Of all the ways I could have broken my first skateboard, I still crack up at the plan my eleven-year-old brain cooked up.

It wasn’t the quintessential, stomp with all your might, middle break. It wasn’t a slab of concrete dropped from a grocery store loading dock either. Although, if you can’t tell by the specificity, that was an option I considered.

Nope, I decided to wedge the board’s tail into a sewer grate behind the local quickie-mart, step back to a sufficient distance and run to a climactic drop kick of the board.

Did it leave my board tailless? Perfectly. Did the tail plummet directly into the abyss of the sewer, never to be recovered? Big time. Was there at least eight other options that wouldn’t have left me laid out on the concrete with a sore hip? Obviously.

Looking back, I remember how important this board break mission was to me. How I walked home rehearsing over and over in my head the “perfect” cover story, claiming to have kickflipped a stair set leagues above my rudimentary ability.

It wouldn’t have taken much Sherlocking to crumble the rouse, and while I’ve never asked my Mom I’m sure she took note of the marked up CCS catalog detailing my top three board choices left on the dining room table.

Whether playing coy or not, she was sympathetic to my web spinning, and a few days later I was settling into my new neon green Baker board.

While my idiotic back alley drop kick might be unique, I have a feeling the experience is not. We’ve all broken a board in one way or another, on purpose or not, and it left me wondering: Why do skateboarders love breaking skateboards?

I’m no expert, but as someone who experienced all three years of middle school, I’m quite familiar with the effects peer pressure can have on a kid. I can still distantly feel the heart flutters as I held my first apple bong, and who can forget all the hoops of adolescent style.

First it was the DCs, then it was the “I Love Boobies” craze. And while most of these struggles to fit in were left between pre-algebra and gym, one instance of peer pressure stuck with me, and it happened at the skatepark.

A kid, this asshole (I’m not still mad, I promise) stopped my runaway board, and instead of pushing it back in my direction he gave it one good look and kicked it off in the other direction. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of, “Dude, your board is so old. You should just throw that thing away.”

I’m sure he wasn’t wholly wrong, either. The board was most likely beat. But at that age and skill level, I didn’t notice nor did I care. Dammit, I was just an innocent kid. I skated boards for months, and I would have continued to do so, happily, if it weren’t for the comment.

Even at that young age, I began to make the connection between an old board and being, for lack of a better word, poor. Coming from a low income family that was the last thing I wanted. I already had to make excuses as to why I didn’t have an Iphone, why I had a magical card that could get me snacks (but never hot food) at the grocery store.

All I wanted to do was fit in, and my old board was keeping me away from that.

As an adult, it’s obvious how roundabout a child’s logic on skateboards is. How a fresh board invites poser comments, yet an old board makes you less fortunate and undesirable. You can see the same with skate shoes, where a ripped lace or small ollie hole is cool, yet shoes covered in duct tape and shoe goo aren’t.

And what about trucks? People love a K-grind divot, which is a sign of wear. A chipped and beaten board should have been a sign of dedication. I didn’t see any of that at the time though.

Breaking a board quickly became the only way to quell the chances of looking less than, because I knew that even if my Mom was struggling financially, she’d get me a new board. She knew what skateboarding meant to me.

And there lies the beginning of my complex relationship with breaking skateboards.

Quickly gone were the days of my Mom’s blind generosity, and with that departing ship I started working to earn a new board. First it was washing cars and raking leaves, and then it was my first job: an ice cream shop.

As I joined the workforce and grew older, my relationship to breaking boards changed.

This isn’t to say the board shaming of my youth went away, only it was less potent. Sure, sometimes you’d get someone who steps on your board and calls it soggy and razor tailed, but it didn’t matter like it did before.

I was no longer the helpless kid begging my Mom for a new board to fit in with. I could buy a new board if I needed one. However, there was a new problem at hand.

Breaking boards now meant you were good.

