The Skateboard Life

"Skateboarding is more popular than ever. In the last five years, and especially, since the twenty twenty Olympics, where skateboarding debuted as an official sport, skateboarding has gone mainstream, and it will keep getting bigger and bigger. The sport was put on the map in the late seventies when legendary skater Rodney Mullen created one of the most famous skateboarding tricks, the ground Ollie, and became popularized in the early eighties when Thrasher magazine, with its counterculture vibe, was established, and, then, in nineteen eighty two, a little known skater named Tony Hawk came onto the scene at just fourteen years old, changing the face of the sport forever. Since then, skateboarding has gained traction, but was always portrayed from a one dimensional perspective, when in reality, the sport and the stories of prominent skaters are extremely diverse. Enter The Skateboard Life. Through sixty five dynamic profiles of skaters and over a hundred striking images, Dr. Neftalie Williams reveals how skateboarding has permeated every inch of our global culture, Media, Art, Fashion, Music, Business, and Education. From the legends, Tony Hawk and Paul Rodriguez, to the Olympians, Nyjah Huston and Sky Brown, to the artists, Mark McKee, most celebrated skateboarding artist of all time, to the activists, Briana King, Vogue model, artist skater, and women's and queer skateboarding advocate. Never before has this mega roster of skaters been featured together. In addition to the profiles, there will be interstitials that include famous skate parks around the world and the coolest looking boards. The Skateboard Life will appeal to skaters of all levels, dreamers, beginners, and experts alike"--

Dr. Neftalie Williams is the Director of San Diego State University's Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports, and Social Change. With a background in both academia and a deep personal connection to skateboarding, writing, and photography, Dr. Williams has made significant contributions to the study of skateboarding culture. He has published scholarly works, written op-eds for mainstream publications, and provided commentary for various traditional news outlets and documentaries, including The New York Times, CNN, ABC, Forbes, and the documentary Reaching the Sky featuring Olympian Sky Brown. His research on race and skateboarding, conducted as part of the 2019-2020 USC x Tony Hawk Foundation project, was prominently featured in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Dr. Williams’s extensive experience also includes positions at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, as well as serving as a Yale Schwarzman Center Visiting Fellow in Race, Culture & Community. His scholarly expertise is complemented by his personal history as a skateboarder, writer, and photographer, which has led to features in publications like Transworld Skateboarding Magazine and Thrasher Magazine.
Currently, Dr. Williams provides consultation on skateboarding and action sports for Disney Studios and Burton Snowboards. He is also a co-founder of the College Skateboarding Educational Foundation (CSEF), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing scholarships for young skateboarders pursuing higher education. Furthermore, he serves on the boards of the Tony Hawk Foundation/The Skatepark Project, Skateistan, McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, and chairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for USA Skateboarding.