Sima Safavi-Bayat

Last year marked the release of Skate Like a Girl’s Nike SB Dunk Low Pro, a shoe that was both emblematic of the non-profit’s ethos and a testament to the work they’ve put into the skateboarding community.

Along with the shoe, the crew at Skate Like a Girl, led by S.I.C. Program Manager Sima Safavi-Bayat created “In Our Shoes,” a 26-page printed and now digital zine that documents 20+ years of fostering an inclusive community by promoting confidence, leadership, and social justice through skateboarding.

With “In Our Shoes,” now available digitally for all to digest, revisit, and share, we spoke to Sima about creating the zine and the deeper themes within it.

The zine has some writing that explains how you met Kristin (Ebeling) and how that led to you becoming a highly involved member of Skate Like a Girl. Can you dive a bit deeper into that “origin story”?

I met Kristin at the YMCA Skatepark in Mukilteo, Washington and she was like, ‘You can totally skate, come to Skate Like a Girl,’ so that made me give it a go.

I was a snowboarder so physically skateboarding wasn’t that intimidating and culturally, because I was around skateboarding, I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do. I started skating and started volunteering as a skate instructor because Kristin saw that I was really comfortable and thought I could teach someone how to push and cruise. Within a few months, I went from volunteer to summer skate camp counselor. Kristin had recently become the Seattle Chapter Director at the time, so I was directly being mentored by her.

As a young person I was really interested in photography and art shows so with the encouragement of Kristin and Skate Like a Girl, I ended up curating my first photo show at 19 years old at 35th North Skate Shop and, as far as I’m concerned, I was one of the first female curators. That opened up the doors for me. Then, I moved to Portland for school and became involved with the Portland Chapter helping lead camps, and clinics, and supporting fundraising efforts. In 2020, I was given the opportunity to come onto the more admin side of things, mentoring other future leaders in skateboarding myself. Currently, I serve as a Program Manager, leading and supporting the Skateboarding Inclusivity Cooperative (S.I.C.) program as well as our organization-wide fundraising campaigns and closely supporting our partnerships.

So that’s over the span of ten years. I was also mentored by Kim Woozy, Director of Partnerships and Marketing, as well as Kristin, now Executive Director, so I was mentored and now I’m a mentor—it’s cool how things came full circle.

It feels like you’re a prime example of a new and more positive relationship with skateboarding that many didn’t have in the past. Is that fair to say?

I think what happens when someone gets labeled as a skateboarder is that they only think of themselves on a board. But I’m like, “Maybe you’re a creator, you make videos, you can do other things too.”

Our community is so colorful in so many ways, you’re not just a skateboarder you’re using skateboarding as a vehicle for change. A lot of our demographic now is made up of people who started skating later in life and they’re bringing their life experience to skateboarding now and having a really great time with it. I love seeing that vision of skateboarding. I had kind of a “normal” journey in skateboarding so I love seeing those journeys that weren’t as typical. It’s really important to be multi-dimensional. Life’s too short to only adhere to one interest.

The term “non-traditional skateboarder,” has come up quite a bit in the past few years and I’d like to unpack what that means to you a bit.

Kristin started using the phrase “non-traditional skateboarder” about a decade ago, as a shorthand for women, trans, queer, BIPOC, and other marginalized identities within skateboarding. In essence, I think that until we have more shoes, covers, products, and ads in magazines, and there doesn't need to be special media for “non-traditional” skaters, we have work to do. there's always going to be a gap to be filled, and there will always be non-traditional skaters to serve. If you look at the history of Skate Like a Girl, we started with girl-specific sessions, then we thought, “That’s really not equitable and how can we tap into our community and make this more equitable?”

There’s no end goal. If you think there’s an end goal to equity you’re thinking from a very narrow perspective. We still have under ten Thrasher Magazine covers from non-traditional skaters. Skateboarding’s getting older but it’s almost like you need to have a huge celebration for these feats. It still isn’t the norm for people who aren’t white cis men. But you hear ‘Oh the trick wasn’t gnarly enough for the cover.’

If you think about skateboarding, the average skater isn’t doing gnarly tricks. We pay attention to the style, the music—there are so many other things. There are so many gatekeepy opinions. People complain about one skater because they’re really good but they’re robotic then hate on a skater with style because they aren’t doing the gnarliest tricks. At this point can’t we just celebrate anyone giving it a go?

“In Our Shoes” is available digitally now but can you speak about the decision to originally make it a printed zine? 

Working with SB was really fun because they were like, 'What additional messaging do y’all want to have with your shoe that feels most authentic to your brand and your organization?’

When Kim, Kristin, and our committee were talking about it, the most DIY thing was zines. Zines have always been a part of skateboarding and our culture at Skate Like a Girl. We wanted to make something printed—it’s digital now because we always want to think about accessibility for folks. We wanted something memorable that we could have on hand. It was going back to the roots of skateboarding and Skate Like a Girl.

How did the portraits throughout the zine come together as both an idea and in execution?

Our photo editor for the zine was Sabrina Sellers, who's an amazing volunteer and community member out of the Bay Area. They were my go-to person and we had a couple of meetings and I was like, “Can you help me kind of visualize for photos, what the zine looks like?” They brought up the 2020 cover of Thrasher Magazine that Atiba Jefferson did and they were like, ‘Hey, that was really powerful for me in terms of representation,’ so I said “Let’s run with that.”

