SSOTY (Skateboarding Stories of the Year) 2025

An incomplete collection of the year's best writing.

Cole Nowicki

19 Dec 2025 — 26 min read

Say "show me your clips" to a room full of people and the ones most ready to share will be skateboarders and writers.

That doesn't necessarily mean that skateboarding is like writing or writing like skateboarding, but both do take time, require extreme dedication to the craft, and provide their practitioners with alternating states of anguish and euphoria. And, by nature, the writer and the skateboarder stack clips. Increasingly, they also cross streams. To that end, it is the belief of this publication that when skateboarding and writing become writing about skateboarding, however tangential that intersection is, it should be recognized.

Which leads us here, to Simple Magic's Skateboarding Stories of the Year for 2025, an annual effort to catalogue and celebrate some of the best skateboarding-related writing from the year that was. Below you'll find essays, features, reviews, interviews, investigative reportage, commentary, academic studies, illustrated accounts, roundtable discussions, and more.

If you're on this list, you've won SSOTY. Congratulations. Send me a message and I will mail you a print of whichever Wordy trophy you like. There are four to choose from, each exquisitely created and animated by James Kerr, a.k.a Scorpion Dagger.

Happy reading.

(Check out the SSOTYs for 2022, 2023, and 2024.)

“Talking Shit and Making Meaning”
Ted Barrow and Sam Korman, Portable Gray (Autumn 2024)

TB — Right. And that’s the other thing, when you’re attempting skate criticism, very seldom are you attempting to write about something. Again, you attempt to evoke Barthes’s Mythologies, and Mythologies is totally correct because we are describing skate videos and video parts and internet clips, and maybe even photos published in magazines, all of which were produced for the purpose of advertising and promotion. So we’re not actually talking about that cool ineffable thing. We try to get to describing that cool ineffable thing that skateboarding and nothing else but skateboarding is but we’re doing so through the base language of commercials.

“The skater’s ear: a sensuous complexity of skateboarding sound”
Paul O'Connor, Brian Glenney, Max Boutin, Sport in Society (January 5, 2025)

Sound has tended to be a peripheral topic in skateboarding studies in comparison to a common focus on the ‘skater’s eye’, the ability of skateboarders to quickly notice the skate-ability of spots, various forms of urban architecture (Borden 2001). But as our research demonstrates, sound is a central experience in the sensuous and symbolic lives of skateboarders. This research shifts focus from the spectacular, visible, and overt ocular styling of skateboarding and its various medias to the aural world of skatesound.

Bonus Paul (+ Indigo Willing, Benjamin Deuster, and Sander Hölsgens): "The leisure of grey spaces, urban play and the chromatic turn" Leisure Studies (Volume 44, 2025)

“On The Road”
Adam Gray, Resort to Cannibalism (January 28, 2025)

Every DIY is also built upon understanding of the old Taoist/Buddhist teaching that everything is transitory, nothing will last. So new graffiti replaces old graffiti, early fixtures are taken out or built upon, and eventually, most likely, the man will inevitably come and tear the whole thing down.

“Austyn Gillette: The Chrome Ball Interview”
Eric Swisher, Closer (Issue #10, Vol. 3.2, 2025)

My proudest moment was probably when I turned pro, which was two months after my Dad had passed away. He was such a big supporter of my skating and genuinely wanted that for me. It was very emotional for me. I remember crying because he couldn't be there to see me. It was really the first time that I had to be proud for myself, not just to earn my Dad's respect or approval, as turning pro was always the dream since I was a kid.

“In Dreams — Nick Jensen on the Isle Skateboards Curtain Call”
Farran Golding, Skate Bylines (February 28, 2025)

“I was running a gallery out of my flat when Isle started and I was used to documenting artists’ work on the wall. I thought, ‘Why can’t that exist [on a board]?” Instead of where you just think “graphic design” and then “computer”, I thought why not do that? Not as if I’m really clever but more ‘Let’s see if it looks good.’..."

