Ben Dietz

Ben Dietz (BWDD) is a longtime friend of WITI, and serves as SVP of Partner Concepts & Development at VICE Media Group. He got his first skateboard as a Christmas gift in 1985 and has never seen things the same way since. Hence, views here his own. Ben here. To say I’m a skateboarder at this point in my life is to beggar belief, given that I’ve been out on a board maybe three times in the last year. But by the same token, the older I get the more clear it is to me that once you’re a skater, you can’t ever not be one. This is down to what I call (tongue firmly in cheek) “the Skate Gaze”. The idea, essentially, is that anyone who has become a skateboarder from roughly 1985 onward (and arguably even earlier—since the introduction of urethane wheels in 1970 or so) actually sees the world in a different way from everyone else, in terms of its spatial and creative boundaries. And that skaters, unbound by a more traditional POV, are increasingly behind ideas that shape our world, literally. As the director and skateboard company owner Spike Jonze wrote to me for this piece: I think skaters look at everything with yet to be defined possibilities. Nothing that is skated in the streets was ever creating for skating, a bench and rail, a bank, a wall...but a skater saw it and saw something else was possible there. As a skater you move through the city looking at things differently, thinking about other possibilities. And as you move into other things you want to do, that perspective just stays with you. Nothing is what they say it is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be whatever you see is possible.Why is this interesting?This “skate gaze” worldview is a post-postmodern phenomenon, and as such it’s only now being recognized. But considering that skateboarding is one of the most popular sports in the world (between #3 and #10 depending on who you ask), and people of all ages are staying on board longer, it’s clear that the skate gaze has implications far beyond skateparks and skate companies. As skaters age and proliferate, we can see that what Spike described as “looking at things differently” extends to every aspect of global culture. Take Alexis Sablone, a 32-year-old Olympic skater for Team USA, but also an MIT-trained architect who’s used her pedigree to design a public plaza in Malmo, Sweden that doubles as a shared skate/pedestrian space. Or Steve Rodriguez, don of New York City skateboarding and since 1996 the owner of 5Boro—a skateboard “hard goods” company, who also keeps himself busy running creative services for major advertising firms, when he’s not designing and managing the execution of New York public skateparks, in conjunction with city commissioners. They are emblematic of generations of skaters who’ve grown up seeing—through skateboarding—a world they could affect and shape by their personal actions, and they’ve seized the opportunity to shape both the physical world and culture. Alexis Sablone’s Malmö PlazaWhen Mark Gonzales and Natas Kaupas—both now fine artists—invented “street skating” as teens in the early-mid 1980s by turning driveway embankments into launch ramps, they made the sport available to anyone with a patch of asphalt close at hand. What they couldn’t have anticipated was the incipient need 35 years later for people around the world to navigate from place to place differently. With over 50% of the world now living in urban environments, it’s become necessary for us all to travel – and allow others to travel – through public space in new ways. Echoing the explosion of bicycle travel as a statement, more and more city-zens globally are commuting by skateboard (to say nothing of those awful one-wheel contraptions, electric longboards, and the like). And there are a lot of driveways and embankments along the way.Beyond this, there’s a new appreciation for the skate worldview, driven by the proliferation of skate videos on platforms from Youtube and Instagram to Tiktok. In the words of Kevin Imamura, a lifelong skater and one of the proponents of NikeSB’s push into skateboarding, “In urban areas across the globe, the amount of interaction with non-skaters feels like it is at an all-time high: average pedestrians, homeless people, security guards, etc … you see people stopping and watching what skaters are doing. They will stop and clap. The cops will allow [skaters] to finish and get the clip before they kick them out.”Why is this, Kevin asks? Perhaps it’s because of the dual acknowledgment by skaters and by the powers that be, that neither is going away, and both have something to learn from the other. Skaters not only see physical space differently, they cause non-skaters to do so, too. There are examples of this developing around the world—as presaged by Iain Borden’s 2001 book Skateboarding, Space and the City, of which the Independent wrote: “Borden argues that [skateboarders] draw our attention to the city as the site of perpetual change.” And there