06/26/2023
Reflecting on our first skate at a public (Black Culture) event 6/17:
- It was so dope - to get to skate with some new community members and ones we hadn’t seen in a long time. Such a good reminder of why we do this! 😍
- it was nice - to skate with some cohorts. It encouraged us to mayyyybe try the OCCASIONAL future — partner, cohort, hesitant to use the word ally, but sure — that are aware of the space they take up, skate. The challenge is maintaining the integrity of who we are and not having it turn into every_other_space
- it was not cool - being bombarded with messages from self-appointed allies about ‘everyone being welcome to skate’ from the time it was made public. Are you kidding me?? Hell no - we worked too damn hard to get away from all of them trifling people! And we sure as hell don’t VOLUNTEER our time to cater to them!💀
- it was most stressful - one of the least self-aware people STILL crashing… they regularly used to crash our skate nights any time they found out when/where they were. They even offered to donate ONE of their multiple pairs of used skates ONLY if they could skate with us… 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏿♀️Not surprisingly - nobody wanted to put in the labour to deal with them. Nor should we have to.
It’s hard to hear, especially in a colonial-built world that was designed for you so you feel entitled to go everywhere you please, but not_every_space is meant for you. And our metric for safe space is a hell of a lot higher than not being hung from a tree.
There are some folks who prefer to be in predominantly white spaces - you do you. For those of us who need or appreciate this space, we will 💯continue to honour it!
✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
There’s some extra toxic privilege that seems to happen in the general Greater Vancouver skate scene. So while we MAY do future public skates, we’re excited to get back to private meet-ups.
Please read our Community Guidelines on how we get down. ☮️🛼💛💚
