The Kids of Hate and Love follows a group of skateboarders from Asheville, North Carolina. This essay chronicles the lives of street skaters, mostly sponsored, on and off the board. Because street skating is illegal in most American cities, the lives of skateboarders are greatly unknown to anyone outside of the culture. As a life long skater, I've watched the culture of skating significantly change over the past few years as a result of large corporations buying their way into skateboarding from the top. The effect is that non skateboarders perception of skateboarding, gathered from reality shows and commercials, is radically different than the reality. The problem is that the reality is also shifting and the corporate control is starting to infiltrate a culture that thought it couldn't be infiltrated. Over the last several years I've made en effort to capture the essence of what it is to be a skateboarder before it's too late.
