Broken pipe dreams
When life gets in the way of becoming a pro-skateboarder
Mike Belleme
My relationship with skateboarding runs deep. It’s a subculture that defined my childhood, shaped who I am today and inspired the photographs I take.For nearly a decade I’ve focused my camera on the same group of guys who push themselves to the edge of what their bodies can handle. I’ve watched them grow up, have kids, get jobs and settle into their adult lives. Even as the dreams of professional skate careers have dwindled for myself and the crew I grew up with, the friendships that came from all those years of traveling and struggling to make skate videos has never faded.
When you are pushing your body to its furthest limits day after day and battling to nail a trick ... it’s not fun. It’s a fight.
This body of work, titled Kids of Hate and Love, originated when I saw those words scratched into the griptape of a skateboard the very first day I decided to start documenting skate culture. Hate and love are words that came to represent everything I experienced and saw. Those two words said it all.When you are pushing your body to its furthest limits day after day and battling to nail a trick — especially while filming for a video — it’s not fun. It’s a fight. You keep trying until you either make the trick or your body and mind give up, unable to go back for another try.
It’s difficult to explain why it’s worth the grueling effort that we put ourselves through, but that’s where the love comes in. There is a lot to love about skateboarding, and the struggle is a big part of what makes the highs so high. The frustration of trying to land a trick makes way for a euphoria as you roll away perfectly while all of your friends cheer around you makes it all worth it. After five years of documenting these moments of hate and love, the story had started to change. I was still looking for those moments of struggle and of celebration, but they were fewer and farther between. The dream of living a life on four wheels had been pushed aside and we had become adults.
Real life got in the way.
So I began the second chapter for Kids of Hate and Love, this time photographing the lives of my skate friends away from their boards. I asked them how they were dealing with that balance of skateboarding and "real life," and how skating fit into their lives now. There were different versions of the same answer.
Life would continue to get in the way of dreams until one day, long from now, skateboarding wouldn’t be much more than a fond memory.It all came full circle when everyone gathered back together recently. The guys rallied together behind Push Skateshop with the goal of making another skate video.Another grand test of will.
One more chance to capture that unbelievable high of landing the perfect trick and another moment to revel in the brotherhood of skating.
With just as many scrapes, bruises and broken boards as the old days, the making of the latest Push video put to rest any worries of forgetting our skate life. During the last week of filming for the video, when we were out all day and night getting tickets, bruises and clips for the video, we were once again the kids of hate and love.