We all have heard about the Black Lives Matter movement: on TV, in the newspaper or even talking with a friend. On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, MN, USA, by police officer Derek Chauvin. After this event, many people started protesting to end racism and xenophobia. And the result is worth it.

The wave of demonstrations and the fight against racial discrimination have led to a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize because of the movement’s social impact and its capacity to change the world nowadays. Petter Aide, a Norwegian politician, in an interview with the newspaper “Klassekampen” said that the Black Lives Matter has done a lot in our society since last year, and it continues helping us to end racism in the world nowadays.

The ceremony will take place in Oslo on December 10th as always, but we will have to wait until October to know who the winner is. Other nominations are the “Boy Scout Organization”, the “CEPI” and the “GAVI”.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscious stupidity.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

WHAT IS SKATEBOARDING?

Skateboarding was born in California in the 50s, when a group of surfers decided to put some wheels on a table to keep rolling when the weather wasn’t good enough to surf.

Later, in the 60s, it became more popular, but it quickly lost popularity.

Fortunately, in the 70s, a new invention changed the way people practised skating. Urethane wheels were invented, but the best was about to come: Alan Gelfand invented the ollie, which is a trick that consists of kicking the top of the table with the ground to elevate it. This brand new trick opened the doors to a new whole variety of skate.

Later on, modern skateboarding started to appear with the emergence of Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero or Rodney Mullen. We will talk about them later. Nowadays it’s an important sport which is practised either on the street or in skateparks.

WHERE TO SKATE IN VIGO

Nowadays, we can see how skating in Vigo is one of the most recognized and practised sports, but where do people exactly skate in Vigo?

Well, the answer is everywhere. Some skaters prefer skating near their homes, and some others prefer going to a skatepark. Luckily, one of the most important skateparks in this country is here, in Navia. This skatepark was opened two years ago, and its success continues. It is a structure made of cement and is 2000 m² in size. It became one of the favorite places to skate for many experts, but not so much for beginners.

Another excellent place for skating is “La plaza de la estrella”, near the Náutico. It’s a concrete skatepark, with banks, stairs… the skating landmark in the city.

Every day, especially on Friday and Saturday, a group of skaters from every corner in the city meet there and spend a great time together. Most of them are young skaters, between 16 and 19 years old, and some of them, beginners.

Near this skatepark is the famous “Náutico”, where teenagers from Vigo meet their friends. This is a less visited place because most of the people there aren’t skating, so it’s more difficult to do this sport there. However, lots of skaters prefer going there, because there are some great structures where you can try new and advanced tricks, like high stairs, noticeable slopes… 

It doesn’t matter where you skate as long as you enjoy it and try to do your best.

O MARISQUIÑO

From 2001 until now, O Marisquiño has become the largest Urban Culture and Action Sports event in southern Europe. It’s a great, free of charge outdoor festival in the middle of August, in front of the sea. It lasts three days during which there are ten sports competitions as well as different cultural events like break dance, graffiti exhibitions, and live music.

Every year O Marisquiño presents 3 competition events: World Cup Skateboarding Street, World Cup Skateboarding Mini Ramp and Dirt FMB World Tour scoring in global rankings, where the best national and international riders meet. And since last year, a new sport discipline has also been added, the FIBA ​​3×3 Basketball, which will finally be in the Olympics in Japan 2021.

The festival is held the second weekend of August and in each edition, more than 160,000 people enjoy the competitions, exhibitions, concerts, gastronomy and the unique atmosphere that is generated around the seaport of the city of Vigo.

In addition, in the last four years, O Marisquiño has been broadcast live to more than fifty countries through live streaming on the Internet.

TRICKS

When you first start skateboarding, you have to gain some confidence with your skating, so the first thing that you learn is how to stand on your board. When you know how to do that, you can try to skate fast, and maybe flip your board. You don’t have to be afraid of falling; skating is about practising and getting up on the floor. After that, you can try some simple tricks like the “Strawberry milkshake”, where you turn your board with one of your feet without standing on it. It’s a good beginner trick because you can’t fall doing it, but you also can make it more difficult. The first real trick that a skater learns is the “ollie”, which is the trick where you jump and dodge obstacles. Then, there are some more advanced tricks like the “nollie” (similar to ollie), the manual, the kickflip, the pop shove it, the varial flip… and thousands more. 

FAMOUS SKATERS

The most famous skater in the world is Tony Hawk. He’s a legend for skateboarding fanatics, and his name is everywhere in this little world. His career in skating is brilliant and successful. In 1990, the magazine Thrasher named him “Skater of the Year”. Nowadays, he’s trying to encourage young people to skate, building skateparks where he thinks it’s necessary. We can appreciate his virtuosity in skateboarding when he does one of the most difficult tricks: the 900.

