A Case for Skateboarding

Overall, while I agree with Langely's overall assertion that skateboarding is a bona fide sport that should be acknowledged, I do not feel he utilized the arguments in his piece as well as he might have done. The points he brings up are all legitimate, yet it is unclear in my opinion who exactly the audience of this paper is. There was quite a bit of it that I had trouble understanding, and it felt almost as if Langely was addressing other skaters as a fellow skater himself. This is likely due to the fact that it is a culture that is part of his personality, and is easy for him to express, yet I feel it would have behooved him to pick a different persona. You would be hard pressed to find a skater who doesn't agree with him; what he's really trying to do is to convince non-skaters, such as myself, that skating is a sport that aught to be acknowledged by the greater population as a whole. There was almost an assumed knowledge of skater culture in this piece that limited it. Unless you were a member of such a culture - and if you were, this piece was obviously not directed at you - it is easy to assume that much of these details could be lost upon you, as they were on me. On the whole, I agree with Langely. I am not a skater myself, as was previously mentioned, but I sympathize with his plight. His examples allow us as readers to identify more readily with the author, and the piece succeeds in this regard.