I was not planning to stop at a skateboard shop in Edmond that day.
We were spending the day knocking around town, checking out a few places we hadn’t been yet, when we drove past Proper Skate Shop on East 15th Street. That was all it took. There was no chance I was going to see a skate shop and keep driving like a normal adult with errands and functioning knees.
Skateboarding was basically my whole personality for the first 15 to 20 years of my life.
Before I could drive, a skateboard was transportation. My friends and I would skate for miles across town because somebody heard about a five-foot ledge or a stair set behind some building, then we’d spend the afternoon repeatedly throwing ourselves at concrete until something worked or something swelled up.
My first internet username was “skat3sets,” because three stairs was the number I could actually make it down doing a trick at the time.
Aspirational branding, I guess.
A real skate shop, not just skate-looking retail
Proper Skate Shop describes itself as “skater owned and operated,” and the shop feels like it means that in the old-fashioned way.
The walls were covered in decks. I saw names that immediately pulled me back into that part of my brain: Real, Antihero, Toy Machine, Spitfire and plenty more. Proper’s online store also carries the actual stuff skaters need, including decks, completes, trucks, wheels, bearings, griptape, protective gear, shoes, apparel and Proper-branded decks and merch.
That matters because there is a difference between a skate shop and a clothing store with a few boards on the wall.
Proper felt like a skate shop.
One of the first things that caught my eye was a signed Bam Margera board hanging on the wall. Bam was one of those skaters I grew up watching, along with Tony Hawk and a whole generation of people whose videos made us immediately go outside and attempt things we had no business attempting.
Seeing that board would have been cool at any point, but it hit a little differently right now. I’ve been following Bam’s return to skating and the way he has been sharing that part of his life again. There’s something encouraging about somebody getting back to the thing they loved before everything got complicated.
Skateboarding is brutal like that. You fail constantly. You slam into concrete. You get up and try the exact thing that just hurt you.
Eventually, if you stay with it long enough, you roll away.
The shoes were the part that got me
The thing I kept thinking about after walking around Proper was not just the decks or the Bam board. It was the shoes.
I’ve worn skate shoes basically my entire life. For the past few years, I’ve mostly defaulted to buying Vans wherever was convenient. Standing inside an independently owned skate shop made me realize how backwards that is.
If I’m going to keep buying skate shoes anyway, why not buy them from the people actually supporting skateboarding in Oklahoma?
So that’s the plan now.
Buy the shoes at the local skate shop.
It’s not a grand act of civic heroism. It’s just a practical decision. But those small purchases are what keep places like Proper around, and places like this are more than retail.
A good skate shop is where a kid can walk in knowing almost nothing and leave with the right board instead of a bad setup that makes skating harder than it already is. It’s where you hear about spots, videos, events and other skaters. It’s where the local scene has a counter, a wall of decks and somebody who can tell you what wheels make sense.
I asked the guy working whether Proper was going to SKATE! The Plaza in Oklahoma City this weekend. He said they were, and that Proper would be helping with ramps and other equipment.
That tracks. SKATE! The Plaza is scheduled to take over 16th Street in the Plaza District on Friday, August 14, from 3 to 10 p.m., with ramps, skating, BMX, rollerblades, scooters and local punk and hardcore music. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing local skate shops help make possible.
Stopping at Proper also made me realize I’ve somehow covered restaurants, bookstores, vintage stores, record shops and comic shops around Oklahoma, but skate shops had not really made it into the rotation.
That needs to change.
Because skateboarding gave me transportation, exercise, confidence, friendships, broken bones and probably a slightly unreasonable tolerance for physical pain. More than anything, it was fun. Even if you never become especially good, there is still something satisfying about spending days trying something that seems impossible and finally rolling away from it.
Also, to be frank, skateboarding is still one of the coolest things a person can do.
So if you’re an old skater whose knees now make strange noises, somebody looking for a new deck, or a kid trying to learn how to ollie for the first time, Proper Skate Shop in Edmond is the kind of place I’d rather see people support.
Wherever you live, support your local skate shop.
They keep skateboarding rolling.