Bonus Farran: "So what's it really like to skate the biggest ramp ever, Sandro Dias?" redbull.com (October 21, 2025)

“8M United for Change: Marching in Mexico City on International Women's Day”
Norma Ibarra, normaibarra.com (March 9, 2025)

The unity we experienced was overwhelming. Skateboarders, roller skaters, artists, activists, mothers, daughters, and friends—we were all there for the same reason: to fight for a world where women can live without fear. Seeing so many strong, determined individuals sharing the same struggle reminded me that change is not only necessary but possible.

“No true skating at the wrong spot? - Skateparks and creativity”
Various, Bubble (March 13, 2025)

Veith [Kilberth]: Of course, there is also the occasional criticism that the park is an enclosure, a functional space, that there is no authentic skating in the skatepark. According to Adorno, a wrong life can’t be lived rightly. But there is also this other dimension, that the skaters create their own skatepark, their own dreamland. If you come from a small town that doesn’t even have a decent Aldi parking lot and an old town full of cobblestones, then you are dependent on your skatepark. Not to mention the transition skaters, what else are they supposed to do here in Europe? We also plan most skateparks in rural areas and for them, a park is something completely different than for those in a city.

“Skateboarders Are Defying Gravity Once Again”
Lindsey Adler, The New York Times (March 30, 2025)

Mr. Hawk, ever the evangelist, knows what he wants to happen next. The Summer Olympics are heading to Los Angeles in 2028. Southern California is the global epicenter of skateboarding, and Mr. Hawk has been, as he puts it, “hustling” to get vert added as an event. It would increase the visibility of the form and, Mr. Hawk believes, lead to more vert ramps being built. To help get things started, he’s willing to put his own equipment on the line.

“I would give them my ramp,” Mr. Hawk said feverishly. “I would say ‘Here’s the terrain. Find a place for it, and it’s all yours.’ I have the best vert ramp in the world, and it’s portable. It can be assembled in a couple of hours. It’s all yours.”

“In England's rural north, skateboarding is femme”
Zahra Onsori, Huck (April 1, 2025)

When I read the zine, one of the stories that stuck with me was a mother-daughter duo who were learning to skate together. It was really powerful. What stuck with you from the personal stories you heard?

I think it’s how much we need each other as a community. The fearlessness of being young, bouncy and resilient is something that we can all learn from. The older you get, the more you fear. When I asked people to explain their experience of how skateboarding felt, freedom was the biggest thing. Within skateboarding, you have to fail – it’s part of the process – but getting back up again is such an enormous lesson. Also, just being around people and having a neutral space. To have that locally, to have something connected with people that isn’t just work or college or school is really important.

“Andrew Reynolds is Still The Boss”
Chris Black, Highsnobiety (April 2025)

Social media has changed certain industries for the better and the worse, but skateboarding has probably experienced one of the most significant shifts. Guys used to take a year or two to put the video together, and now there's this pressure to do more all the time.

I don't know what it's done for skating. As a skater who grew up skating in the '80s and '90s, watching the whole thing happen in front of me, from the invention of street skating to videos… I think it's too much. I don't know. All old fools in every industry will say, “It was sicker back then,” but whatever. I don't know.

“Love Park, Love Malmö, and Preserving Memory and Material — Skateboarding as Spolia”
Dominique Teoh, Skate Bylines (April 8, 2025)

Skateboarding is getting old. Countless spots have been lost through the years, yet enough time has passed that some are actually returning. From Pier 7 in San Francisco to the Brooklyn Banks in New York City, some of skateboarding’s holy sites have begun their resurrection. Campaigns to save skate spots have proliferated and success stories like Long Live Southbank prove cultural preservation is not only worth fighting for but a battle which can be won. Skateboarders may seem unlikely candidates to be thrust into the world of civic activism but the deep connection skaters have to place, material and community is unmistakable. But what happens when a spot is destroyed forever?

