Desmond Tutu, the Patron Saint of Longboard Skateboarders

Shameless self-promotion: “Board Games” is a short documentary video I did for my friend Kent Lingeveldt who runs the independent Alpha Longboards company. I just showed up at his workshop when he told me to, followed him where he told me to, and drank coffee when he told me to. The video is “a day in the life”–or “a few days in the life”–of Alpha Longboards, and of Kent himself. Kent is something of a veteran and an enigma in the Cape Town skating scene, and was one of the first longboarders on the Cape Flats. The aim was to explain what made Alpha different to other board companies; they use local wood, every board is shaped and carved by hand, and every piece of artwork is unique. Also, how many other longboard companies have Desmond Tutu as a patron?

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

The new antisemitism?

Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.