As urban development in Asia has accelerated, cities in the region have become central to skateboarding culture, livelihoods, and consumption. Asia's urban landscapes are desired for their endless supply of 'spots'. A spot is assemblage of objects, surfaces and obstacles holding the possibilities to perform skateboarding manoeuvres (tricks). Spots are not built for skateboarding; they are accidents of urban planning and commercial activity; glitches in the urban machine. Skateboarders and filmers chase these glitches searching for spots to make skate video, the currency of the industry and skateboarding's primary cultural artefact. Once captured, performances at Asia's spots circulate rapidly through digital platforms to millions of skateboarders, enrolling spots from Shenzhen, Dubai and Ramallah into an alternative cartography of the region. By focusing on this alternative way of desiring and consuming urban Asia, this book explores the ways skateboarding resets relational and comparative hierarchies of urban development within Asia and between Asia and the West.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Urban Asia: Endless Spots
- Escaping the California Gridlock
- (Re)Mapping Asia Through Spots
- Structure of the Book
- 2. Shredding the Urban Fabric
- Spots: Urban Landscapes Below the Knees
- Infrastructure’s Adjacent Publics
- Splicing the Map
- Life on Video, Life Online
- Conclusion
- 3. Chasing the Concrete Dragon
- From Chinese Consumers to Consuming China
- Skateboarding at Shenzhen Speed
- Endless Spots, New Cartographies
- Communist Wonderland
- Conclusion
- 4. Spectacle Cities: The Luxury of Emptiness
- Central Asian Spectacles
- Emptying Dubai
- Dubai Unreal
- Spectacle and its Others
- Conclusion
- 5. For the Love of Soviet Planning
- Post-Soviet Urban Space from Below (The Knees)
- Independence Square (Tashkent)
- Ala-Too Square (Bishkek)
- The Outer Grid
- Haunted Spots
- Conclusion
- 6. Skateboarding’s New Frontiers
- Iran: Revolutionary Modernity
- India: Rough Cut Modern
- Shredding the Architecture of Occupation
- Conclusion
- 7. Conclusion: Another ‘Next China’
- Real-time Blues
- Endless Spots, Endless Search
- Bibliography
- Skate Videos and Media Files
- Published Sources
- Index
- List of Images
- Image 1.1 Jasper Dohrs in Chengdu, China in Preduce skateboard’s Supermix
- Image 1.2 The Preduce ‘Skate Park’ Map of Bangkok
- Image 2.1 Waxed marble ledges outside Vincom Center in Ho Chi Minh City, 2018
- Image 2.2 Navigating the crowd to skate the variation in the pavement. The Theatres by the Bay ‘durian spikes’ feature in the right-hand corner of the frame. Go Skate Day in Singapore, 2018
- Image 3.1 Rodrigo Petersen’s name on the famous Deng Xiaoping billboard in Shenzhen from Give Me My Money Chico
- Image 3.2 Rodrigo Petersen skating the famous wave ledge in Shenzhen in Give Me My Money Chico
- Image 3.3 Shanghai Spot Map; note colour coded spot types and spot information at each pin
- Image 4.1 Gabriel Summers skates a handrail in Astana in The Kazakhstan Triangle
- Image 5.1 Ethan Loy waxing the Muzhestvo monument in Tashkent in Hotel Uzbekistan
- Image 5.2 Miki Tähtinen skates the memorial to Bagrat Shinkuba moments before a local intervenes in Abkhazia
- Image 6.1 Denny Pham rolls through the arches of Azadi Tower in Tehran in preparation for a trick down the stairs in The Persian Version
- Image 6.2 Off the plywood onto the handrail in Delhi. Note the drying clothes. Sean Malto in Gurus of the Ganges
- Image 6.3 Skaters in Lal Bazar, a rare flat space amidst the vertical growth. Gangtok, Sikkim in 2019
- Image 6.4 Showing ‘the wall’ no respect. Sylvain Tognelli in Pieces of Palestine
- Image 7.1 Unorganized encounters in urban Asia: Thai skater Beek Supavich frontside noseslides a ping pong table in Bangkok
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
Login to your account