Skaters have historically been characterized as lazy stoners with little to no future, but in 2018, that’s not so true anymore. Skaters have infiltrated all sorts of jobs and career paths that seemed unimaginable a decade or two ago. We’ve got skaters on TV, creating educational programs in Afghanistan, working in politics and museums, just to rattle off a few. And as a result, we’ve befriended a few non-skater ambassadors along the way, who are pulling for us on the inside, helping us represent skating in these new spheres that we’ve never really had access to.

The people you’ll see featured in this series are the very people advocating for skaters’ rights to freely use public spaces, assuring our skaters and artists are properly compensated for their work when commissioned for commercial projects, and teaching parents that letting kids skate from an early age is actually a good thing.

For our first episode of our new mini-series, Allies, we sat down with Calder Zwicky, a skater who has been working with NYC’s Museum of Modern Art over the last decade to incorporate skate-centric programming into its Teen Programming along with its Open Arts Space, which caters specifically to the city’s LGBTQ youth.

We traveled to Calder’s home in Manhattan and asked him what his views are on the art world’s incorporation of skateboarding and skate culture and how he sees his work evolving down the line. He also showed us a peek at his own artwork in the form of his “Lonely Thrasher” series, which flips the idea of the traditional skateboard cover on its head. Check out what he has to say in the player above and stay tuned for future episodes.

Filmed by: Alexis Castro
Edited by: Ollie Rodgers
Check out Calder’s other work here.
Share this with a salty skater on Facebook.
Report this as selling out on Instagram and Twitter.