are increasingly examples of civic leaders using this fact to bring vitality to their communities. Case in point, pro skater Leo Valls’ collaboration last year with his hometown, Bordeaux, to design and create a series of skate-able public sculptures, intended to bring the non-skating public closer to the action while still honoring the organic aesthetic of street skating - in which any physical feature of the landscape is potentially terrain. When skaters design, skateboarding persists.From Leo Valls’ Play! in BordeauxOr perhaps it’s to do with what Chris Nieratko, former editor of seminal 90s skate-prank magazine Big Brother, observed about skateboarding as a means to relate to people, informed by his experience as a dad. As he told me, “Having a non-skateboarding, 10-year-old son on the autism spectrum has taught me a lot about myself and the skateboarding community. I think there are countless traits about skaters that can be attributed to countless skaters being undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The 100-mile stare, the deep concentration and hyperfocus on repeatedly trying to learn a trick … the anxiety, social awkwardness, lack of empathy, the flapping arms, the inherent knowledge of science far beyond their G.E.D., etc. Skaters view the world with innocent eyes for a singular use. To deviate from that is to lose the plot.”I’m not sure. I agree with Chris that the skate gaze is singularly-focused. And I also agree that there are no shortage of people on the spectrum drawn to skateboarding—a culture that the ex-Supreme creative director and founder of skate-inspired clothing brand Noah, Brendon Babenzien, described to Monocle recently as having “invented itself.” Self-determination is a deeply attractive proposition for anyone whose reality isn’t just so. But I think the even more prevalent attraction is the way skateboarding allows its adherents to see things as more than just what they “are” but as what they could be. (BWDD)Photo of the day:Originally shot for the cover of Transworld Skateboarding, J. Grant Brittain’s shot of Tod Swank,  entitled “The Push”, is one of skateboarding’s all-time great images, not least for its implication of skating’s relationship to the geometry of the built world. This is art, whether you care about skateboarding or not. (BWDD)Quick Links:Ex VICE editor Jonathan Smith highlights the ongoing oral history of skateboarding that’s coming to life over at The Nine Club podcast, for The Outline(BWDD)Pro Skater and photographer/artist Jerry Hsu’s monograph “The Beautiful Flower is the World” is a total gem; funny, candid, weird, unlikely, poignant and totally contemporary. Everyone should own this. (BWDD)Spike Jonze has directed some pretty great things, but one of my favorites ever is “How They Get There,” a short starring skateboarding god Mark Gonzales. Context is everything and whether or not it holds up to Spike’s later work is debatable, but I’ll never forget seeing this for the first time on ¾” tape in 1999. (BWDD)Skateboarding is an Olympic sport for the first time in 2020, but ask most skaters and they’ll rate the ongoing “Battle at the Berrics” series as equally or more important. It’s played like “horse” in basketball, but on skateboards. 2019 marks the first time an all-female BATB has been held. (BWDD)Skateboarding and contemporary art have lots of overlap points—Raphael Zarko talks about a bunch in this article about “Skating Sculptures” (BWDD)As recommended by Kevin Imamura, this blog post is as inside as you get when it comes to contemporary, skate obsessed culture. Also a great survey of recent skating’s unique alchemy of action, abstraction, music and personality. (BWDD)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ben (BWDD)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).Sign up now

Why is this interesting? - The Skate Gaze Edition

Ben Dietz (BD) is a longtime friend of WITI and publishes the [SIC] Weekly newsletter. After a long stint leading commercial partnerships at VICE Media, he now consults with media and consumer brands, and co-hosts the Culture Club Show on Clubhouse on Wednesday nights. He’s everywhere @dietznutz. Tell us about yourself.I hail from Syracuse, but have lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn more-or-less continuously since 1998, now with my wife and two teenage-ish kids. I started in the music business but have spent the last 18 years working on the commercial side of digital media, mostly at VICE, but back in the early days at Heavy (IYKYK) and most recently as GM for the relaunch of Departures. Outside of my main gigs I’ve always been a dabbler - DJing, throwing parties, advising friends’ companies, and occasionally writing - which collectively led me to start publishing my newsletter three years ago.Describe your media diet. It’s pretty catholic; I always say my newsletter is a cross-section of my brain, since it’s compiling links across a bunch of industries and interests