We had three meet-ups in each chapter city to capture as many folks that represented our community. Marc Matis photographed our Portland chapter portraits, Sabrina did our SF Bay, and Chrisy Salinas did our Seattle shoot. Sabrina wrote out a document letting everyone know the camera settings and the background that was needed, so all of the photographs would be uniform and look cohesive on a page.

Sabrina was really the one who coordinated and edited all of the portraits. Also in terms of the way that I looked at it as content, there were breakout moments. I called them portrait moments—you’d have a photo and you'd have text, and then you'd have a full portrait moment. It really was to represent what our community looked like then and how diverse it is.

What else went into creating the narrative and rhythm for the zine?

We wanted to tell stories but how do you do that? Where do you start? It was a tight timeline but then I thought, “We’re a non-profit, we’re mission-based. What’s our mission?”

Then it was really obvious. The three pillars of our mission are confidence, leadership, and social justice. Let's break up the zine into that. That’s what the portraits break up. We were able to go into our archives and find photos that fit each moment. My story was in the “leadership” section for example—that’s how it started to come together. It might not be obvious when you’re reading it but as I’m saying it out loud and then look at it you can see the similarities. Everything we do goes back to those three pillars so it was a good way to visualize how the zine would work. I’m so excited to reveal that! It was so hard to come up with a way to show all the years of Skate Like a Girl, but it was actually right in front of me.

Let’s talk about that last piece you mentioned. Social justice is something that some people might not connect to skateboarding—you know, the “shut up and skate guy.” That’s a pillar of Skate Like a Girl. Can you communicate why that’s so?

Skateboarding is social. When we move through the world, we're not invincible to the day-to-day things that make our world go round. Whether that's money or politics, you're still a part of society. You're not exempt from it. How do we build confidence in skateboarders to be more than just a skateboarder? Unless you’re living in the middle of the country by yourself with your own skatepark and you have no other skaters visiting you, then yes, you can say skateboarding is not political. But when you're buying skateboards from your favorite brand, and you're repping their sticker on your car, and you are going to events, and you’re on Instagram commenting, you’re a part of the social world and you're part of the social skateboarding world. Basically, skateboarders do not exist in a vacuum—we are all susceptible to the “isms” of the world. Even when a woman is good, it's always mentioned that they are a woman. For example, no one ever tells Tony Hawk he's good for a guy. Men do not have to deal with that.

Another piece from the zine that really illuminates your mission and speaks to that “new age” is the “Tip Section.”

That stems from our collab with Spitfire Wheels, so it has been worked on and tweaked for years. Again, it's about building bridges, if Skate Like a Girl or other communities and organizations are asking allies to step up to the plate, they need to know where to start. It’s an opportunity to teach and open up that realm. The language was intentionally written to be friendly, easy to read, and inviting. The goal was that anyone could opt-in to being an ally, as opposed to reaffirming the traditional toxic culture that is present at many skate spaces. How can we help you rethink your actions?

You can never assume people know what’s right or wrong. We want people to feel comfortable to ask questions—if you want to be better, here’s a suggestion from our community that we’ve seen work. There’s a lot of pressure on skateboarders to not look stupid—instead land their tricks effortlessly. Which is a paradox because in order to be able to learn you must fail a disproportionate amount of times. Both ends of learning and failing take effort. A lot of what I like about doing this work is cultivating “safe spaces,” and what I mean by this is creating safe spaces to make mistakes and learn from them. You can’t push someone to learn but if you have a friendly space—whether it’s skateboarding or not—being a better person is scary. With these little tips, it’s OK. We’ll make space for you to make mistakes and learn.

Can you explain the thoughts behind how the timeline in the zine was constructed?

So before the inception of Skate Like a Girl in 2000, there were a lot of folks who were the pioneers of “non-traditional” skateboarding—paving the way and making moves. We didn't want the zine to just be about us—it’s like the community as a whole as much as we can. It’s very important to highlight those moments in skateboarding that were in parallel with our accomplishments. Some of the best things that I've heard from some of my friends that read the zine were like, ‘Whoa, I had no idea there was a woman on the cover Thrasher!’

I’m like, “That’s OK, you weren’t even born yet, but still, that’s awesome.”

We don’t want to take all the credit. Skate Like a Girl is a community of people nationwide—worldwide—who have really made strides in skateboarding. I really want to shout out that it wasn't just myself or Skate Like a Girl, it was Yulin Oliver, Alex White, Migzy McGuire, Mimi Knoop, and Lisa Whitaker—they all contributed their reflections on skateboarding. They’re also powerhouses in skateboarding that have been around and really witnessed change. Yes, Skate Like a Girl has had a lot of accomplishments that helped the skateboard world, but there were a lot of other moments and folks who attributed and contributed to our success as well. Again, it was that reflection moment for folks who haven't been paying attention to certain areas of skateboarding to kind of reflect and be like, ‘Damn, like, these folks have been around for a long time.’

It was also an emphasis on the importance of collective power. We have worked together, and still are, inside and outside of the industry to keep the forward-moving momentum of progress. The zine was us being able to give our community and those powerhouses their flowers while we had this big global moment.

READ THE FULL ZINE HERE