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Skateboarding in Lebanon

Eric, Elia, Andrew and Marc answered some questions about what skateboarding in Lebanon is like:
Skateboarding in Lebanon Map

Lebanese Skateboarding

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  • What's it like to skate in Lebanon?
    Skating in Lebanon is kind of bad. First because there are no parks, second because of the politics and the bombings. So skaters don't really get to skate outside their houses. Some of them have rails like Eric. Some others just skate spots near their houses. But when everything is good, skaters rule the streets till night and skate what ever they can find. But it is also nice to skate in Lebanon because it is kind of cool to skate in a war zone and we learn to appreciate skating more than any other skaters because we can skate all year(winter is short).

  • What kinds of skateboarding do people do?
    Since we only have one half pipe in the country and it's built of metal and full of rust skaters are only practicing street skating. I (Eric) already skated vert in Dubai and Switzerland and i think it's really bad that we don't have vert ramps in Lebanon. I'm sure that Lebanese skaters can ride vert as much as they can skate handrails.

  • What does it feel like to be known as a "skateboarder" in Lebanon?
    Young kids who see skating only on television like to watch us skate and are interested since they don't get to see skaters a lot, but older people think that skateboarding is dangerous and makes a lot of annoying sound.

  • What kinds of places do you skate at?
    Like i said before, we can only skate street. We get to skate stairs, gaps, handrails, ledges...but never empty pools because for some reasons all pools are square in Lebanon.

  • What is it like to shop for skateboarding gear?
    Since we shop almost two times in a year from the internet or if some of us travel, we think it is something we appreciate and we always order from the internet when we are all together. But the only problem is that the shipping gets really expensive.

  • What does the future of skateboarding look like in Lebanon?
    Hopefully, with someone rich and generous, or maybe the municipality will open a public park, we think skating will be better and skaters will get to train better. And because we influence a lot of kids to start skating, we think skateboarding will be just like in any other country: not just a hobby, but a passion and a respected sport. And if skating continues to evolve like this in Lebanon, we will hopefully celebrate this year a nice Go Skateboarding Day on june 21st with many skaters!

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