Skateboarding Slogans And Quotes

YOLO. A slogan, a rallying cry, carpe diem for the skateboarder set: You only live once. But was it true? That was the problem, wasn’t it? She had never thought about it in any deep way. She hadn’t had the time or inclination to speculate about other lives: this one was hard enough to manage.

I leave my hotel around two. Without thinking, I go in the direction of the Place du Vieux Marché. It is a truly vast square, bordered entirely by cafés, restaurants and luxury shops. It's here that Joan of Arc was burnt more than five hundred years ago. To commemorate the event they've piled up a load of weirdly curved concrete slabs, half stuck in the ground, which turn out on closer inspection to be a church. There are also embryonic lawns, flowerbeds, and some ramps which seem destined for lovers of skateboarding - unless it be for the cars of the disabled, it's hard to tell. But the complexity of the place does not end here: there are also shops in the middle of the square, under a sort of concrete rotunda, as well as an edifice which looks like a bus station. I settle myself on one of the concrete slabs, determined to get to the bottom of things. It seems highly likely that this square is the heart, the central nucleus of the town. Just what game is being played here exactly? I observe right away that people generally go around in bands, or in little groups of between two and six individuals. No one group is exactly the same as another, it appears to me. Obviously they resemble each other, they resemble each other enormously, but this resemblance could not be called being the same. It's as if they'd elected to embody the antagonism which necessarily goes with any kind of individuation by adopting slightly different behavior patterns, ways of moving around, formulas for regrouping. Next I notice that all these people seem satisfied with themselves and the world; it's astonishing, even a little frightening. They quietly saunter around, this one displaying a quizzical smile, that one a moronic look. Some of the youngsters are dressed in leather jackets with slogans borrowed from the more primitive kind of hard rock; you can read phrases on their backs like Kill them all! or Fuck and destroy! ; but all commune in the certainty of passing an agreeable afternoon devoted primarily to consumerism, and thus to contributing to the consolidation of their being. I note, lastly, that I feel different from them, without however being able to define the nature of this difference.