“The QS Anonymous Skateshop Survey Asks: What’s the ‘Matter’ With Skateboarding?”
Mike Munzenrider, Quartersnacks (April 17, 2025)

What isn’t “working” in skateboarding right now, that may have worked in the recent past? This can be answered any way you like: retail, product, media, cultural landscape, etc.

Bonus Mike: "The QS Anonymous Brand Survey Asks: What’s the ‘Matter’ With Skateboarding? — Part 2" Quartersnacks (August 13, 2025)

“The 24-minute movie of the year”
Jonah Weiner, Blackbird Spyplane (April 17, 2025)

In that light, he singled out one “strange shot that appears a few times, far removed from the action, maybe up on a pole, like a security camera, that puts Bobby and the whole project in perspective, literally. After he finally lands the switch tre flip over the block, we see it all again from this angle. The agony and drama are gone. You can hardly see the trick. He blends in with the schlubs and tourists trudging by, who seem to pay him no mind. That’s the reality of the job: No matter what you put into it, or how you document it, or where you put it afterward, it’s over in an instant. And you’d be lucky if anyone bothers to notice.”

“Skate Trip”
Ian Browning, The Stop Gap (April 30, 2025)

I went on a skate trip last summer. A week or so later, I was in the passenger seat of the car with my family. My son Louis, who is five, piped up out of the blue from the back. “Dad, maybe we could go on a skate trip too.” After resolidifying my melted heart, I told him we could probably figure that out.

A few months later we camped in upstate New York, where I taught him how to pee off a cliff. In the morning we drove over to New Haven, Connecticut. I landed on going there because New Haven has it all: an outdoor skate park, a municipal indoor skate park on the bottom floor of a brutalist parking garage, and some good food.

Bonus Ian: "What makes a skateshop video great?" Closer (Issue #12, Vol. 3.4, 2025)

“Bump to Bark: Melbourne's Tree Root-Formed Kickers”
Josh Sabini, Monster Children (May 4, 2025)

Another major issue caused by the trees is that their vigorous roots cause many problems in cities, making tripping hazards, buckling the surface around them. The City of Melbourne has combated the invasive root problem by covering the base of the tree in a flexible, permeable pebble mix paving, to save the bluestone pavement while keeping the roots covered and suitable for the environment. Due to the flexible nature of the paving it bubbles up, forming unique, bumpy, wavy, natural bumps, perfect for skateboarding. The permeable paving bases at the bottom of the hayfever, allergy causing Plane’s, have been skated by basically everyone to ever skate the city within the last decade, whether it be rolling over them while skating down the street or launching off the bump.

“Tracing The Evolution of Skateboarding's Favorite Game: S.K.A.T.E”
Ben Komins, Jenkem (May 8, 2025)

It was during this era that he remembers multiple games coming out of Skate City, including something called Glove. “One guy has this old skate glove, and everyone else takes off throughout the park, so you’d chase people down and throw the glove at the person, usually at their wheels so it would stop them. Whoever gets gloved would then be the glove, and it would start over again,” said John.

“It was basically a game of tag with an old dirty glove,” he laughed. “You break out the glove and everyone is like, ‘OHHHH NOO.’”

Bonus Ben: "Can a Video Game Create a New Generation of Skateboarders?" Jenkem (August 4, 2025)

“Overthinking Tom Schaar's 'Vert's not Dead' Part”
Andrew Murrell, Village Psychic (May 9, 2025)

Pay close attention to Tom Schaar’s Vert’s Not Dead part, and you’ll realize it isn’t just the latest in a long line of progressive vert skating. It’s an ode to the discipline itself, packed with references to all the OGs Tom and filmer Chris Gregson grew up watching.

“Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk makes surprise visit to B.C. mountain town to open skate park expansion”
Andrew Kurjatta, CBC (May 29, 2025)

"Hey, what's up Smithers? It's Tony Hawk. Someone told me there's a skate demo happening at your new park?" he said in a video posted to social media. "That's pretty cool, I may have to check it out."