Another famous skater that every skater must know is Bob Burnquist. He’s a Brazilian skater. He’s really creative and an acclaimed skater.

There are a lot of great and fantastic skaters such as Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Danny Way, Mark Gonzales… They all inspire new and young people to try skating and to not be afraid of dreaming.

SKATE SHOPS IN VIGO

There are two main skate shops in Vigo: Woodtown, in Camelias, 20, and Novalbos, in Pintor Laxeiro, 16. Of course Decathlon sells skates, but they have less quality and buying skates there doesn’t support local skateboarding.

IMPORTANT BRANDS

There are a lot of well-known brands which were born out of skating. Vans, for example, is a very famous brand for shoes, and they have a reputation for being one of the best for skateboarding.

Thrasher, for example, is also well-known for their sweatshirts, but they’re in fact a skate magazine.

Another example of a brand that found its reputation around the skate world is Supreme, which was founded in 1994 in New York, and has had a quick boom since then. It wasn’t only about skating, instead it was based in urban culture and streetwear.

VIDEO GAMES

It’s quite interesting the huge variety of video games about skateboarding, to the point that most players don’t even like skateboarding, but they enjoy playing video games. Probably the most famous is Tony Hawk Pro Skater, which has been in the market since 2000 and is still getting updated.

Feminism is a social and political movement that formally began at the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement is the awareness of women as a group fighting against oppression, domination and exploitation.

Despite the advances that happened since then, there is still a long way to go for men and women to be treated the same. 

Even today no country in the world has achieved equal pay for men and women, and in some African territories, women still do not have the right to vote.

However, we don’t have to travel that far to find these differences. In our ordinary lives, there is still a lot of gender inequality. It is known that most men earn more wages than women for the

simple reason of being a female.

The average time of working is higher for women than men. Household tasks are also unevenly distributed. In general, women spend an average of 20 hours a week doing house chores, while men only spend an average of 11 hours. 

This inequality is not only seen at work. Most of it is in our society: women are represented as delicate and very feminine girls and men as strong and insensible boys.

Feminism doesn’t put the woman over everyone, it looks for equality for both genders and to achieve that we need to normalize many things. Women shouldn’t leave their houses at night terrified of being kidnapped, and they shouldn’t stop wearing their favourite clothes because of others’ opinions or being called many things because of the way they look. Men don’t have these problems and that’s why we need to stop these things and try to be more equal.

Our young people today have a serious problem of self-esteem and self-love due to the stereotypes that society establishes about what is considered beauty.

Society has always set standards of beauty, for both men and women,  reaching the point that many people have come to feel bad about themselves for not being able to achieve them. There are standards related to appearance and also to personality.

Some physical stereotypes for women are: to be thin, to have big breasts and buttocks, a small waist and big hips, to have a flat stomach, light eyes and long hair, and be shaved. And some physical stereotypes for men are: to be muscular and tall with light eyes.

Some personality stereotypes for women are: to be superficial, this means that women only can love going shopping, or putting on make-up. Some men’s personality stereotypes are: to be strong, don’t express their feelings.

The only way…is loving ourselves, without thinking about what others may say.

These patterns are received every day through publicity and social media.

Thanks to this, there are more and more cases of teenagers developing eating disorders. They also hide their insecurities as much as they can.

We have to end these stereotypes of trying to follow a «perfect» body. The only way to do it is loving ourselves, without thinking about what others may say. Only in this way can we make sure subsequent generations are not so boxed-in and can be themselves.

George Floyd is the name of the African American man who changed everyone’s way of thinking. We are one step closer to the end of racism thanks to the world’s reaction to his death.

He was 46 when he was violently and unfairly murdered by a white police officer. Nowadays, his name is known all over the world, together with Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King. 

It was May 25th, 2020 when a global movement and hundreds of peaceful protests began. Everything started when a video went viral where a police officer was arresting and choking this man to the point of leaving him without breath and committing murder. What truly happened, according to what the police officer said, is that George Floyd, who used to be a security guard, was trying to buy something at a shop in Minneapolis with a fake $20 bill. When this police officer saw this, he arrested him without hesitating. He was putting his knee on George’s neck, making him unable to breathe properly. 

A woman was walking through when she saw what was

happening and started recording the video where you could see this situation, the unjust racism towards George Floyd. You could even hear him multiple times saying “I can’t breathe” and asking for help, until he ended up dying.

After this day, the video went very viral and the hashtag “Black Lives Matter” was created and spread on social media. People started doing memorials in some cities such as Houston, the place where he grew up, or Minneapolis.

His story started to be very known all around the globe and many peaceful protests were made. In these protests, people were only asking for equality and saying ‘’Black Lives Matter’’ on their placards.

Many celebrities attended these protests, some of them are Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Harry Styles and a lot more. These protests are very important if we want to make a change in society and stop discriminating against certain groups or qualities of some people.