If Tony Bennett’s heart is lyrically and metaphorically left in San Francisco, writer José Vadi’s heart resides forever in Oakland’s Rockridge district. Though Vadi moved to Sacramento in 2021, it is on the streets — especially in the Rockridge BART parking lot during the COVID-19 pandemic — that Vadi practiced and performed his passion second only to literature: skateboarding.
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His new book, “Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens” (from Soft Skull Press; josevadi.com/chipped), is a collection of 10 essays reflecting on the historical and nascent movements in skateboarding and an ode to its techniques, styles, lexicon, videos, soundtracks, urban planning, fashion, mentors and deep cultural connections.
The endeavor begins with wheels and a mere piece of wood — often chipped (hence the book’s title) — but within one excursion becomes a gateway to self-identity and actualization, connection to communities and urban spaces, realization of individual power, fragility, aging and mortality. Skateboarding is also a mode of transportation and athletic competition, but more than anything else Vadi writes of it as a vehicle for personal expression.
Vadi is a poet, playwright, film producer and author of “Inter State: Essays from California,” a collection of essays about California’s gentrification and his family’s connection to the Golden State. His essays have appeared in Paris Review, The Atlantic, Free Skate Magazine and others.
Married to Meghann Farnsworth, the couple moved in 2021 to Sacramento near where Vadi works as a writer in the communications department at UC Davis. In an interview, Vadi says “Chipped” was challenging to write because skateboarding is inherently visceral and difficult to articulate in words on a page.
“Why skateboarding is important can be written about as a Bart Simpson ‘cowabunga’ and a stereotype instead of in a literary sense. I was happy I was able to write some of the essays as short, bite-size pieces like ‘Chipped’ and ‘Sick Boy’ because I started with the biggest essays” ‘King S–t (or Can a King Be a King?)’ about (experimental composer) Sun Ra and jazz, and ‘Programming Injection,’ around (writer/artist) Ed Templeton.”
Digging into the core elements involved researching beyond the clichés to honor skateboarding’s intersection with art history, music, urban planning and corollaries to existential questions.
“Talking about my experiences at the Rockridge BART station during the pandemic or about my childhood or the intrinsic feeling of skateboarding in honest ways was hard.
“Every time you jump on a board you feel that magic energy, so it took pushing to get that in real, tangible writing. After the first draft I submitted to my editors, I feel like I rewrote the entire thing to get the final version.”
Distinct among others, Vadi says writing “Sick Boy,” which touches on injury and deaths related to skateboarding, involved a vulnerable process.
“It’s understanding that skateboarding is a privilege and not to be taken for granted. It’s a world like painting: your work is never done until you create that loop that is art. Every time you try a trick, you’re thinking about every way you could fall as well as how you might pull it off. The connection to death is obvious.”
In “Wild in the Street,” Vadi writes about how a skateboard becomes “a worthy vehicle” in the Bay Area in a way that it wasn’t in vehicle-centric Los Angeles, where he lived before moving to the East Bay.
“You navigate differently; say you’re a pedestrian commuter. Your feet know your route, but skateboarding forces you to engage with the built environment and all the people who occupy it. There’s a new relationship with space, communities, the built environment and topography of a city.”
Vadi writes in “Curbs” about skateboarding during the pandemic and a meta and physical break with his 1990s roots.
“In the ’90s, you learned things A to Z and what tricks were cool or not. It was more linear, judgmental. You couldn’t help but be restricted. A lot of the cool-guy mentality melted away, and all tricks (became) accepted. The goal was just to skate; approaching your board open-game, come-as-you-are.
“During COVID, I needed to feel something other than mental health walks. The Rockridge BART parking lot was a very accepting spot and community. It’s big, shaded because of the overpass, and, during the pandemic, cops allowed people to skate. They knew the commuters who usually park there weren’t going into the city.
“When skateboarders work with a community and have certain things given green lights, good things can happen. It was a dezoned space and not a skateboarding park, and often those are great spaces.”
Along with paying homage to East Bay and San Francisco locations, Vadi celebrates skateboarding’s language throughout the essays. The terminology of tricks and verbiage surrounding clothing, companies, soundtracks, practitioners, mentors and publications create multigenerational links connecting skateboarders to history and a worldwide community.
Vadi alternates between explaining the etymology of a trick’s name or “forcing unexpected things to come together,” such as connecting improvisational skateboarding to Sun Ra’s free jazz and leaving the reader to imagine a trick based solely on its name or create their own associated narratives.
“Heelflips,” “Slappies” and “Doing Lines,” for example, offer intrigue and invite storytelling. The network of strands multiplying from skateboarding’s simple focus — balancing while moving — lead Vadi to explore existential topics.
“Skateboarding shows you how much a person can do, your desire to live a full life, to appreciate the everyday, to make something out of dust and the special features and possibilities and maximizing of a city’s capacities in one day.”
Having worked with Youth Speaks, a San Francisco-based spoken word and poetry performance, education and youth development nonprofit group founded in 1996, Vadi says authors, playwrights and poets should not be placed on pedestals. He suggests that more physical spaces open to literary forms spoken aloud democratize access to the arts and eliminate gatekeepers.
“Skateboarding was always so much more inclusive than poetry and writing. Arbitrary rules felt unnecessary. Coming into skateboarding as a writer, it matters with both that you’re trying, finding joy, doing it.”
Vadi’s book tour for “Chipped” will come Berkeley, Alameda and San Francisco in April (visit josevadi.com/events online for details).
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.