SK8 SHOPZZ

There were very few skateboard shops in Scotland when I started out skating, and they were located far from city centres so were hard to reach. I had access to skate magazines and would pore over the product pages and work myself into a covetous frenzy before the rare occasions I got to visit a shop. I didn't see a lot of skate videos, so I would try to soak up as much of those if they were showing them in store. I still retain some of this obsession with skateboard products and skateboard shops. Our nearest shop was Clan Skates 2 in Dundee, and as they tended to have about 5 decks in stock at any one time, they would never have what I had become fixated on in a magazine, so I got used to being disappointed by skateboard shops, but I still can't pass one by.
 

There is a new shop right next to Waterloo Skate Park, which is the main place that I skate in Sydney. But this is all I've ever seen of the place:

 

This isn't photoshopped. It is actually called that.

First, the name: BOYZ SK8N. It could be the title of a gay porn movie. It sounds as if it was named by a pathetic old pederast as part of a seedy plan to get his mitts on little skater kids, but whose only point of contact with skateboarding is that Avril Lavigne song. It makes no commercial sense for it implies exclusivity to males, inasmuch as it implies anything, being a nonsensical pseudo-textspeak mishmash of such insulting stupidity that I hope for speedy and catastrophic failure for the shop and its owner.

Secondly, all I have ever seen of this shop is closed shutters. It hasn't been open any time I've been there, and I go to the adjacent skatepark 2 or 3 times a week. It is common to find a lackadaisacal or inept approach to business among skateboard shops, and throughout my life I have experienced lost and bungled mail orders, badly stocked shops, shops opening late, and shops staffed either by non-skaters who don't know their product, or by skaters who are hostile to everyone but their immediate friends.

It isn't difficult to run a skate shop - skateboarding is a thriving scene with a covetable cultural cachet for non-skaters (everyone wears skate shoes and clothing these days) - and although there will be many pressures upon a small business of this kind, I have seen dozens of skate shops fail over my years skating, and I've seen those with the most rudimentary competence flourish. Slam City Skates in London, for instance, is cliquey as hell, overpriced, and I've seen it locked up on a Saturday lunchtime after the keyholder slept in, but it seems to do OK.