Japan’s Skateboarders Roll, Warily, Out of the Shadows

“Here, no one uses skateboards for transportation — you can’t,” said Shimon Iwazawa, 20. He is known to eschew cultural norms and local ordinances by doing it anyway, but usually only in the dark of night. “If you skate in the street, it means you’re from a bad place. It’s a bad image.”

Those perceptions can have consequences. On a Sunday last summer, Iwazawa said, he was carrying his skateboard through Tokyo Station when a security officer stopped him and demanded to see inside his backpack. It happens regularly, he and other skateboarders said.

But this time, Iwazawa’s pack had a blade used to cut grip tape, the sticky sandpaper-like sheets skateboarders put on their decks to give their feet a grip on the board. The blade was confiscated as a weapon, Iwazawa said, and he was photographed, fingerprinted and held for several hours.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/sports/olympics/skateboarding-olympics-tokyo.html?emc=rss&partner=rss