Liberal Talk Radio

New York Magazine investigates the concept of the “grup” — or how the 18-to-24 demographic mission-creeped to 18-to-35 and now probably 18-to-45:

We might consider, then, the case of Chad Ruble. At age 32, with a wife who was four months pregnant with their first child, Ruble had a bright idea — he decided to take up skateboarding. “I had never noticed that there’s a half-pipe at Chelsea Piers,” he said. “I thought, Too bad I’m too old to do that. Then I thought,I’m not too old!” So he went to Paragon Sports in Union Square to buy some skateboarding gear (avoiding the hard-core East Village skate shops, because he found them too intimidating). “I was heartened because there was another older guy there getting a whole setup, too. I was like, Oh, cool. I’m not the only one,” he said. “Turns out he was getting it for his kid.”

Ruble need not have worried, though — once he hit the Chelsea Piers half-pipe, there were lots of thirtysomething guys skateboarding there, along with the usual kids. So he mounted his board and set out on the pipe. He hadn’t skateboarded since he was 12, but it turns out he still remembered most of the moves. Until his fourth try that is, when he wiped out and dislocated his shoulder. “But I was having the time of my life,” he said. “Those four times were really fun.”

His tale conjures an uneasy vision of an all-too-possible future: of a young boy, maybe 12, in a tiny suit, standing in a hospital room where his dad lies in traction after a gnarly kickflip-and-nosegrind combination gone horribly wrong. The boy comforts his father, perhaps fluffs his pillow, perhaps delivers to him a freshly laundered Cramps T-shirt brought from home. Then he replaces the earbuds of an iPod that’s playing Burl Ives, straightens his bow tie, and heads out to grab the bus home.