Coast scene, the kids who gravitated toward skateboarding were misfits and malcontents, the shy outcasts who’d been intimidated and sullied by the complex pressures of social interaction. Skateboarding gave them an identity and voice, and Kessler, by example, gave them the confidence to declare themselves to society.

What is surprising and beautiful to me too, is that I caught the piece featured on the front page, above the fold, in the upper right corner. Awesome that it was written by the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, a lifelong skateboarder.

I would love it if my child grew up to be a skateboarder one day.

Posted August 14, 2009 | ∞ | File under: link, nytimes, skateboarding