I am a 38-year-old woman in skateboarding. I just passed my 2-year bowl-iversary on February 20th, 2011. I first stepped on a skateboard in December of 2008 when I was 36. A nurse friend of mine had been pushing around with another nurse in the parking lot of Kaiser in Oakland, California. That alone sounded amazing. Imagine rolling up for your ultrasound and seeing two nurses in scrubs on their breaks riding skateboards. California living! So my nurse friend, Shoshana, called me up (and she didn’t really call that often) and told me she had started skating, and that she thought I would really like it.

I met Shosh on the top of Bernal Heights, on a relatively flat street. She showed me how to step on the board and we rolled up and down the sidewalk, me on the board and she on foot. My hands dented her arms with an iron grip. I liked how it felt and decided I needed my own board to follow her and a few other women down the wide sidewalks of the Embarcadero in San Francisco. We drove to FTC in the Haight and Andy helped me pick out a board with a drawing of one of San Francisco’s old trolleys on the bottom. He gripped it. I picked out some Indy trucks and red soft wheels. I had four friends with me and I felt more supported than I have in very difficult times of my life.

After two months of pushing around my friend Holly was coming to visit from Seattle. She offered to meet about ten of us at the Novato skatepark and teach us about tranny. Novato was her home park growing up. She invited her friend Kenna Gallagher, a ripper from Santa Cruz, to teach us as well. They got in the bowl, told people to clear out for twenty minutes while she taught and surprisingly, everyone was cool about it. We rolled around, tried turning and carving, did a little falling. I felt obsessed.

I ended up dating a guy I met that day for a year. We skated as often as possible, and he pushed me to learn more, try new things, and he constantly told me I was good at it. He teased me when I looked like a dork, which was nearly always. I really appreciated that. Style is as much a part of the game as technicality. Almost. Totally?

I also started skating with an all-girl skate organization. I thought that was going to be a lot more awesome than it was. I met a bunch of women who were good skaters, and I met a bunch who were awesome. Van Nguyen was super sweet. Elyssa Steamer introduced herself to me at Novato one time and she was LOVELY. But most women I met in skating were not interested in talking to me about how to step up my game. There is no way I am going to be popular for saying that, but it’s true. I don’t know if it’s me, if it’s because women can be so competitive with each other, or if it was because I was 36 when I started. I strongly felt that the organization I was skating with only cared about young girls getting into skating, and that they were trying to be a family-friendly, very accessible entity (JUST MY OPINION, HOLD YOUR ANGRY LETTERS). I have no desire for skating to wander away from being the freak culture that I know and love. I think more young girls could stand to get bruised and cut and live with it. I think more parents would do well to detach and teach their daughters to be robust humans, even if they want to festoon themselves in pink from head to toe. I have been talking with my writing partner Beth about how we notice all these (usually wealthy) women who are so groomed, so ready to smile and have their picture taken (chin down, don’t smile too big, turn to one side, all the shit that makes you look like a very beautiful model woman in pictures), ready to speak articulately about everything. How the fabrics they wear drape nicely and flatteringly. I want the inclusion of more ill-prepared, awkward voices. I don’t think we should be able to rely on any human to say the right thing all the time. Up with intuition, down with symbols. I listened to Marc Maron’s interview with Greg Fitzsimmons (Maron’s WTF podcast is the best, and entirely supports the idea that un-groomed speech is so much more nuanced, meaningful and specific than scripted stuff) in which Fitzsimmons says he thinks people should punch each other more. It’s a sentiment entirely captured by Fight Club. Part of the beauty of skateboarding, to me, is the extremity of every part of it. Flying, bruising, yelling, exhaustion.

I started skating with a bunch of people I met at the Pacifica skatepark, mostly men, and got a ton of help and guidance that I wanted and asked for. I hear about girls and women having a hard time with male skaters but that has never been an issue for me. My skating started improving dramatically when I met these guys (and two women) and they have been my crew ever since.

TO BE CONTINUED.