“Natalie Porter and the Womxn Skate History Project”
Michael Burnett, Thrasher (June 2, 2025)

Talk about the role of zines in women’s skate history.
My obsession with zines is because they are primary documents and have the most candid stories of what it was like, say, being forced to compete against dudes in the 1980s when there were no categories for girls. They are first-person accounts. Zines were creative ways to network with each other. For example: KZ Zapata did Push, Push, Then Go. She was sponsored by SMA and anytime she met another girl, she would use her zine to make connections. Get their address, become pen pals, and generate that action. And then the zine Equal Time was really the catalyst for The Women’s Skateboard Network. They were saying by 1992 they had a circulation of 1000 and 250 members, which is pretty epic for a zine in the late ’80s/early ’90s. That’s a lot of women skaters. And then that resulted in the video SK8HERS, which came out in ’92 and had 14 women in it. Yeah, there’s these DIY efforts that are ongoing, which are really cool.

“Covering Fashion & Pants Became Impossible Once Skaters Began Dressing Like Fashion Icon Tim Duncan”
Snackman, Quartersnacks (June 10, 2025)

Ok, but why five-time NBA Champion, San Antonio Spurs power forward Tim Duncan?

Because — and we’ll get to why we always disagreed with this — he was renown for a sort of “anti-style” in his off-court fits. In short, people thought he dressed bad.

There was an entire micro-economy of 2010s internet content clowning Tim Duncan’s outfits. Complex hosted a “swagless retrospective.” The Onion had an article about how he had an endorsement deal with Florsheim Shoes. Upon his 2016 retirement, GQ chastised him for “wearing the same thing for 20 years.” Sports Illustrated reported on his “fashion crimes.”

Bonus Snackman: "Waxing Ledges Is Contagious" Quartersnacks (July 15, 2025)

“Insisting on The Unimaginable”
Maen Hammad interviews Rajab Al-Reefi, Thrasher (June 2025)

The Gaza Skate Team, a small crew of Palestinian skateboarders, has defied immense odds to sustain a skate scene in Gaza. Since 2015, they have done this under the care and commitment of Rajab Al-Reefi. Although I live just 50 miles away in the occupied West Bank, I only knew Rajab and the Gaza Skate Team through my phone. Rajab and the team have lived through an unfathomable reality. Israel has dropped 75,000 tons of explosives on Gaza—more than six nuclear bombs’ worth. Rajab and his team have watched entire neighborhoods, cities and lives obliterated. Yet skateboarding remains an act of rebellion in Gaza—a way to challenge oneself and foster community amid relentless injustice and oppression. The Gaza Skate Team is a testament to the impossibility of skateboarding, showing us a new way in which skateboarding is an act of defiance—a refusal to let their human dignity be destroyed. Rajab uses the last remaining boards in Gaza to travel for water and food for his family in the heavily bombarded north, and when he’s not doing so, he’s organizing skate classes for displaced Palestinians living in shelters. Despite a weak internet connection, Kyle Seidler and I were lucky to arrange a WhatsApp call with Rajab, who shared the unimaginable experience of being a skater in Gaza. — Maen Hammad

Bonus Maen: "'Moment of escape': Maen Hammad's defiant West Bank skate photos" Huck (June 24, 2025)

“‘He's in another realm’: How a skate media mogul became SF's most powerful Scientologist”
Sam Mondros and Max Harrison-Caldwell, The San Francisco Standard (July 9, 2025)

According to Kristi Wachter, who tracks and publishes membership progress at The Truth About Scientology, Kyro completed at least 25 Scientology courses(opens in new tab) between 2009 and 2023 and has achieved the status of Operating Thetan VI. The church defines an Operating Thetan as “one who can handle things without having to use a body or physical means”; Kyro’s rank is the third-highest possible.

