Kristen on Being a Female Skateboarder: Part I

1 - Tell me 3 things about yourself aside from being a female with a skateboarding career.

      1.  I grew up on a farm near Morris, Manitoba, but now live in Vancouver, BC

      2.  I live with my girlfriend Shelley and our two cats, Oliver and Fergus.

      3.  Even though I don’t skateboard anymore, I think about it all the time.

2 – How did skateboarding come into your life? When did you first start?

I was around 14 years old...I found out that my cousin Adam and his friends had skateboards. For some reason I just knew I wanted to try it...I begged my parents for a board and got a department store model for Christmas. It had plastic wheels but I didn’t care...I ended up going to a skate contest in Rosenort that winter and seeing all these kids tackle these giant ramps. I was hooked. 

3 – What was skateboarding culture about back then?

I think it was all about finding a place for yourself in the world…All of the friends I made skateboarding didn’t fit into the boxes created for us at school. We did however find a place with each other. We had our own culture and made things up as we went. We were all different sorts of people who found a common bond in skating…

4 – Describe a bit about the music and clothes of that time in that scene.

It was definitely an experimental time for music and clothes for me!  I didn’t have an opinion about music until those days. Everyone at school was slow dancing to Def Leppard.   We started getting into bands no one had heard of at the time...I remember just going to Into the Music in Winnipeg and pouring over tapes…We would pick the ones that looked punk rock or crazy homemade. We didn’t even know what we were buying,  but that’s how we figured out what we liked. 

As far as clothes go…oh dear...The Self Help Thrift store in Morris was where I found most of my wardrobe. My Grandma used to work there and she would set aside good pairs of corduroys for my cousin Jesse and I. We used to buy huge pairs of jeans (like size 50) and cinch them up with belts to our little frames…We dressed like kooks…

Sorry I guess I didn’t really answer the question…this is sort of a picture into our skating culture.

5 – How many girls were skating back then?

Well, I guess around where I grew up, I was the only one…A lot of girls I met said they could skate…But when you would finally see them in action, they could hardly stand on their boards! I don’t know what that was about...There were a few pro women skaters and I memorized every single video part and skateboard magazine photo of them.

It’s too bad there weren’t more of us. I remember girls hanging out with us skaters and getting to know them. Later on one of them told me they were all sort of jealous of me…I got to hang out with their boys...It wasn’t until I moved to BC that I did end up riding with ladies that could really skate.