photos/NOAH GATES/ courtesy
Riding into Action
POSE FOR THE CAMERA: Noah Gates loves to
perform mid air trick shots with his scooter.
With a growing fan base, he as over 400
subscribers on his youtube channel. Some of
his videos have been getting thousands of
views!
drawing/BAYAN AMMAR/ golden fleece
04 | November 2023// @GFMEDIAGROUP
by ADDISONROSS
Photo Editor
W hen most people think of a scooter, they think of the skateboard
like object with a funky handle that all of our parents used to buy us
from Walmart for like twenty dollars. Remember? The handle that
was always somehow the perfect length to smack our ankles when we tried
to spin it in circles way too fast even though we knew it would hit us? To a
specific group of people however, a scooter is the key to a whole new universe
of friends and fun. Its like an escape from reality. The feeling of wind blowing
through your hair, all worries leaving you. No cares in the world, and for once,
peace and quiet. Absolute freedom. Hidden in plain sight, one of TC’s own,
Noah Gates (10), shows us the joys and the hardships of being a stunt scooter
rider.
As an avid outdoor sports enthusiast, Noah Gates has been part of the skat-
ing community for pretty much his entire life. he has done everything from
skateboarding, to biking, to most recently scootering. “I was thirteen when I
started stunt scooter riding… moving into a new neighborhood, There was a
bunch of friends that I could just connect with everyone and it was a good way
to stay active in the community as well as to get outside more instead of being
stuck inside all day,” explained Gates. “It's an amazing way to stay active in the
community, or just active in general.” Scooter riding, also known as stunt rid-
ing or simply riding, is an extreme sport where riders -either for fun, or com-
petitively- preform freestyle BMX like tricks on random everyday appliances
including ramps, and stair rails. To Gates, however, its a lot more than that. It
doesn't matter what he is stunting on, its his fellow riders and the community
in which he has found that makes riding special to him.“To be honest, it's an
amazing community, all of the people are so awesome and welcoming and
supportive. It's just awesome to be around that type of people”.
Unlike most skating sports, stunt scootering is quite rare. Less than 20% of
the skating community prefers kick scooters over skateboards or bikes to stunt
on. However finding a competition is even more rare than stunt riding itself. “
I'm not competing yet, right now I do it for fun, but I would love to compete
in the future. I'm trying to get out there more, its just that not a lot of competi-
tions are local.”
To any serious stunt rider, sponsors are one of the most important things,
Having a company behind you, supporting what you do helps with gaining
money, competition opportunities, other sponsorship opportunities, and over-
all more confidence in yourself and what you do. According to Gates, sponsors
are “really good for when you're trying to gain recognition and for when you're
trying to spread more about the brand that is sponsoring you”. Funny enough,
it's statistically proven that most of the time other brands will try to sponsor
you after seeing your sponsored videos and the attention they received. A
process quite similar to this is what happened to Noah: “ I post all of my really
good landings and scooter tricks on my social medias, and companies tend
to look at me a lot, one video must have really stuck out because the company
Alpha Pro Scooters -located in Fresno CA- messaged me and told me they
wanted me to be working for their team.”
Like any competitive sport, stunt scooter riding is not as easy as it looks.
“Any sport that you try and do takes a lot of time.” you have to try over and
over again. You have to fall get up, fall again, get up again. you don’t give up,
you keep trying. There is so many challenges to the sport, but to Noah, “stick-
ing with friends” and the skating community helped him push through the
hard times, and are the reason he hasn't thought about quitting.
Graphics & Design | Addison Ross and Bayan Ammar