“How to Kickflip”
Ted Schmitz, Thrasher (July 2025)

Planes are crashing. California’s a tinderbox. Gestapo-style abductions are back. The stock market’s on its 1920s shit and, what’s that? A genocide?! The world is scarier and more complicated than ever and that’s why you, humble skater, need to work on your problem-solving skills. But I don’t know anything about geopolitics! Of course you don’t, dickhead. Remember Ghandi said, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself.” Well, I noticed you got a dogshit kickflip. Let’s fix that first with a simple 20-step guide.

“The Art of Skating Institutions: Incidental Positionality as an Artistic Strategy in Reappropriating Civic Space”
Harry Meadley, thesis, Leeds Beckett University (July 10, 2025)

Intentionally adopting an incidental position between the local skateboard community, arts organisations, universities, and the local authority, the key question of this research is how the role of the artist can be utilised to establish mutually beneficial relationships in support of actively excluded groups, such as female and marginalised gender skateboarders, who are disproportionality affected by a lack of safety in public space. Seeking to be what Natalie Loveless might term ‘polydisciplinamorous’, there is an intention in both the production, dissemination and analysis of this practice-based research to simultaneously court the fields of socially engaged art practice and skateboard academia.

“The Brooklyn Banks Restoration Brings Culture and Community to Generations of Skateboarders (Again)”
Tyrese Alleyne-Davis, Skate Bylines (July 15, 2025)

But for many in New York, the impact of Rodriguez’s work is felt most profoundly at the street level by the skaters who’ve looked up to him since they first stepped on a board. Eli Ritter first skated on the Brooklyn Banks as a middle schooler. Returning to the spot this summer after years of closure, now aged 36, Ritter couldn’t believe what he saw. “When I heard it was reopening, I was skeptical. I thought they might smooth it out or modernise it too much but I’m super thankful they restored it to its original state. It feels real again.” For Ritter, that authenticity is inseparable from Rodriguez’s vision. “He’s a hero — straight up. Not just for the Banks, but for the NYC skate scene overall. We all understand what a heavy lift this was. We’re eternally grateful. What he’s done will have a butterfly effect. Generations of skaters are going to benefit from this.”

“Skateboarding Into Middle Age”
Navied Mahdavian, The New Yorker (August 5, 2025)

“Does TNT’s Kickflip Count As An Old Head Trick Now?”
boil the ocean (August 17, 2025)

For quite some time, the wood-and-urethane game was believed to be strictly a young species’ game, between the heavy stresses on joints and ligaments and pros getting retired at the ripe old age of 22. Evolving understandings of the structure of time itself, along with a grudging acceptance of conditioning exercise and ever-present fear of the fearsome ‘day job,’ have conspired to change this, extending the pro-skater window from the 20-something’s cow-like lifespan to something more like that of the four decades-deep giraffe, or perhaps even a sexagenarian chimpanzee.

“No Comply: Private Equity and Skateboarding”
Daniel Stone, Center for Economic and Policy Research (August 18, 2025)

Dwindle immediately implemented classic private equity cost-cutting measures under TCG’s ownership. The private equity firm fired employees with over 20 years of service, including Bill Weiss, who had managed Madness Skateboards and served as team manager for Blind for decades. TCG’s destructive force became clear when they attempted to force Bod Boyle, President of Dwindle at the time, to fire longtime friends and colleagues. Rather than become complicit in private equity’s destruction, Boyle resigned from his post. Even when questioned by a team rider in a company-wide meeting about pay under the new management structure, a TCG executive stated “That’s an unfortunate byproduct of the skateboarding industry.” What TCG saw as simple cost-cutting measures were surgical strikes against the institutional knowledge and authentic relationships that sustained Dwindle’s cultural relevance for decades.

“Tyshawn Jones Is Still Skating the Edge of What’s Possible”
Cole Louison, GQ (August 26, 2025)

Jones’s relationship with Supreme ended last September, after Jones appeared in an ad for Marc Jacobs, wearing the Japanese design impresario Nigo’s reimagining of the iconic Superman sweater from Jacobs’s 1990 men’s collection. Supreme would later claim that Jones had violated the terms of his Supreme endorsement agreement by modeling for another brand.

