Gay skateboarding

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And, if you’re in Paris, be sure to check out their events. Jeffrey Cheung, 34, started the San Francisco printing press and skateboarding company Unity Skateboarding in 2017, hand-painting boards for their crew of queer skaters. The next day I went out and I skateboarded again in the same spot, and I wasn’t scared.

gay skateboarding

“Fashion has been one of those things outside of skateboarding where I can do what I want and feel very comfortable with my skin and then be able to showcase that to everyone,” they said.

Photos from Jean Robles. The idea quickly morphed into a full-fledged zine, rooted in art, photography, and sketches that reveal more about his journey and exploration as a now openly gay man, as well as in his personal interests.

“You don’t know what’s under someone’s clothing when you walk by them,” he says.

“Other queer skate groups were popping up all over the country and abroad as well, and we would do our best to support them and post skate videos from queer skaters all over on our Instagram.” Now, Cheung’s project includes not only a small zine press but also a band and a skateboarding group that hosts queer meetups and events — including throwing the first Unity Fest last October, a queer-skating and music extravaganza with punk shows, printing workshops, and dance parties.

From Unity Fest.

But I don’t think we should be scared. I feel like I always need bigger dreams because you never know when things will happen. Our ideas around ambition are learned at home — which is why I’m trying to make sure my children don’t fall into the same traps I did. But I don’t think the Olympics are the best representation of skating, everything’s very categorised and only represents a certain type of skateboarding without showing what skateboarding truly is.

I started skateboarding with straight, cis-het friends and I never had any issues because we were in a small town and my friends are really open-minded. One 2023 study found that 67 percent of transgender athletes experience mocking and slurs during sports participation. Since starting to skate, Robles has learned how to drum and started the band Toxic Tears.

Similarly, global athletic associations are increasingly adopting rules that force would-be Olympians into gender binaries in order to compete, if they are allowed to compete at all. She spent almost six figures trying to fix her skin. I want there to be cis people and straight people because I feel like the only way to make things go forwards is for us to be out there and not to create spaces that are only for us.

And so I spent two and a half weeks next to my classes organising this, contacting everyone, and trying to find a place to host it. Like your favorite sports bar, but without the mansplaining. He saw his foster brother skating and remembers falling in love with it instantly. Cheung views that moment as the beginning of the current queer-skate movement and says they’ve seen the landscape shift in a positive direction since.

Everything went super well, I’m really happy so many people came and it’s really rewarding to see all the work you put into an event pay off and to see people happy. He points to better visibility for LGBTQ+ skaters in mainstream skateboarding — high-profile athletes including Baker and Elissa Steamer, a queer skater and surfboarder and the first woman to go pro in street skating — and support from skate legends Cheung had admired since he was a teenager.

Still, he said, there’s another side to the coin.

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