COMMENT | After so many decades, is skateboarding still a 'crime'?

COMMENT | It was 6am in the morning on a weekend, and my father shook me awake from my peaceful slumber. I was only eight or nine, and the reason he woke me up was to expose to me the wonderful sport of golf.

He brought me along for a round of golf with his friends at the club. We walked along the course, and I listened to my father and his friends chat. I hated it.

That evening, I made it a point to get my BMX bike out and went off riding with my friends. Bicycle motocross (BMX) was the sport that I was interested in. It appealed to me because there weren't any rules, you didn't have to wear a certain outfit, and it was so free form. Basically, it was just us kids learning to do different tricks on a bike.

This was in the early 1980s, and BMX wasn't really seen as a legit sport. It was in the same category as skateboarding and the likes of other street sports...