In May, Jones filed a $26 million lawsuit against Supreme, alleging wrongful contract termination. The suit alleges that Supreme had raised no concerns when Jones, who’s been repped by DNA Models since 2019, had modeled for other brands in the past. The suit asserts that the company disparaged Jones within the industry and that Supreme had terminated his contract in order to cut costs in the wake of a recent acquisition. (In 2020, Supreme was sold to VF Corp, the brand conglomerate that owns Vans, Dickies, The North Face, and Timberland, for $2.1 billion. Last year VF sold it for $1.5 billion—or $600,000,000 less—to EssilorLuxottica, the French and Italian multinational holding company that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley.)

Bonus context: "Tyshawn V Supreme" Mostly Skateboarding Podcast (May 18, 2025)

“Skateboarding and the Silver Screen — Five Videographers on Cinematic Influences in Skate Videos”
Jacques Talbot, Quartersnacks (August 28, 2025)

“Memory is fragmentary, flawed and hallucinatory, but it has a gloss of coherence. I always wanted people to experience [the “Atlantic Drift” series] like a memory of their own that was already half rotting,” says Harris. “So many filmmakers do this in different ways; pre-eminently Andrei Tarkovsky, but there are major bits of things from Raging Bull to your average romcom that you could point to.”

“Immerse yourself – Tyler Surrey”
Zach Baker, Free Skateboard Magazine (August 29, 2025)

As many, I dreamed, from as soon as I developed a sense of the greater zeitgeist and community around skateboarding, of visiting Barcelona. An American Easterner, in circumstance and mentality, born in Boston, raised in New Jersey, back again to Boston, pursuing a background in (capital L) Letters, useless, mostly, save for the opportunity herein displayed, some oscillating thoughts: an as yet unproven thesis punctuated here and there with some possibly misused em dashes and five dollar semicolons. But we’ll get there in due time, body, conclusion, and all. An American Easterner, I say, drunk on Mixtape, Panama Dan, Uncle Fred, et al. I won’t bore you with cliched assumptions around Southern California… palm trees, a pool-draining drought, sand in your bearings… but I’d been there. I wanted to see something new and exotic; this magical place from the vids… the Gaudí shit. So I holed away some table-waiting money and I went.

“Everyone's favorite skater is... Kader”
Brianna Holt, Highsnobiety (Fall 2025 issue)

If Kader’s whole come-up feels compressed, it’s because he just hasn’t been alive for that long. He first picked up a board around age seven or eight, inspired by YouTube videos and the older kids skating near his hometown of Encino. His mom’s personal trainer gave Kader and his brother a board to share. Eventually, his grandma bought him his own: “some SpongeBob board from CVS that I would just fling around and kind of fuck up.”

“Cata Díaz: "I Used To Feel Like Without Skating There Was No Cata”
Leticia Nogueira, Dolores (September 29, 2025)

What ultimate lesson do you take from not being able to skate?

Understanding that skateboarding is something I love, but it is not who I am. After this year of struggles and the injury, I finally understood that skating is something I love with all of my heart and I enjoy it deeply with every cell of my being. But it is not who I am. What I am goes with me everywhere, despite how I skate, where I am or what others might think of me. I used to feel like without skating there was no Cata that had any worth, or that my life was just pointless. Being so close to death made me understand that there’s nothing more important than life. It’s all we have and there’s nothing we do that is better than that.

Bonus Leticia: "The Importance of Shared Spaces in Skateboarding" Dolores (September 24, 2025)

“The Ultimate Pilgrimage for the Middle-Aged Skateboarder”
Willy Staley, The New York Times (October 15, 2025)

Love’s apex also happened to align with the beginning of my long and unimpressive skate career. As a teenager, I watched Love footage with awe via my family’s VCR in San Francisco. I learned the layout of this plaza I had never actually seen, piecing it together from countless clips. But I never got to skate there. Now, on the eve of my 40th birthday, having for the last 20 years managed the decline of whatever modest talents I ever possessed, and saddled with some of the most serious impediments to skateboarding in the known universe (child, career, golf), I had a chance.