that are pertinent to me. I start every day with coffee and WNYC on while I spend a couple hours of newsletters delivered via email, scanning and pulling tabs that catch my eye, a habit I picked up from my first boss and mentor, Randy Irwin. There are a zillion good ones, but a few of my most consistent sources include daily newsletters from Business of Fashion,  It’s Nice That (graphic design), Dezeen (design & architecture) Hyperallergic (art), Public Announcement (arts & entertainment), Future Party (digital media & entertainment), Protocol (tech) and Morning Consult (my secret weapon, aggregating everything). Today in Tabs, Garbage Day and After School (which I discovered through WITI, shout out Casey) are guilty pleasures in the afternoon, and of course, there’s WITI itself, the GOAT.  Some favorite weekly guys are Jonah & Erin’s Blackbird Spyplane, Matt Klein’s Zine, Sean Monahan’s 8Ball, the Tiktok geniuses from High Tea, Rachel Tashjian’s Opulent Tips, Andrea Hernandez’s foodery Snaxshot and Alex Danco’s Dancoland. I should hasten to mention that I am still hopelessly devoted to newspapers in print, but only on the weekends. I look forward all week to going to the newsstand on Saturdays for the the WSJ Weekend and the FT Weekend  – special shout out to Jo Ellison’s How to Spend It magazine, which combined with the paper for $3 is the best value in media, for my money. Sundays, it’s the NY Times. My wife and I subscribe to The New Yorker, New York, AD, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and Monocle, so there’s a lot of print hanging around the house. Elsewhere in mags, 032c, Jaime Perlman’s More or Less, and Apartamento are on the coffee table, and when upstate it’s new issues of YOLO Journal and Wm Brown, grabbed from David and Laurie at Spruce Homegoods in Callicoon. I don’t watch tons of TV but when it’s on it’s the shows everybody’s into on HBO Max, Hulu , and Netflix so I can keep up with conversations, or a constantly failing attempt to get my money’s worth from the Criterion Channel - which I love but find very hard to watch anything beginning to end on. Finally, can’t forget Instagram as a source - I’m pasting links into my newsletter notes constantly. And I have audio going in the background pretty constantly - aside from NPR I pod along with How Long Gone, Pivot, and Group Chat (for the Penn bro in me), and rely heavily on my Discover Weekly. What’s the last great book you read? I want to say the Vernon Subutex trilogy by Virginie Despentes, a great ensemble cast story about a French record store owner turned mysterious messiah, which is so, so fun to read (and is my favorite cover design in a minute) but I don’t know if it can be called “great” – it’s a little too pulpy and ridiculous, at times. So I guess the last “great” book was Denis Johnson’s novella “Train Dreams,” a gift from my friend George Rogers. Johnson’s economy with words is truly admirable. What are you reading now?  I just finished Haruki Murakami’s “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki,” which I thought was fine; I really wanted it to get weird and it just refused. Next up is Jenny O’Dell’s “How to Do Nothing,” a gift from Gillian Schwartz, whose stealth-mode startup Elsewhere I’m contributing to. What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?I was going to say I go front to back, page over page, and then start over and read everything from beginning to end – including the ads – but I just realized I actually read the weekend newspapers from the middle-out. And The New Yorker is table of contents first, then selective picking, typically a couple of stories per issue (though Kyle Chayka’s column is a must online). Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?I think Jing Daily and its sister Jing Culture and Commerce are both really fantastic in translating what’s happening in China’s youth culture brands and fashion worlds for Western audiences. I had a great chat with Avery Booker from Jing on my IG live a few weeks back, if you want a sense of their approach. The other one is Apology Magazine’s new newsletter, which just launched but is going to be really special, if the magazine and podcast are any indication. Jesse Pearson is an exceptional curator of subject and talent. What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? I’d love to play cool guy and say Merlin Bird ID from the Cornell Lab since I like birds a lot, but actually, it’s probably Park NYC, which just makes moving around the city easier with a car. Plane or train?Plane, though I have to say a post-pandemic to Copenhagen recently has challenged my habits in a major way. My body isn’t used to sitting for that long anymore and I really had a hard time moving around afterward. Then again, maybe I’m just old. What is one place everyone should visit? New Zealand. I lived for a year in Australia and while I had a good time there it was a little too California-esque to feel special for me - but New Zealand is truly something else. The scenery is really mindblowing; straight out of Lord of the Rings, for real. There’s amazing outdoor recreation in the South Island, but in contrast, Auckland’s a real cosmopolitan city. The people are great too. Get there, once they open it back up.Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into. This is less a rabbit hole I fell into once than one I am constantly falling into via the IG algo - which is old skateboard decks, photos, and paraphernalia.  Growing up a skateboarder permanently altered my worldview (as explained in my “Skate Gaze” contribution to WITI) and there are a gang of IG handles that traffic in visuals from my halcyon days (in the best way).  A few off the top of my head include @deadhippie, @dearskating, @caribobbo, @elpatosk8og and @joedlamb, a collector who specializes in boards by Vision, which were deeply uncool when I was a teen, but bring back unbelievable associations now. Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ben (BD) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Monday Media Diet with Ben Dietz

We write and edit WITI every weekday with a range of topics and a fascinating cast of characters. If you’ve been a longtime subscriber, may we suggest upgrading to a nominal paid subscription to support? We’d appreciate it. -Colin and NoahSubscribe nowBen Dietz (BD) is a longtime friend of WITI and publishes the [SIC] Weekly newsletter. He’s co-founder of Elsewhere, consults with media and consumer brands, and co-hosts the Culture Club Show on Clubhouse on Wednesdays. He’s everywhere @dietznutz. Ben here. After a recent meeting in Tribeca, I chanced to wander into The Armoury, a men’s clothing store known for its high-end, idiosyncratic men’s suits. Originally from Hong Kong, The Armoury serves a particular kind of man—the type that wants to look proper but also wants to look distinctive, style expressed through tiny details like the shape of his jacket shoulder or the make of his braided belt. (Editor’s note: read Armoury founder’s MMD here)As I walked in, I was greeted with a compliment on my shoes—a pair of Padmore and Barnes model P404—which is more popularly known as the Clark’s Wallabee boot. Padmore was the original wallabee manufacturer and still makes its P404 style. I am a shoe guy and so the compliment made me smile. And it got us into a conversation about the shoes in the store. I picked up a pair of interesting-looking loafers; they were made in the style of Belgian Shoes but shod with an outsole very much like the cream-colored rubber unit that luxury brand Loro Piana’s casual footwear is known for. I asked about them and the salesperson went into great detail about the shoes in my hand- made by the UK-based Baudoin & Lange. I told him that they reminded me of the Loro Pianas and he replied “Oh yes, but much cooler.” (Photo: Baudoin & Lange) I’m paraphrasing now, but he continued to the effect of, “When anybody walks in with a pair of those on”—“those” meaning the Loro Pianas—“you can tell what level of service he’ll expect, how he wants to be treated, the level of obsequiousness.” The comment was not a compliment. Why is this interesting? This exchange made me think about how I judge people: by their shoes. I have always started my assessment of anyone from their feet first. Male or female, old or young, colleague or friend, stranger or icon—it starts with the shoes for me. The question is, why? Why do so many of us feel compelled to start with the shoes, and judge others by them? According to Lawrence Schlossman, co-host of the menswear podcast Throwing Fits, it’s just logic. Via DM he told me, “Literally and figuratively, footwear ... is the foundational element upon which I’m building every outfit.” He continued, “We have the whole bit where if you go top-down you’re a cop, because going bottom-up is the most logical way to logistically build an outfit that makes you feel great for that day.”He offered an example. “So maybe it’s Lucchese cowboy boots for me personally, and I know from there I’m going to work my way up to Wrangler cowboy-cut jeans and a vintage western shirt and a rodeo hat. OR maybe it’s Belgian sleds and I’m gonna go with Patagonia baggies and a Kamakura Oxford Cloth Button Down.” I’m the same, pretty much. Loafers take me almost inevitably to once-cuffed selvedge denim and a cashmere crew-neck sweater or a madras button-down, while my Padmores dictate chinos or fatigues and a chore coat. And so on … brogues, work boots, Birkenstocks (only Bostons, tho). The combinations matter and the shoes are the cornerstone. If you’re dressing top-down, what are you thinking? Seriously, I want to know. Then again, I couldn’t tell you exactly why I feel like I do, either.  