Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens

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A memoir-in-essays about how skateboarding re-defines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the board Chipping a board-where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail-is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro, you'll see folks riding chipped boards as symbols of their stubborn dedication toward a deck, a toy, and aging bodies that will also reach their inevitable end. In Chipped, Jose Vadi personalizes and expands upon this symbol. Written after finishing his debut collection Inter State- Essays From California, Vadi used these essays to explore his own empathy in aging, and to elaborate on the impact skateboarding has had on culture, power, and art. From tracing a critical mass skater takeover of San Francisco's streets, to an analysis of visceral '90s skate videos and soundtracks, to the solace found skating a parking lot during a global pandemic, Vadi expands our understanding of the ways skateboarding can alter one's life. Vadi acts as a "ethnographer on a skateboard," writing, living, and animating an object, likening the board and skate ephemera to the fear of being discarded, wanting to be seen as useful, functional, living. These essays analyze the legacy of seminal texts like Thrasher Magazine, influential programming giants like MTV, and skateboard artists like Ed Templeton. They imagine jazz composer Sun Ra as a skateboarder to explore sonic connections between skateboarding and jazz, obsessively follow bands, chronicle tours, and discover the creative bermuda triangle Southern California suburbs have to offer. Chipped is an intimate, genre-pushing meditation on skateboarding and the reasons we continue to get up after every fall life throws our way.

Reviews

"The essays are poetic, compassionate, and vulnerable, drawing rewardingly original connections among a host of seemingly disparate topics . . . Vadi clearly takes great pleasure in the vocabulary and syntax of skateboarding; at times, this pleasure feels contagious, even for non-skaters . . . [A] largely illuminating collection about skateboarding, race, and relationships." Kirkus Reviews

"To Jos Vadi, one of our great poets of the overlooked and ignored, its not just a skateboard. Its a medium for dreaming, for chasing down histories of public space and private rebellion, for measuring ourselves against the wide-open visions of youth. Chipped is a treasure. Hua Hsu, author of National Book Critic Circle award-winning Stay True

"Continue the line that runs from Sun Ra to contemporary skateboarding and you'll arrive at the brilliant, searching essays of Jos Vadi. Chipped is a masterpiece of both the form and his subject." Kyle Beachy, author of The Most Fun Thing

"A skateboard is a simple plaything from which a vibrant global culture emerged. With Chipped, Jos Vadi takes us under the hood of its animating force, deftly weaving the personal with the world to show us how all the infinitely beautiful and complicated things that make us human coalesce to breathe life into this toy. A piece of wood with wheels that can, if you let it, take you everywhere and show you everything. Cole Nowicki, author of Right, Down + Circle and Laser Quit Smoking Massage

"In these vibrant texts, Jos Vadi shows how skateboarding is not a sport, but an attitude, a culture, a way of thinking. A compelling collection of insights, musing and observations." Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History

A luminous reflection on the many ways that skateboarding changes the way we see the world from one of our most attentive eyes and ears. Ted Barrow, writer, art historian, and skateboarder

Author Bio

Jose Vadi is the author of Chipped and Inter State- Essays from California. An award-winning essayist, poet, playwright and film producer, his work has been featured by the Paris Review, The Atlantic, the PBS NewsHour, Free Skate Magazine, Alta Journal of California, and the Yale Review. He lives and writes in Sacramento, California.