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Clothes are important, and a thrasher turnout has standard components: oversize T shirt, baggy shorts, high-top sneakers and, often topping it off, a kind of revisionist Huntz Hall cap. Those basics allow for infinite variations in color and design, and the skateboarding T shirts sold in stores like Rip City in Santa Monica, Calif., have a heady graphic punch that combines elements of biker insignia, psychedelic coloring and underground-comics' goofiness. Surfers favor light colors, but skaters go for darker hues. "Dark colors make more of a hard-core statement than bright surf wear," says Santa Monica Artist Jim Ganzer, whose Jimmy'Z regalia for beach and board will pull down sales between $25 million and $30 million this year. "When you fly up into the air and land on concrete -- that's not water."
When urethane wheels, which give a smooth ride and solid traction, began to be used around 1973, the streets turned into open thrasher territory, and there were pressures brought to institutionalize the sport. Says George Powell, president of the Santa Barbara-based Powell Corp., which makes the coveted Powell-Peralta skateboards: "People who had power in the industry tried to make skating a Little League sport. But kids want skating to be their sport, not their parents'." Skateboarding languished until it burnished its outlaw image anew. Now "skaters are the punk rockers of the sport set," says Thrasher Editor Kevin Thatcher. But aside from a taste for heavy metal-tinged rock, this is a matter more of appearance than substance.
Skaters may not be front runners for the high school citizenship citation, but there is an easy and equitable racial mix among thrashers. Rivalry seems to occur along geographical, not blood, lines. Eastern skateboarders smart about skateboarding's being seen as another sunny fad from Southern California, while the folks on the West Coast tend to rise above the controversy -- smoothly, natch -- as if they were crackin' an Ollie (standing on the board and bouncing straight into the air) over a large fire hydrant.
Powell believes the new boom in boards occurred because everyone recognizes the "legitimacy of the street terrain." Longtime Skateboarder Thatcher speaks to a deeper appeal: "The skater doesn't have to rely on anybody or anything to do his sport. He doesn't need a wave, a ski slope or a team, and he likes it that way." The police, of course, do not, and the buoyant banditry of skateboarding can lead the law a merry chase. "To skateboard you've got to be aggressive, and you've got to be a little crazy," says Roger Mullen, 17, of Ventura, Calif. Law officers get heated up over potential noise, traffic, safety and property violations. Explains Mark Wynn, 12, who skates in Atlanta: "Cops always think you're tearing up places, and they're wrong . . . well, sorta." Police policy about skaters seems to have only one common denominator: chase 'em. In Chicago, authorities tell skaters to get off the sidewalk, while others tell them to get out of traffic.