I like Lawrence’s claim of logic (which was backed by others I spoke to), but that’s not it entirely. In my case, luck is part of it—I am both sample size (Men’s 9) and have worked in a business with generous friends from Nike, Adidas, Clarks, and many others—which means that I am better catered to than most when it comes to footwear. But I don’t think my career (or my shoe size) really has anything to do with the importance I place on shoes; mine or others. It’s not even my appreciation for the sublime but unfortunately dying art of shoemaking. I’m pretty sure my shoe-first POV comes from growing up a skateboarder in Syracuse, a city known for shitty weather and its basketball team. Skating and slush meant ruined shoes. And the basketball Orange set the Nike-driven footwear agenda for me and every other kid in town each fall. So I was always thinking about what story my next pair might tell. It made me identify with a particular psychographic: those who lavish upon the lowest part of our wardrobe the highest admiration. This is not to say the shoes are the end-all-be-all. As Swaim Hutson designer and founder at The Academy New York told me, “Nothing is worse than a nice shoe in the bad company of an unattractive sock.” But that’s a whole ‘nother column.* (BD)*Footnote of the day: Swaim’s advice: “If you have trouble with a sock it’s best to go no sock at all...nothing screams constant classic style more than a white sock and a loafer. Many may disagree and say I’m keeping bad company. [But] as they say, ‘you’re known by the company you keep.’”Quick Links: It’s one of my great regrets that I never ordered a pair of Arrow Moccasins when the company was still around; I eyed them for years. These days, the zombie website haunts me. But wow, the products page – seemingly unchanged since 1997 – is fun to visit. (BD) The Armoury’s sister marque Drake’s does a great job manifesting modern brand marketing with lively playlists, interviews and impromptu lookbooks. Worth a follow (if you like those sorts of things). (BD)It’s not about shoes per se, but W. David Marx’s book “Ametora” is a must-read for anybody with a style jones. It traces the influence of post-war Japan’s Ivy obsession on basically everything we wear today, in ebullient, highly readable style. (BD) --WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Look out below. What goes up should come down—but it's a little more complicated when you're talking about space debris. By one estimate, there are around 27,000 pieces of junk in orbit, from mission-related debris to parts from rocket bodies. A new article looks closer at what to do when it's time to take out the extraterrestrial trash.--Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ben (BD)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The Footwear Edition

Re-running an all-time fave today. - Noah (NRB) Ben Dietz (BWDD) is a longtime friend of WITI and the person behind the excellent newsletter [SIC] Weekly. He got his first skateboard as a Christmas gift in 1985 and has never seen things the same way since. Ben here. To say I’m a skateboarder at this point in my life is to beggar belief, given that I’ve been out on a board maybe three times in the last year. But by the same token, the older I get the more clear it is to me that once you’re a skater, you can’t ever not be one. This is down to what I call (tongue firmly in cheek) “the Skate Gaze”. The idea, essentially, is that anyone who has become a skateboarder from roughly 1985 onward (and arguably even earlier—since the introduction of urethane wheels in 1970 or so) actually sees the world in a different way from everyone else, in terms of its spatial and creative boundaries. And that skaters, unbound by a more traditional POV, are increasingly behind ideas that shape our world, literally. As the director and skateboard company owner Spike Jonze wrote to me for this piece: I think skaters look at everything with yet to be defined possibilities. Nothing that is skated in the streets was ever creating for skating, a bench and rail, a bank, a wall...but a skater saw it and saw something else was possible there. As a skater you move through the city looking at things differently, thinking about other possibilities. And as you move into other things you want to do, that perspective just stays with you. Nothing is what they say it is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be whatever you see is possible.Why is this interesting?This “skate gaze” worldview is a post-postmodern phenomenon, and as such it’s only now being recognized. But considering that skateboarding is one of the most popular sports in the world (between #3 and #10 depending on who you ask), and people of all ages are staying on board longer, it’s clear that the skate gaze has implications far beyond skateparks and skate companies. As skaters age and proliferate, we can see that what Spike described as “looking at things differently” extends to every aspect of global culture. Take Alexis Sablone, a 32-year-old Olympic skater for Team USA, but also an MIT-trained architect who’s used her pedigree to design a public plaza in Malmo, Sweden that doubles as a shared skate/pedestrian