What outdoors can learn from action sports, or not…
Posted by: Mike Geraci | 24 July 2008 | 12:01 pm
After spending a night stuck in a hotel room watching Fuel TV and the accompanying endless X Games promos, I have a better sense of what drives action sports industry’s popularity among mainstream America’s youth, particularly in contrast to what drives outdoors supposed lack of popularity among America’s youth:
- Sick tricks.
- Peer powered online community
- SoCal-centric
1. Sick Tricks
Skateboarding, freestyle moto-cross, surfing, BMX, snowboarding, wakeboarding in real life and as represented in TV coverage consist of successful or attempted sick tricks, one after another after another after another… sick tricks galore without pause.
In outdoor we have epic adventures of perseverance that are sick in their own right but are much better suited for books and long-form magazines than for TV, and who reads anymore? Old people.
2. Online Community
Go to Shredordie.com. Click around…
The pursuit of sick tricks builds community. Go to any skatepark and watch as the entire posse of punk-ass kids celebrates when one of their own completes their first 540 shove it. They then go to the home of whomever parents are at work and study the DVDs of their rock star athletes, then go back to the park to try and duplicate the tricks, film it and post it on ShredorDie.com. The community then comments, shares, disses…there is an ongoing conversation.
Outdoor pursuits are individualistic, introspective and take place in remote locations. The more remote the better. It’s very spiritual, lends itself nicely to poetry. And we all know who writes poetry…
3. SoCal-centric
Save for wakeboarding’s foothold in Florida, the entire action sports world is based out of SoCal: the manufacturers, athletes, media, events.. If outdoor is going to build a youth movement, we need to build it in SoCal, primarily because that’s where trends start in the U.S.
Outdoor’s base camp is Boulder, CO. Boulder is a really nice place, ask anyone that lives there. It’s also wealthy, white, and uber-liberal (not that there’s anything wrong with that)…Boulder is elitist. If we want to continue to reach out to affluent white people, Boulder is the perfect place from which to work.
We’re only kidding a little…
Outdoor is clearly different than action sports, and that’s the opportunity: Further developing and promoting a well-defined alternative to the action sports world.
The bottom line is if you want things to be different, you can’t do things the same. But what?
Some ideas next week about chasing cool, parents, climbing and more…?
July 24th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Mike,
You nailed it. After working in the industry for a few years, the biggest disconnect I saw between the outdoor industry and today’s youth is that the people running it are holding onto this idealized version of the backcountry as an escape from everyone and everything. The problem is that kids today have no desire to “disappear,” into the woods. They want to hang out where the party is (And frankly, so did all of us when we were kids. It’s just that we had a lot of “parties” in the woods back then because we knew our parents had no desire to go there.)
I recall sitting in on a panel discussion at OR several years ago that discussed this very same topic. There were a couple of local teenagers there who, when asked what it would take to get them into the outdoors, simply responded “I’ll go wherever my friends go” and left it at that. Then some older guy piped up that if we get these kids into the outdoors they had to learn to respect nature and not trash it. That they had to learn how to take care of the environment. To me, that pretty much summed up why kids will never get into the outdoors: Us older folks have placed so many rules on outdoor recreation (stay on the trail, get off those rocks, don’t climb that tree, don’t jump in that lake, don’t pick that flower, stop yelling, don’t chase that deer) that’s it’s no wonder kids have turned their backs on it. Being a kid is about finding and testing your limits in a world undefined by adults.
Unfortunately, we adults, acting with the best intentions, have done such a good job burying the outdoor world with rules, that I doubt any kid really feels the “freedom” and “escape” we did as a kid 20-30 years ago.
July 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Remember though that if you want to talk about kids being in the woods, getting out into the backcountry and on the trail, in the outdoors, per se, this takes help for most kids (usually from a parent). It’s not something they can typically do on there own (until they start to drive), but hanging at the skate park is easy and convenient. In SoCal it’s no surprise that things are action- and city-oriented. The majority population is surrounded by concrete and asphalt.
I think you’ve hit some good points here, but let’s not forget that so many of the youth are concentrated nowhere near the “outdoors” or don’t have a way to get there. They often don’t have a good opportunity to see the “woods”, let alone “disappear” into them, as Grant stated. I disagree that kids feel burdened by the rules of the outdoors. There are rules for the indoors too. It’s a matter of taking care and respecting nature. Most kids WILL feel that feeling of “freedom” and “escape” in the outdoor world, if only they had the opportunities.
A safe place to start would be getting more kids on bicycles, take them camping or fishing at an early age, spend more time in the park, even if it’s in your city, supporting inner city outdoor programs, etc. These activties are basic and are usually the building blocks for all other outdoor oriented activities. Let’s not forget we’re dealing with kids: keep it simple.