The most fun thing : dispatches from a skateboard life / Kyle Beachy.

Preface: On benches -- Part 1. For whom is the fun thing fun? -- You're not me -- On firsts -- A chronicle of doing it -- On direction -- The deep seams -- On bad kickflips -- A very large puzzle: On Andrew Reynolds -- On this ugly world -- Making up legends in the era of zero-budget skateboarding -- Part 2. On the obvious -- Toward a poetics of skateboarding -- On nostalgia -- Pretend we haven't grown -- On narrative -- A most mundane perfection -- On how -- Clearing a space for meaning -- On younger -- "Nearly" -- On bafflement -- Part 3. On Bitul Z'man -- Good Old Street League -- On the technology of a secret -- A day with Chaz Ortiz -- On Tampa pro -- Primitive progessivism -- On pushing boarders -- A serious man: Mark Suciu's "verso" -- "The monk's posture" -- Part 4. Seven small bafflements -- On animal play -- Inappropriate places -- On a decision -- The Dylan period -- Still -- Epilogue: Loveletters.

"In the tradition of Barbarian Days, THE MOST FUN THING is a memoir in essays of Kyle Beachy's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding-a search that unearthed fresh insights on marriage, love, loss, and American invention. In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike's corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. For a decade and counting, Beachy has been skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime Beachy first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood. What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married? Answering these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime, often overlooked, regularly maligned, whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a life and collection of the varied lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy-what it continues to teach him as he struggles to find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband"-- Provided by publisher.