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From the hard-ridden half-pipe of a suburban driveway to teens doing boardslides down stairway handrails in Rio de Janeiro, from the bright-light glare of ESPN's X-Games to the groundbreaking street-skating videos of Spike Jonze, skateboarding has taken the world by storm -- and if you can't deal with that, get out of the way. In The Answer Is Never, skating journalist Jocko Weyland tells the rambunctious story of a rebellious sport that began as a wintertime surfing substitute on the streets of Southern California beach towns more than forty years ago and has evolved over the decades to become a fixture of urban youth culture around the world. Merging the historical development of the sport with passages about his own skating adventures in such wide-ranging places as Hawaii, Germany, and Cameroon, Weyland gives a fully realized portrait of a subculture whose love of free-flowing creativity and a distinctive antiauthoritarian worldview has inspired major trends in fashion, music, art, and film. Along the way, Weyland interweaves the stories of skating pioneers like Gregg Weaver and the Dogtown Z-Boys and living legends like Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk. He also charts the course of innovations in deck, truck, and wheel design to show how the changing boards changed the sport itself, enabling new tricks as skaters moved from the freestyle techniques that dominated the early days to the extreme street-skating style of today. Vivid and vibrant, The Answer Is Never is a fascinating book as radical and unique as the sport it chronicles.
Customer Review:A3MNZ5VVTYZDXA
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Summary: The Answer is ... Buy this Book
If you love skateboarding you should buy this book. It's a nice history that is intelligently written. It talks about skateboard culture with the alienated, angry kids, and how it is so different from organized sports. It covers the early beach culture skaters, punk rock skaters, Dogtowners and the beginning of vert riding. This book is fun to read. It's smart and almost scholarly but Jocko Weyland keeps it fun and exciting at the same time.
Customer Review:A30L1POARVUWRI
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Summary: Absolutely Incredible
The best book I have ever read about skateboarding. None of the BS, namedropping, "my generation," "you owe us," etc you usually find in a book about skateboarding's history and/or skater's memoir. Jocko is a true skater to the bone, nobody special, never pro, never worked in the industry getting rich; Mr Weyland is just a skateboarder who feels he owes more to skateboarding than it owes him (which is extremely rare in today's skate environment). I'm willing to bet if you've skated for more than 10 years and are over 25 (especially over 30) you will love this book. All of my friends and I have followed the general path of the author's life; he has definitely touched on a common thread of each of our lives. As an historian I don't think it is the best "history" per se, but I don't think that was his intention, I think it was a personal history; so as a journalist I think it was incredible reporting. Incredible work dealing with "what is skateboarding?"
Customer Review:A2VNH1XELBVZZB
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Summary: Describing the color red
Growing up in the 80s I was surrounded by skateboarding, whether it be in the form of my Mom's friend's daughter showing me how to (attempt to) ride down the street at age 10, the kids skating in the "hip town" of Hyannis, MA (which was a "city" to someone from The Cape), watching my neighbors skate and build their own ramps, watching the early skate videos, or ogling through Transworld Skate or Thrasher and wishing I'd had enough coordination to actually be able to learn what I was seeing. I found this book at the public library and thought it might be an interesting read, but I had no idea what I was in for. Granted, Weyland's writing can be very subjective and he tends to "go off" about what skating has become (as many people who have been skating their entire life can), but what he wrote isn't just his complaints about skating and the industry. There's a lot of information about the history of skating (which a lot of people who claim to skate might not have any ideas about), and also stories about what skating was like before The Circus of what is now began. What he's written gives the person who doesn't understand skating the ability to have some inkling of what it's like, and to understand that "skating" isn't just what they see, but it's a culture, a lifestyle, a thought pattern, a philosophical journey, and can even be a family. One truly interesting part of the book (for me, being a 28 year-old college professor) is Weyland's comments and thoughts about going from being "in the know" to being considered "old." I would definitely suggest this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of the sport and the genesis of what they see before them today.
Customer Review:A1O3UEGL7KRF4W
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Summary: Literary History of the Sport Lovingly Told
Weyland chronicles the history of the sport from its ancestry in Hawaiian surfing through its recent emergence as a mass-marketed ESPN drawing card. While carefully charting this history, he intersperses lenghty (though riveting) tales from his own experiences growing up as a skater. These tales, which are indicative of how the skating mileau of the time shaped him, are a valuable time capusle to which many readers will relate. He manages to do all of this very artfully so that what seems to be a bi-polar stucture is nearly seamless. Few books measure up to the narrative and literary standards I expect from authors--but this one far surpasses them (a pleasant surprise). Novice skaters and parents who wish to understand skating culture should read this book and also Tony Hawk's Operation: Skateboarder. Both are fast reads (despite their 300+ pagecounts) and demonstrate two contrasting aspects of the sport and the corresponding worldviews engendered therein. Really, it's so good if Weyland waxes poetic on ice fishing I'd have to check it out. Please note that this book is a lot more fun to read than my dull review.
Customer Review:A19RQJDIZOX7UV
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Summary: the answer is...
Indeed there is something to be said for reaching out with the internet. Jocko has, since my previous review, made good with a payment for the photo usage in this book, and has been added to my personal list, as another "Cadillac of Dudes".
-M.Fo
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