Skateboarding is an action sport that involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as a recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. Originating in the United States, skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is worth an estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue, with 11.08 million active skateboarders in the world. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, for both male and female teams. Skateboarding made its Olympic debut in 2020 and was included in the 2024 games.
A skatepark, or skate park, is a purpose-built recreational environment made for skateboarding, BMX, scootering, and aggressive inline skating. A skatepark may contain half-pipes, handrails, funboxes, vert ramps, stairsets, quarter pipes, ledges, spine transfers, pyramids, banked ramps, full pipes, pools, bowls, snake runs, and any number of other objects.
Danny Way is an American professional skateboarder. He was awarded Thrasher magazine's "Skater of the Year" award twice. He is known for extreme stunts, such as jumping into a skateboard ramp from a helicopter; that was featured on the cover of Transworld Skateboarding magazine. One of his more notable stunts was jumping the Great Wall of China on a skateboard via megaramp.
Jared Pappas-Kelley is an American curator, researcher, and visual artist. He studied at The Evergreen State College, Goddard College and the European Graduate School where he served as Graduate Teaching Assistant for both Jean-Luc Nancy and Paul D. Miller while completing his PhD. Pappas-Kelley also studied with filmmakers Claire Denis and Barbara Hammer whom he cites as influences on his visual work. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Sylvère Lotringer, examines the inherent instability of art objects, investigating what he terms "the thing that is not a thing" through an examination of events such as the 2004 Momart warehouse fire and the objects stolen and subsequently lost or destroyed by art thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Much of his current research focuses on ideas of this instability of the art object and the intersection between practice and theory, examining art as a method for understanding the object’s coming together through its undoing. Developing these themes, he is currently organizing a group exhibition that he is co-curating with Natasha Chuk entitled Solvent Forms.
Jeff Jahn is a curator, art critic, artist, historian, blogger and composer based in Portland, Oregon, United States. He coined the phrase declaring Portland "the capital of conscience for the United States," in a Portland Tribune op-ed piece, which was then reiterated in The Wall Street Journal.
Mowry Thacher Baden is an American sculptor who has lived and worked in Canada since 1975. He is known for his gallery-based kinaesthetic sculptures and for his public sculpture, both of which require a strong element of bodily interaction on the part of the viewer.
In skateboarding, grinds are tricks that involve the skateboarder sliding along a surface, making contact with the trucks of the skateboard. Grinds can be performed on any object narrow enough to fit between wheels and are performed on curbs, rails, the coping of a skate ramp, funboxes, ledges, and a variety of other surfaces.
FDR Skatepark is a skatepark located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is accessible from the Pattison Avenue stop of the Broad Street subway line. The park has long been popular with notable local skaters such as Willy Akers, Chuck Treece, Bam Margera, Kerry Getz and various other local pro skaters. The park was built on unused public land in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park beneath an overpass of Interstate 95. The park came to be through volunteer labor and donations of materials. Over time the park has expanded with additions and inclusions to the area around the original components of the park.
Wynne Greenwood is a queer and lesbian feminist performance artist who works in various media such as installation art, photography, filmmaking and music. One of her well known projects include the electropop and video project group, Tracy + the Plastics. Wynne works out of Seattle, Washington, and was an instructor in the Department of Art and Art History at Seattle University.
Spohn Ranch is a skatepark design and construction firm based in Industry, California. The firm specializes in the construction and design of concrete skateparks and skate plazas, skateable art sculptures, several styles of ramps, and courses for skateboarding, BMX and motocross events.
Reedville Creek Park is a municipal park in the Reedville neighborhood of Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Opened in 2003, the 9.6-acre (39,000 m2) park is along Cornelius Pass Road at Francis Street in the southeast area of the city. The park includes basketball courts, children’s play equipment, a picnic shelter, tennis courts, and sports fields among other amenities. Reedville Creek was the first and is the only park in Hillsboro with a skatepark.
Seattle True Independent Film Festival was started in 2005 by a group of filmmakers whose feature film Swamper was rejected by the Seattle International Film Festival. STIFF was modeled after the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City UT as a way to champion local and true independent films that they felt were being left out of the local film program. The Stranger film critic, Andrew Wright described it as “like a belch in church ” All films that screen at STIFF receive a one-of a kind award called a “STIFFY”. Past STIFFIES run the gamut from “Best Buddy Movie”, to “Hottest Zombie”. On average, STIFF receives over 600 submissions per year and screens over 125 films as part of the nine-day event.
Turf Skatepark, also known as "Surfin' Turf" or "The Turf", is a former skatepark located in Greenfield, Wisconsin, United States, less than one mile south of the city of Milwaukee. The Turf was an indoor/outdoor facility consisting of five sculptured concrete pools providing some of the best terrain of its time.
Konstantin Dimopoulos is a social and environmental artist whose art practice is grounded in his sociological and humanist philosophies. He investigates globally relevant questions related to ecology and the human condition through his socio-environmental interventions and conceptual proposals, which argue for the potential of art as a means of social engagement and change. He is known for large public kinetic sculpture, The Blue Tree - an art installation about deforestation and Purple Rain - a textual and visual response to homelessness.
Tom Carr was the City Attorney of Boulder, Colorado from 2010 to 2021. He managed an office of 17 people, and received a salary of $170,000 per year.
A bronze sculpture of American pioneer, newspaper editor and historian Harvey W. Scott (1838–1910) by Gutzon Borglum, sometimes called Harvey Scott or Harvey W. Scott, was installed on Mount Tabor in Portland, Oregon, United States, until being toppled in October 2020.
This All Happened More or Less is a 2014 outdoor public art installation by Crystal Schenk and Shelby Davis, located along Southeast Division Street in Portland, Oregon, United States.
Rebirth, nicknamed "Deer Baby" and "Twilight Zone Bambi", was a proposed outdoor sculpture by American artist Seyed Alavi, considered for installation at the MAX Orange Line's Southeast Park Avenue MAX Station in Oak Grove, an unincorporated area neighboring Milwaukie in Clackamas County, Oregon, in the United States. The design of the unfinished creative work, which featured a 30-foot (9.1 m) deer with a child's face, was met with a mixed reception. Unable to meet TriMet's standards and remain under budget, in November 2011 Alavi withdrew his design from the project.
Love & Loss is an outdoor 2005 mixed-media installation by Roy McMakin, installed at Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, Washington.
Coleman Playground is a public park on the border between the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City.
