The Late Bloomers Skate Club

Who says a climber can’t learn a few new tricks. But also, send help! Photo courtesy of Lydia Pourmand

When’s the last time you tried something new? Something that made you feel happy or surprised or even a little foolish? Or that challenged you to think and move your body differently?

My newest passion is a skatepark by the ocean. The coastal wind keeps me cool as I struggle to balance, kick and push down hard enough to get the pop for an ollie. The form is demanding: I need to commit and think of the landing, not the fear of falling. Too late! Before I can blink, I‘m flat on the concrete while my skateboard rolls onto the adjacent basketball court. I think that’s enough ollies for now, I’ll come back to it. 

I retrieve my board and join friends at the top of a small ramp. It’s the perfect spot to watch them choose lines or nail down various tricks. The ramp doubles as the entryway for the park. I am 30-years-old and terrified of it. I love skateboarding but there are days I definitely struggle and yet, without hesitation, I’m offered the same level of support and encouragement as anyone else.

In Vancouver, beginners and seasoned skateboarders alike come together through affinity groups like the Late Bloomers Skate Club because we need more spaces where we can heal.

In the past few months of skateboarding, I’ve managed to walk away with two swollen elbows and a large bruise on my backside. And yes, I’m still scared; but when I think of those memories, it’s not fear but absolute silliness and bravery that come to mind. And kindness. I’m rekindling a healthy attachment to childlike joy and the pursuit of pleasure. 

Photo courtesy of Lydia Pourmand

There’s no doubt that, these days, all of us are tired. We have every right to be. So many of us are exhausted from spending so much time in survival mode. We are working more, saving less, and feeling mounting pressure to squeeze the maximum productivity out of each day. Perfect that side hustle. Pick up another shift. I know that the road will be long in adapting, mourning, and surviving all of it. If we’re to thrive, we need direct access to joy. For me, for the time being, that’s become skateboarding. 

The first time I stepped on a skateboard I was freezing in borrowed knee-pads and a lone wrist guard on my dominant hand— that I’d put on backwards before one of the volunteers corrected me. It was late February. The smooth stylings of sixties psychedelic rock and girl band badness that are Habibi, the band, played through the bluetooth speaker. I watched a volunteer from Late Bloomers Skate Club demonstrate how to pump back and forth on the smooth sanded plywood of the green ramp. Pump with your whole body. The only way to stay warm was to skate, so I went for it.

Before long, I was sweating and bruised in multiple places trying to figure out how to balance on four wheels. By the end of the evening, I was giddy. I’d managed to pump forwards and backwards a few times and celebrated with others who’d been trying to balance and learn to stand and push the board around. Falling was normalized immediately. I laughed at myself and something inside me lit up.

Skateboarding is mentally and emotionally demanding. It’s fucking hard and scary because falling sucks and it hurts, meanwhile there is a certain innocence in choosing to do it anyway. And the company doesn’t hurt. I love being surrounded, even virtually, by a community of folks who believe in each other in order to believe in ourselves. That sequence of support makes perfect sense to me and is what will help me, personally, survive the apocalypse. I’m going to skateboard and glow-up my community along the way. 

Glow-ups are compilation videos Late Bloomers put together to showcase the progress different folks made from their first days to whenever they felt like marking their journey. For the sake of this article, and because a beautiful member of the group offered, I now have a Glow Up of my first two months of skateboarding for your amusement. 

Since the onset of the pandemic, I felt like I might’ve forgotten how to have fun. Then in February, I went to that skateboarding meetup between Late Bloomers and Colour the Trails mostly because I was overjoyed at the chance to be in (even limited) company again. I experienced beautiful affinity between queer and racialized folks sharing space and sharing skills. In a week’s time, I had a board set up, a helmet, wrist guards and knee pads thanks to a combination of hand-me-downs and second hand gear, a fund to buy new padding from LBSC and even someone’s old Vans to get me started. 

One way of adapting to a post-apocalyptic world that’s worked well for me has been to reteach myself skills I grew out of a long time ago, like how to play like I did when I was a kid. Skateboarding is messy—think scraped hands, bruises and torn jeans. It’s terrifying and fulfilling. It keeps me grounded in the moment and allows me to experience joy and derive pleasure from the most minute and trivial things, like finally getting my back wheels off the ground for an ollie. 

Recently, skateboarding feels like one of the only ways I can think of to refill my cup. I still climb—the sport I’ve been doing for seven years, but there’s something special about learning something new and being reminded of just how liberated I felt as a kid. Late Bloomers has made the process simpler by providing me with mentorship off the bat. Even though I grew up in the area I didn’t know that Vancouver has one of the highest number of skateparks per capita than any city in the world. 

Back at the park, within view of the mountains and with the ocean at my back, after countless false starts and serious meditation on my commitment issues, I bend my knees, grit my teeth and roll down the edge of the ramp, managing to absorb the bounce as I level out after an intimidating 3 ft drop. I’m in the park! Now what? I roll to an anticlimactic stop. I step off the board to cheers and feel the real and miraculous effects of empathy and pride in facing my own fear and doubts. 

Photo courtesy of Lydia Pourmand

I’ve been a rock climber for seven years and have faced some serious fear in high risk situations and while that’s lent itself to understanding the mental demands of learning how to skateboard it doesn’t by any means do the work for me. I need to walk the path and, in the few months I’ve been wobbling along, I’ve been enjoying the beautiful community blossoming on unceded Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish territories. Folks who have come together to skateboard with radical love and acceptance. 

I’m still learning the world of skateboarding that is intersectional but for the first time in my life, I’m entering an intentional community space that feels like it can hold the entirety of my identity. What this means is that I can do the scary and vulnerable thing and feel like a fucking badass. It means I get to laugh obnoxiously and take up space and it means I can exhale and relax on my board in order to learn. Some days, I don’t have it. Some days I prefer to watch and I can do so without questioning if skateboarding is for me because I’m not ripping around. No one from our group puts that pressure out there and I’m eternally grateful. 

Even during the pandemic where meetups are severely limited, the culture of Late Bloomers is established enough that two or three of us can still hold space and enjoy a day out at a park where the crowd is still majority white guys. It’s been really good for my heart to be reminded that play, pure ridiculousness and abandon can also be radical. Excuse me while I obsess over Vans like I did when I was twelve, customize my grip tape and nurse my swelbow (it’s what it sounds like). For the time being, I’ll be diving deep into skateboarding because I need more sunsets, more safe environments where I can be vulnerable and in my power to try new things, and to rip around with a firm knowing that my community is rooted and resilient. From that place, I know I can do the best work for my communities.