As a system of inscription through which meaning is made—then skateboarding can be understood as a practice of writing upon the environment.
The board, wheels, and body operate as instruments of inscription, leaving marks, scratches, grooves, and scuffs on urban surfaces.
These traces are not merely incidental damage but function like Derridean “traces” that destabilise fixed meaning: they testify to the presence of a practice, yet are always incomplete, pointing to what is absent as much as what is present.