With his eyes focused ahead of him, third-year Education student Brian Davis rolls down the slated platform outside Runk Dining Hall and heads straight for the huge trash can that looms a short distance away. The uneven slating punctuates his glide toward the huge metal bin. Face-to-face with the can's black lid, he ollies into the air at a 60 degree angle, flies above the trash can, and with his board seemingly attached to his feet, hits the cement pavement and rolls down the hill.
Davis, clad in a worn white shirt that reads "Miami" in black marker, has landed yet another trick.
"I get a fulfillment to live out of skating," he said. "Seriously, I wouldn't be much of anything if I didn't skate - just a Joe Schmo student."
In an attempt to merge life as a student and the love of skating, Davis' skater buddies Ben Gathright and Peter Mina recently started a skateboarding club at the University to provide an outlet for their passion.
"It's something you constantly think about, you have dreams about," Mina said. "If I'm not skateboarding, then I'm reading a skateboarding magazine or watching a video."
The new club aims to bring skateboarders together since many students leave their boards at home because of the many rules and prohibitions for skating on Grounds.
The club, now 15 people strong, meets every other week. Save two girls who sat quietly in the back for the first meeting, most members in the club are males that have been skating for at least five years.
"Skateboarders look beyond trends," Davis said. "Once you get past the point of doing it as a trend, you realize it's seriously the best thing ever."
At the first meeting, the group went over the embryonic ideas and goals for the club, and then for its second gathering, members met at McIntire Skate Park located on the corner of McIntire Road and Harris Street. The skate park, created from dilapidated tennis courts last fall, came after 15 years of pleas from Duane Brown, the owner of a local skate shop called Freestyle. The city listened to Brown's request for an official skating park after ramps had been commissioned and donated. The park became official with the help of anonymous donations.
All three skaters agree that there is a price to pay for the park being city-run: It used to be a place where skateboarders could simply meet up and skate, but now it's overcrowded with what they call "easy-listening soccer moms," rollerbladers, 3-wheelers and scooters.
At the second club meeting held at the skate park, in the midst of watchful parents and rowdy kids, Davis attempted a 50/50 trick with his board. He rode up to the flat, square bar with his board and prepared himself for the nose grind kick flip. All of a sudden, a young boy clipped him in the shin with his silver, new-age razor scooter. The kid backed up his scooter and grimaced. Angry and in pain, Davis said he told the tot to watch where he was going. Then the child's angry mother emerged from behind the square bar and reprimanded Davis for yelling at her child. This is not an atypical occurrence at the skate park, according to Davis.
"Some of those parents at the skate park really get out of hand," he said, citing the mothers in parked vans along the street of the park who yell out of car windows at skateboarders.
While the skate park provides bars and ramps for skaters' tricks, it is not an optimal location because of the crowds. The ideal place to skate is one with ledges, stairs and rails for the skateboarders to maneuver. And it would help skateboarders if their sport was legal, since most places on Grounds and in Charlottesville have those infamous white signs up with the red cross over the stick-figure skateboarder.
On Grounds, the most popular place is what skaters call "The Dell." Outside Ruffner Hall with two concrete benches, the Dell is perfect for ollies and nose grind kick flips. The area outside Hereford College's Runk Dining Hall is equally exciting, since there are platforms and railings galore.
All three skaters claim to skate around 15 hours a week, whenever they can.
"I want to skate until I can't walk," Mina said. "If I can still stand on my skateboard and try to do something, then I'm going to skate."
Davis mirrors this passion and says skating is why he gets up the morning. In fact, he did not realize how addicted he was until he was unable to skate.
During one of the photo shoots Davis has done for the Energy and Rhythm skate shop, he attacked a trick, trying to grind on a handrail, but as he was landing, his knees locked and he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. He couldn't skate (or walk) for six months.
"I would just sleep all day because I was so depressed," Davis said. "I would dread the whole day. I couldn't bear another day of not skating."
He has been on his skateboard almost every day since some of his neighborhood friends started skating seven years ago. Even Davis' answering machine attests to his love of skating: "If you don't skate, then you are the enemy," says the arcane, mechanical-sounding voice.
Although tricks give skateboarding the edge that makes it most enjoyable for diehards, Davis and Gathright usually ride their boards as a mode of transportation around Grounds. One can usually spot Gathright, with the skull and bones image on the back of his button-up striped shirt and a pair of jaded jeans, skating along Ivy Road across from Memorial Gym.
Mina, the antithesis of what one might picture as a skater, seems like the typical University student at first glance, with his khaki-colored long shorts, T-shirt and green, shoulder-strapped book bag. Mina has also participated in about 15 skating competitions since high school. Usually placing third or fourth out of about five to 20 people, Mina's first competition was in New York City where he won third place and received a $40 set of wheels.
Often, skateboarding competitions are a cause to travel around the country. Some of Gathright and Mina's plans for the club include traveling to New York City and Philadelphia to skate, as they all share a love of finding new places to maneuver.
Gathright has taken road trips for the sole purpose of skating. Last summer, he and some skating buddies traveled to Colorado and New Mexico in a car that had 297,000 miles on it before they started their trip.
"The car over-heated all the time, especially in the desert," Gathright said. "We'd stop and skate on the highway and dodge cars. In the desert, we drove at night and skated all day."
For a month, they drove to skate parks and skated at scenic parks out west. As for sleeping at night, sometimes they pitched tents at camp grounds, and other times skaters they met in parks offered the group a couch to crash on or room to stay in at their houses.
"When you see someone else that skates, you're automatically friends with them," Davis said. "It's an unspoken rule that when you see someone with skate shoes on, you say hi."
Traveling is Davis' favorite part of skateboarding, which is the only reason he says he travels.
To these boys, skateboarding is an activity all its own. None of them would classify it specifically as a sport.
"Sports are defined by rules and other people's regulations," Gathright said. "Skateboarding doesn't have any rules."
To Davis, skating resembles more of an art form. But more than an art, more than a way to make friends, and more than a mere mode of transportation, he says skating is above any petty classification. No explanation can do it justice to capture what it means to addicted skateboarders.
"It's just my reason for living," Davis said.
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