And so, nearly a decade after Love’s demolition, I found myself jet-lagged on a cool August morning, watching a surprisingly large team of neon-clad city workers install the spot’s final touch: a streetlamp that had graced the original park for decades.

“Joy Rides”
José Vadi, Sactown Magazine (Fall 2025 issue)

At the March clinic, Yessica Cervantes brought her 11-year-old son, Lincoln, who has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Prior to skateboarding, Lincoln had tried team sports but found the downtime involved—when he wasn’t actively participating—to be challenging. But skateboarding, she says, is something where “he is able to control his own movements, and something that he has full agency over. And people on the spectrum don’t always feel like they have agency over things that are happening.”

“A battle for skateboarding’s soul”
Thom Callan-Riley, The Observer (October 11, 2025)

Financial machinations aside, there are other considerations. In seeking objectivity, these formats are creating a more sterilised version of skateboarding. Ironically, in wanting to "change the game", they are trying to subvert an already subversive activity, ultimately producing something bland that's unlikely to appeal to skateboarders themselves.

And what does it mean for anyone who wants to start skateboarding? In many sports, increasing spectator numbers is considered positive. Perversely, through skateboarding becoming more popular as a spectator sport, there's a risk it could limit participation, as has happened in Japan, where skateboarding is increasingly restricted to sanctioned skateparks.

“San Francisco Wants to Destroy a 96-Year-Old’s Defining Artwork”
Carol Pogash, The New York Times (October 12, 2025)

Destroying the Vaillancourt Fountain, its supporters say, would be erasing history and modern architecture, and counter to the city’s reputation for being weird. Bono spray-painted “Rock ’n’ Roll Stops the Traffic” on the fountain, which was completed in 1971, during a free U2 concert in 1987; the sculpture’s steps and ledges made it a skateboarding mecca in the 1990s.

“It’s weird and unusual,” said Ted Barrow, a skateboarder and art historian. “It’s a symbol of San Francisco.”

“The Collaboration is Dead, Long Live the Collaboration!”
Jamie Carey, The War Report (October 21, 2025)

Nostalgia is running wild these days and we’re all pretty sick of it. Brands are resurging that have no business still hanging around, and often it’s because they’re collaborating with actually Cool brands to grab headlines and relevance and keep hoodwinking people into buying Shitty clothes.

“Skating is like... Birding”
Michael Lombardo, Skate Jawn (October 28, 2025)

Take tricks over a pyramid. When I was starting out, I’d muscle through—overthinking every twitch and push, trying to time my trick-to-launch just right. Only later did I learn: you have to stop forcing and start gliding. Let your body join the energy of the ramp. Same with birding. You drop back into your animal self. Shed the social scripts, the mental clutter. You stop narrating and start sensing. Your ears stretch out. Your eyes rewild. You’re not looking at nature anymore—you’re part of it.

“Sober vs. Wasted: The Soul of FDR”
Chuck Harp, Confusion (November 2, 2025)

The vast concrete skate mecca known as FDR is something that shouldn’t exist. Like the universe itself, FDR is an ever-expanding entity bringing together old and new rippers from all across the Philadelphia territories. And Sober Vs. Wasted event does just that. Created by those who hold it closest, the entire day felt personal. Whether it was the merch stand, the judge’s treehouse bleachers, or the heavy metal resembling lemonade stand called the “Gnar-Bar,” which assisted those who quickly depleted their beer supply. And, by the look of a neighboring tree with its branches bestowed with bottles and cans, this was a true concern.

“Louisa Hawton”
Natalie Porter, Womxn Skateboard History (November 9, 2025)

Louisa Hawton, aka “Bang Bang Lulu” or “The Smiling Assassin” is best known for being a professional boxer, World Boxing Council (WBC) champion fighter, and 2019 Supreme Boxing Female Fighter of the Year, among many other boxing-related titles, and I’m not surprised to learn that she was also a ripping skater in the early 2000s.

