Craig Wasserman, the owner of The Drop Boardshop and the mad genius behind Telluride Skateboard Camp, talks about the value of skateboarding and how the skills and lessons learned apply to life outside the skate park.
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Transcript
– I’m Craig Wasserman and I’m the owner of The Drop Boardshop and that’s the headquarters for Telluride Skate Camp and this is where we actually run the camp. In 2006, we built this big bowl here in Town Park behind me and a lot of parents were like, “Whoa, that bowl’s huge and scary. Will you teach my kid how to skate?” So 2007, I started teaching just a couple kids how to skate in that bowl and that rolled into a few more families and a few more families and by, like, 2010, we had a full on skate camp in the summertime. And as a skateboard instructor, skateboarding is so difficult. It’s just, like, so hard to do and so challenging and so painful at times that it teaches all these really cool life lessons. So dedication and perseverance and respect and focus. And we all know that the more we skate, the better we get, and the better we get, the more fun we have. That’s the deal. We got to earn our fun here on our skateboards. And Vivian took a fall, got up, and tried it again. Did anyone else do that today? Guys, pretty much everyone did that today. We fall down, we get back up.
– Falling is how we learn because if we don’t fall, then we’ll just keep doing things the same way and nothing will change.
– You have to face your fear to get better. You have to butt right up against that edge of comfort and push past it. And I watch kids do it every single day. And to watch a kid get scared and take that deep breath and be brave, that’s when the magic happens and that’s when I see kids learning these lessons that they not only use here in the skate park, but they use outside the skate park too. We’re talking about just getting kids on the path of being a lifelong learner and a lifelong skateboarder. It’s amazing to see how we all just encourage each other and we’re all stoked. And when we do that, it up levels the whole session that we’re having. And a lot of times people start landing tricks that they’ve never landed before because you’re just stoked and you feel that and the energy’s lifted and the next thing you know, you’re skating better than you ever have. And we try to instill that here at camp. I try to pass that on to kids. So if anybody is interested after hearing all this or is excited about skateboarding themselves, maybe on the fence about, “I don’t know if I could try this,” Skate Camp is open to everyone. We make it accessible to everyone. It’s for all ages, five and up for Skate Camp, but we’ll do private lessons younger, and you can join Skate Camp even if you’re older than five all the way up through as old as you want to go. I have adults joining camp all the time and you can sign up on the website at thedropboardshop.com. You can come into the shop and see me. We can talk through it. And let’s get you all out here because I know skateboarding is something that’s been incredible for me my whole life, even still today. Skateboarding harder than I ever have. And I hope you all come out and skate with us too.
