Chipped: Writing From a Skateboarder's Lens

by José Vadi

A memoir-in-essays about how skateboarding re-defines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the board

Chipping a board—where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail—is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro, you’ll see folks riding chipped boards as symbols of their stubborn dedication toward a deck, a toy, and aging bodies that will also reach their inevitable end.

In Chipped , José Vadi personalizes and expands upon this symbol. Written after finishing his debut collection Inter Essays From California , Vadi used these essays to explore his own empathy in aging, and to elaborate on the impact skateboarding has had on culture, power, and art. From tracing a critical mass skater takeover of San Francisco’s streets, to an analysis of visceral ‘90s skate videos and soundtracks, to the solace found skating a parking lot during a global pandemic, Vadi expands our understanding of the ways skateboarding can alter one’s life.

Vadi acts as a “ethnographer on a skateboard,” writing, living, and animating an object, likening the board and skate ephemera to the fear of being discarded, wanting to be seen as useful, functional, living. These essays analyze the legacy of seminal texts like Thrasher Magazine , influential programming giants like MTV, and skateboard artists like Ed Templeton. They imagine jazz composer Sun Ra as a skateboarder to explore sonic connections between skateboarding and jazz, obsessively follow bands, chronicle tours, and discover the creative bermuda triangle Southern California suburbs have to offer. Chipped is an intimate, genre-pushing meditation on skateboarding and the reasons we continue to get up after every fall life throws our way.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Sports, Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2024

About the author

José Vadi is an award-winning essayist, poet, playwright, and film producer living in Oakland, California. José received the San Francisco Foundation’s Shenson Performing Arts Award for his debut play “a eulogy for three” produced by Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Living Word Project. He is the author of SoMa Lurk, a collection of photos and poems published by Project Kalahati / Pro Arts Commons. His work has been featured by PBS NewsHour, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Daily Beast while his writing has appeared in Catapult, McSweeney’s, New Life Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, SFMOMA’s Open Space and Pop-Up Magazine.

Reviews

[Ethan Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though there are only two distinct periods of my life when I picked up a skateboard and attempted to learn how to ride (2009 and 2021, at 12 and 24 years old, respectively), I’ve always wanted to be a skater. There was some part of skater culture that felt like something I could identify with, the freedom that came with gliding along the concrete schoolyard of Marina Middle School or the pavement of the College Estates suburb of Long Beach, this liberated sensation of no longer feeling confined by the parameters of traffic and city-mandated street ordinances and instead re-evaluating the terrain without prejudice and only as a means of traversal upon this wooden board with four wheels. I also really liked the music associated with it; music made me want to skate more as a means of escapism, and skating made me want to find more music. I’d find bands like The Cry and find out they were heavily associated with skate videos, then subsequently want to find more bands that had that alt rock sound that was simultaneously jangly and distorted, which I felt somehow captured the multitudes of joy, energy, counterculture, rebellion, and escapism that skating embodied. Bands like Pavement and The Smiths and early Radiohead graced my playlists alongside dream pop and shoegaze favorites and 90s alt rock hits from the 90s (Think Smashing Pumpkins “1979” and Cocteau Twins), soundtracking sessions in which I attempted to keep my balance and glide down the streets on my Santa Cruz skateboard, fitted with cloud wheels to smoothen my ride.

This fascinating way that skateboarding can embody such a niche intersect of arts, culture, sports, and media is precisely what makes skate culture wholly unique; there is no other community quite like it, and Jose Vadi’s Chipped understands that to a fundamental and intimate level. In ten memoir-essays, Vadi explores his relationship with skating and how the act in itself and the community at large connect with his own spiritual, musical, and cultural roots. Each essay seems to touch on different aspects of the skate community, as well as different chapters of Vadi’s own skate journey, relaying cultural memories and even informing readers of niche aspects of skate culture. There’s one essay about Sun Ra (and how Vadi insists he’s a skater at heart despite never having seen any evidence he skated) that miraculously connects Ra’s dedicated craftsmanship to the art of jazz and music to Vadi’s own philosophical ideals on skateboarding that I found particularly brilliant, precisely in how deftly Vadi navigates his thesis while displaying a thorough understanding of the art, culture, and sport of it all. Through essays like these, Vadi conveys this idea that skateboarding could never be reduced down to a hobby or toy representing an adolescent angst or phase; it is a mindset that dictates and influences how we mentally and spiritually engage with and make sense of this vastly cultural world.

[Doug Schaefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I keep giving books 5 stars, but I guess my local librarians are just really, really good at putting books out on display that they know I’ll love. Ha. Seriously, though, this is the book I wish I could have written. It’s a series of interconnected essays about art, music, and poetry analyzed through the artist’s experience with skateboarding. Specifically street skating in the early ‘90s, where he idolized people like Ed Templeton, Jamie Thomas, Brian Anderson, Elissa Steamer, Kareem Campbell, etc etc. Maybe this hits home because that was the same time I was into skating and those are the same skaters I looked up to. He’s a great writer and you can tell he genuinely loves the culture surrounding skating. He took the DIY underground attitude and applied it to slam poetry, using it to speak out about oppression and inequality. It’s a relatively short read, and it left me wanting more, but it also wasn’t too long, if that makes sense. RIYL Chuck Klosterman, MTV when they still played music, and 411 Video Magazine on VHS.

[Andrea Janov · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I never skated myself, I was surrounded by the local skating community through a boyfriend and from shows. In this collection of essays Valdi takes me back to that time referencing names and videos and tricks that I haven't thought about in years. The specificity is great (maybe too detailed sometimes) but the power is when he pulls out the lens. When he zooms out from describing the tricks or the landscape to show us how this colored his writing, his life, his world view. Though it is not skating or shows for all people, but we all should be so lucky to find something that gives us a place to belong and also expands our young minds and helps us become adults who do creative things, things that some kid will find and be inspired by.

[Colin Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read! Vadi does an excellent job of articulating what it means to be a skateboarder and I truly connected with several of the essays in this book. While I rarely get out and skate anymore at this point in my life I will always identify as a skateboarder as it has undoubtedly influenced the way I view and live in this world.

[Ricardo Motti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essay collections are messy by nature, but this is messiER, with essays that jump around subjects like a skater trying out a new skatepark.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so excited to read CHIPPED: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens by José Vadi since I really enjoyed his previous book Inter State and I really enjoyed this book too! All the essays were really interesting and showcased how his life as a skateboarder shaped his writing and worldview. His passion for skateboarding was evident and a joy to read as he shared his stories of attending demos, watching skate videos, learning tricks like slappies, his fave skater Sun Ra, skating during the pandemic and writing poetry. I was definitely influenced by the skateboard style since I was a teenager when I would wear Dickies pants, Vans sneakers and West49 tees. I still have this Girl skateboard deck from then!

Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!

[Sunday Dutro · Rating 4 out of 5]

a medium-paced memoir in essays about the author's experience skateboarding and how it saved him from a life of gangs and drugs. Poetic and fascinating.