“Seeing Like a Skater: Skateboarding as Poetic Technology”
Alia ElKattan, Mediapolis (November 10, 2025)

My first experience skating was also as a child in Cairo, where I bought my first low-quality skateboard as a pre-teen, and skated for a few years. I primarily skated at Gezira Sporting Club, a large private social club built by the British occupation, now populated by upper-middle- and upper-class Egyptians, or at a private beach resort in South Sinai where my family went for vacations. This is typical of Egyptian social spaces, which are highly fragmented, restricted, and privatized based on socioeconomic divides, and where public spaces are severely limited. When explaining why I stopped skating, I described my perception of skateboards as a toy for children that I enjoyed before I grew up and thus stopped playing with. As Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky write, “as people get older, they forget how to play. They forget that rules can be remade and games can always be played differently.”

“Where Does Skateboarding Come From?”
Isaac Bjorke, Flowers From The Fissures (November 12, 2025)

Academic skateboarding attempts to understand and unpack this ever-mutating anomaly that is skateboarding through complex theoretical lenses. And yet, this event is held in San Diego precisely because of the overwhelmingly popular idea that skateboarding’s past has been set in stone. Or sand, rather: skateboarding begins with sidewalk surfing beach kids, backyard pools, LA, San Diego, Florida, mayyybe NYC/Long Island, undoubtedly San Francisco and Hawai’i. The culture is forever intertwined with surfing, “board shorts”, and shaka brahhh. Hence, the only official organization of skateboarding scholarship within any university in the United States is the San Diego State University Surf/Skate Studies Collaborative, the most southern public university along the coast of California.

“Melonchaly: Da Vinci's Lost Box”
William Takahashi, Adjacency Bias (December 1, 2025)

“I think it was just the perfect height for everybody, plus how long and wide it was. Also, the angle iron was perfect,” David Failla, a local skater and rider for Rips, said. But why the watermelon design? “I wanted to make something that could withhold the weather while making it look kid friendly in some way. Also, free Palestine,” Preston said.

“EMB Drubbing”
Kevin Wilkins, Epicenter (December 1, 2025)

A drubbing.

My brain has taken one, as they say. A full-on beating.
Yeah, pretty tough.
A more difficult run? EMB? I can't even remember.
Seems like you guys might have kinda overcooked it.
Nice spot you had there, though. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

“Skaters are Feeling Dublin’s Public Space Crisis in Real Time”
Philip Theiss, District Magazine (December 8, 2025)

...many of the city’s newer public squares, while technically open to everyone, are designed with a purpose in mind. “They’re polished, controlled, and come with rules. They don’t invite people to hang out, experiment, and figure things out themselves. That’s what’s missing in Dublin.”

In a city facing densification, a housing crisis, and rising privatisation, the question is not just whether there is public space, but whether the city is cultivating spaces that allow people to exist on their own terms.

“Flip Side”
Jono Coote, Wizz (December - January 2026)

The sound of wheels on concrete and marble carries on a light wind, which sculpts rippled patterns on the surface of the sun-sparkled Garonne River. Down by the water, where pedestrians stroll in the early winter light, curved concrete sculptures are swarmed by groups of skateboarders, hungry to test out the new features erupting from the ground. In a city better known for its century-spanning architecture and vineyards, a grassroots movement has been growing here in Bordeaux - one that just a few years ago would have been difficult to imagine.

Special consideration for some Special Correspondences:
Given that Simple Magic is the issuer of the globally recognized and universally respected SSOTYs, it would be a conflict of interest to award anything published here with a Wordy. However, that doesn't mean I can't put forward the fantastic work of this newsletter's contributors for your reading pleasure.

The pieces above were compiled by me, and I am merely some guy on the internet, so I’m sure there is a lot I’m missing. If there’s writing that was published this year that you loved and isn't here, leave a comment below.

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