Who can forget the first time they watched an older homie battle a trick that ended in a board break? I sure can’t. It was a front pop down a sizable grass gap for those wondering, and it was awe-inspiring. This is where the ever so satisfying snap became a signifier of ability.

You can see this phenomenon in other sports as well. I can only assume tearing the leather outer shell of a baseball off with a monumental hit gives the same feeling. Or shattering a backboard. Sure it’s a net negative, but it shows your skill has surpassed its confines.

It meant you were trying something hard. Even as a youngin I knew it, back when I was dreaming up fictional kickflipped stair sets, but now it was real. I had made it to the point where the tricks I was trying warranted the occasion board break.

And I loved that.

I loved the reaction, how everyone would stop for a brief moment and look over, often inquiring what trick you were trying. It meant you could post that horny ass Snapchat of your board in two pieces with a black heart or crying emoji.

Even though I knew I had to float the bill of a new board, walking away from a session with your board in two pieces felt good. And now you had a story. A worthy battle you could tell your friends about.

Did it actually mean you were good at skateboarding? I’m not sure. What I do know is that I snapped two boards in a row because I couldn’t figure out how to front lip a flat bar properly. Sure I was angry after, but I was the talk of my friend group for that day. And that felt good.

Throughout high school, I battled two ACL surgeries (fuuuuuck, I know) and while I handled both with what I would call youthful negligence, the final straw came my freshman year of college.

I blew out my MCL and had my third knee surgery, all while living on my own for the first time. With this, skateboarding became a different type of battle. As my frustrations around keeping up and feeling happy on my board mounted, so did my board breaking.

It became something I did out of frustration. I broke boards when I couldn’t keep up. I broke boards out of irritation with my knee. And when I had to sit down on the sesh or when my knee tweaked for the thousandth time, I stomped my board.

Have you heard of something called a rage room? Where you go into a room with a baseball bat and, for a certain price, destroy everything within. They’re said to function as a safe space to release bubbling emotions and stress, and whether you see destruction as a healthy means to regulate stress or not, we can agree on something.

Breaking shit feels good. It’s a catharsis, and it was somewhere I could put my emotion when the successes I experienced in skateboarding became less and less frequent.

Skateboarding is often praised for its stress relieving abilities, but funnily enough, it’s also extremely stressful. And what do you do when your reliever becomes your causer? For me, it was destruction, and the board was the first thing to go.

It also, and this is important, made me feel like I was still playing in the same league as everyone else. Because while others around me were climatically landing tricks, my climax was often a broken skateboard. It’s a different type of session ender, but an ender all the same.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call breaking my board my specialty, but in the waning days of trying to keep up with my peers, I think I had an equal amount of slams or broken boards in videos as I did clips.

Now that I’ve removed myself from keeping up with my peers, I can see how toxic this relationship became, but it’s important not to overlook this point when I think about why I and so many other skaters love breaking boards.

Today, I couldn’t give the slightest shit about being “good”, I don’t care about my board’s condition, and I have healthy outlets to deal with stress. With all that, I still know damn well that if I broke a board I would crack a smile.

It’s a building block aspect of skateboarding, one that fits in along with all the other monumental firsts, like first kickflip and 360 flip. I’m sure most of you reading this can remember the first time you broke a board too.

That’s because it’s deeply ingrained within skateboarding. It’s a feeling like no other trick, one that unlike the switch flip back tail, everyone has done. It’s this common ground that makes the board break so special.

My current skateboard has been running for six months, and I wager that there’s another six months to come. After that, I’m confident I will be taking the trucks off a board that is still in one piece, but I have found a new love.

It’s one that is much healthier. I leave my old boards at skateparks, hoping someone in need can give it another life. It’s something I probably should have been doing all along, but I’ll chalk that up to post-break up clarity.

I no longer need to lean on my board breaking affair, and while I’ll sometimes miss the feeling, the sound, of seven split plys, it’s not where my skateboarding is these days, and that’s ok.

Written by: Ben Komins
Header Image by: Wilson Lucas
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