Aug 20, 2026 · 35 min · 13 segments
Grab your helmet and your grip tape for a ride through the surprising past and thrilling present of skateboarding, a sport that’s indelibly shaped West Coast slang, fashion, and urban landscape…
Alex WhiteGuest
Michelle DonatiHost
Mitti HicksHost
I mean, Tony Hawk landing the 900 happened the same week that his video game came out.
I mean, X Games launched this entire new era of accessibility and sport and the sportification of skateboarding.
So skate stoppers are this architectural element where cities put basically like a knob.
They intentionally put like locks on the rails so you can't slide down the rails.
Are we past that at all? Do you think that cities are now adapting to skaters and the culture?
It was originated in France by a man named Leo Valls, who started this conference.
Their downtown had a lot of, you know, skatable obstacles, right? And he just started approaching the city from, you know, a very humble perspective of like, can we have hours we can skate here? Can we adapt together? And these grassroots efforts kind of blossomed across the globe.
They've realized cities working with architectural firms and working with community groups, that skateboarding is a really good way to interject energy and life force and shared community space into places that were previously unused or kind of underutilized.
So yeah, the skate urbanism movement has been a huge thing in the last 10 years.
I mean, Tony Hawk landing the 900 happened the same week that his video game came out.
I mean, X Games launched this entire new era of accessibility and sport and the sportification of skateboarding.
So skate stoppers are this architectural element where cities put basically like a knob.
They intentionally put like locks on the rails so you can't slide down the rails.
Are we past that at all? Do you think that cities are now adapting to skaters and the culture?
It was originated in France by a man named Leo Valls, who started this conference.
Their downtown had a lot of, you know, skatable obstacles, right? And he just started approaching the city from, you know, a very humble perspective of like, can we have hours we can skate here? Can we adapt together? And these grassroots efforts kind of blossomed across the globe.
They've realized cities working with architectural firms and working with community groups, that skateboarding is a really good way to interject energy and life force and shared community space into places that were previously unused or kind of underutilized.
So yeah, the skate urbanism movement has been a huge thing in the last 10 years.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
