¨The beauty of skating is that everybody has a unique set of variables that they can put in place and express their individual identity in the form of – call it – greatness,” said by  Pro skater Rodney Mullen, also frequently known as the father of skateboarding. With 16 million skateboarders in the United States alone, it would be fair to assume that skating has at least some impact on the media and pop culture we consume. Skateboarding has lots of influence from fashion to even music.

Video Games

When most people think of early 2000’s video games, Tony Hawks Pro-Skater comes to mind and maybe even Thrasher presents; Skate and Destroy, developed by the studio that created the Grand Theft Auto series. While the first Tony Hawk´s Pro Skater only sold 300,000 copies, it pioneered skateboarding in video games. Later Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 would be known to some people as one of the best video games ever created. Another name that comes to mind when skateboarding games is the skate franchise, grossing 1.4 billion dollars, The skate franchise adding new “flick-it controls,” which was never seen before and reinvented skate

games at the time. But the most popular skate game in the franchise Skate 3 was most popular, and rightfully so. Skate 3 brought new customization that was never seen before in skate games players could now make their own pro skater and dress them in their favourite skate brands. Even after being released 11 years ago, Skate 3 is still often played. Newer skate games like Session and Skater XL at their core are completely different taking on a more realistic approach on the genre, ditching scores and having more realistic graphics and controls.

Fashion

Skateboarding has been seen to heavily influence streetwear and fashion as a whole, skate brands like Supreme, Vans and even Nike SB have made people who have never even stepped on a skateboard spend hundreds of dollars on skate related products. The best example of this is Supreme, most of the brand’s popularity is due to its insane prices, as a result of these prices they gained the reputation of a “hype beast” brand. The definition of a hype beast by dictionary.com “is a mostly derogatory slang word for someone, who follows trends in fashion, particularly street-wear, for the purpose of making a social statement.” Supreme is also known for its collaborations some of the weirder ones include Colgate, Skittles, Kermit the Frog, Oreos, Ziploc, and Fujifilm. Supreme also has less obscure collabs such as North Face, Jordan, Vans, Champion, Stussy, Nike, Hanes and many more. While the brand has tons of collabs only one has been able to bring the brand closer to high fashion, like the Louis Vuitton X supreme.  Supreme isn’t the only brand with a reputation that strays away from skateboarding though. Nike’s Skateboarding line is mostly known for its Nike SB Dunk which is sold at retail for $100 but commonly resold for almost double the price. 

Even though skating is incredibly popular in the media every skater has their own style. “I fell in love with skateboarding because it was individual” – Rodney Mullen.