space. Or Steve Rodriguez, don of New York City skateboarding and since 1996 the owner of 5Boro—a skateboard “hard goods” company, who also keeps himself busy running creative services for major advertising firms, when he’s not designing and managing the execution of New York public skateparks, in conjunction with city commissioners. They are emblematic of generations of skaters who’ve grown up seeing—through skateboarding—a world they could affect and shape by their personal actions, and they’ve seized the opportunity to shape both the physical world and culture. Alexis Sablone’s Malmö PlazaWhen Mark Gonzales and Natas Kaupas—both now fine artists—invented “street skating” as teens in the early-mid 1980s by turning driveway embankments into launch ramps, they made the sport available to anyone with a patch of asphalt close at hand. What they couldn’t have anticipated was the incipient need 35 years later for people around the world to navigate from place to place differently. With over 50% of the world now living in urban environments, it’s become necessary for us all to travel – and allow others to travel – through public space in new ways. Echoing the explosion of bicycle travel as a statement, more and more city-zens globally are commuting by skateboard (to say nothing of those awful one-wheel contraptions, electric longboards, and the like). And there are a lot of driveways and embankments along the way.WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.Exhibit B. Books: true crime told and sold Shop the 12 Days Of ExMas sale nowWhy is your family interesting? With Storyworth, record their stories one weekly email at a time, and gift them a beautiful printed book. Get $10 off Storyworth.Beyond this, there’s a new appreciation for the skate worldview, driven by the proliferation of skate videos on platforms from Youtube and Instagram to Tiktok. In the words of Kevin Imamura, a lifelong skater and one of the proponents of NikeSB’s push into skateboarding, “In urban areas across the globe, the amount of interaction with non-skaters feels like it is at an all-time high: average pedestrians, homeless people, security guards, etc … you see people stopping and watching what skaters are doing. They will stop and clap. The cops will allow [skaters] to finish and get the clip before they kick them out.”Why is this, Kevin asks? Perhaps it’s because of the dual acknowledgment by skaters and by the powers that be, that neither is going away, and both have something to learn from the other. Skaters not only see physical space differently, they cause non-skaters to do so, too. There are examples of this developing around the world—as presaged by Iain Borden’s 2001 book Skateboarding, Space and the City, of which the Independent wrote: “Borden argues that [skateboarders] draw our attention to the city as the site of perpetual change.” And there are increasingly examples of civic leaders using this fact to bring vitality to their communities. Case in point, pro skater Leo Valls’ collaboration last year with his hometown, Bordeaux, to design and create a series of skate-able public sculptures, intended to bring the non-skating public closer to the action while still honoring the organic aesthetic of street skating - in which any physical feature of the landscape is potentially terrain. When skaters design, skateboarding persists.From Leo Valls’ Play! in BordeauxOr perhaps it’s to do with what Chris Nieratko, former editor of seminal 90s skate-prank magazine Big Brother, observed about skateboarding as a means to relate to people, informed by his experience as a dad. As he told me, “Having a non-skateboarding, 10-year-old son on the autism spectrum has taught me a lot about myself and the skateboarding community. I think there are countless traits about skaters that can be attributed to countless skaters being undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The 100-mile stare, the deep concentration and hyperfocus on repeatedly trying to learn a trick … the anxiety, social awkwardness, lack of empathy, the flapping arms, the inherent knowledge of science far beyond their G.E.D., etc. Skaters view the world with innocent eyes for a singular use. To deviate from that is to lose the plot.”I’m not sure. I agree with Chris that the skate gaze is singularly-focused. And I also agree that there are no shortage of people on the spectrum drawn to skateboarding—a culture that the ex-Supreme creative director and founder of skate-inspired clothing brand Noah, Brendon Babenzien, described to Monocle recently as having “invented itself.” Self-determination is a deeply attractive proposition for anyone whose reality isn’t just so. But I think the even more prevalent attraction is the way skateboarding allows its adherents to see things as more than just what they “are” but as what they could be. (BWDD)—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ben (BWDD)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.