Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Natalie Porter, "Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders" (ECW Press, 2025)

Date: November 27, 2025
Guest: Natalie Porter
Host: Craig Gill

Episode Overview

This episode explores Natalie Porter’s new book, Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders, a wide-ranging social and cultural history spotlighting women’s contributions to skateboarding. Porter, a skateboarding librarian and historian, shares the decades-long evolution of the women’s skate scene, discussing the vibrant communities, zine culture, and the many misconceptions and erasures that have shaped the narrative of women in skateboarding. The conversation delves into the themes, research process, and significance of her work as both an archive and a rallying call for recognition.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Natalie Porter's Background and Genesis of the Project

• Skateboarding Librarian: Porter has been involved in skateboarding since 1995 and worked as a librarian in Vancouver since 2009. She manages the Women's Skate History Archive and writes for Closer Skateboarding Magazine.
  "I've been a librarian since, I guess, 2009... Skateboarding since 1995." (02:29)
• Long-Running Research: The seeds for the book were planted in her 2002 master’s thesis, which critiqued male-dominated subculture theory and documented her experiences with Montreal’s Skirt Boarders crew.
• Global Archiving: Porter's years of collecting names, zines, magazines, and photos became the foundation for her archive (launched in 2022) and her book. "All those years, I was accumulating a list of names, magazines, zines, photos, interviews... and that's why I have all this content." (03:52)

2. Aims and Intended Takeaways of the Book

• Recognition of Legacy: Porter seeks to dispel the myth that female skateboarding's prominence is new, revealing a lineage of organizers, whistleblowers, and athletes who fought for recognition, safety, prize equity, and inclusion. "These young, talented female athletes... haven't appeared out of nowhere. There's this long legacy of female skaters, you know, community organizers, whistleblowers..." (05:24)
• Value of Community Stories: She is passionate about amplifying less-highlighted stories—those of everyday, older women who catalyzed change and shaped skate communities.

3. Diversity of Experience Across Era and Geography

• Shifting Opportunities & Motivations: Women’s involvement evolved with the subculture—from social fun in the '60s, acts of feminist defiance in the '70s and '80s, to building their own contest circuits in the '90s. "It's kind of like depending on the decade... there's just a range of different approaches with skateboarding." (07:09)
• Examples:
  • Leslie Joe Ritzma: Fought for the right to bomb Signal Hill in the 1970s.
  • Kathy Sierra: Combined gymnastics and freestyle skating despite its dismissal as “too feminine.”
  • Alyssa Steamer & Jamie Rays: Exceptional '90s skaters marginalized as "tokens" until collective organization forced greater inclusion.

4. Gendered Perceptions and Industry Backlash

• Early Equality to Exclusion: Initial contests in the 1960s and 70s offered more parity, but as the industry commercialized, skateboarding was aggressively rebranded as male. "As money and industry got involved, the values shifted... the girls were not seen as a market worth catering to." (09:40)
• Parallels to Societal Trends: Mainstream culture shifts (e.g., Reagan-era backlash) echoed in skating, with periods of progress and regression especially visible in the 1980s and 1990s.

5. Debunking Myths and Misconceptions

• Women Never Disappeared: A core aim is to challenge the notion that women “vanished” from the scene in the '80s and '90s; they were organizing underground, producing zines, creating the Women's Skateboard Network (1986-92), and staying active, even if ignored by mainstream media. "I've even been told myself to my face that there were no girls who skated, but that's just what people are seeing in the media. And I have proof..." (11:55)
• Authenticity Policing: Women were often dismissed as "posers" in a scene where men dictated rules of credibility, even though women had to be “more punk” by persisting underground.

6. Unique Thematic Structure of the Book

• Non-chronological Organization: Porter intentionally avoids a straightforward timeline, opting instead for chapters centered on recurring themes and individual matriarchs as focal points. "I kind of decided that I would avoid doing sort of a traditional timeline..." (13:13)
• Personal Research Journey: The book includes the evolution of her archive, Instagram, and research approach, blending personal and collective narratives.

7. Community Building: Girl Gangs and Zines

Girl Gangs

• Defined as groups (three or more) of women forming their own teams, creating visibility and challenging exclusion—they have been pivotal since as early as 1963 with La Femme in California. "[La Femme] approached a women's clothing store called La Femme and they formed their own team. They got their own custom jackets and their own back patches, and they made themselves visible." (19:41)
• The feeling of "invincibility" and empowerment was transformative, running counter to broader cultural expectations of femininity.

Zines

• DIY, photocopied mini-magazines provided a pre-internet communication network, free from gatekeepers, galvanizing girls to rally for contest divisions and recognition.
  • Ladies Skate World (1986) and Equal Time Zine (early '90s) united hundreds globally, leading to the first all-women’s skate film.
  • Zines' international reach (e.g., Brazil’s Check It Out) and legacy-making power were emphasized. "There's no gatekeepers. You can just do it. So like in 86, there's Ladies Skate World, that was sort of the first female focused skateboard zine. And there was like this call out, come on girls, let's rally together." (24:17)

8. Intersectionality & Double Marginalization

• Women skaters navigated exclusion both from mainstream society (as participants in a 'delinquent' activity) and from the male-dominated subculture. "She describes this as a subculture within a subculture because we're... buried within this broader subculture." (27:50)
• Despite the myth of skateboarding as uniquely countercultural, its gender policing often mirrored mainstream society.

9. Case Study Approach and Vignettes

• Porter uses mid-chapter biographies and spotlights to showcase the vast diversity of women's stories in skateboarding, intentionally crafting an index so readers can find themselves. "I knew that some of these skaters, when they buy the book, they're going to open the contents page and look for themselves." (30:38)

10. Porter’s Personal Journey and Self-Reflection

• Integrating her own story was a deliberate choice to build trust and reflect the common trajectory of isolation/discovery for girl skaters.
  • Early anger at erasure gave way to mentorship, healing, and community validation. "Throughout this process, like I'm meeting all these older women who become my mentors. They... help me in, like, a healing process." (33:18)
• She mined old journals, letters, and experiences, embracing vulnerability and honesty to connect with the reader.

11. The Research Process and Activism

• Research was challenging—names changed or were misrecorded, archives were fragmented, and zines were scattered globally.
• Porter sees her librarian skills and archival work as both a scholarly and activist endeavor, combating the "archival silence" that distorts history. "When only one story... is being acknowledged, it really distorts history. It's like kind of boring and... not the kind of world I want to live in." (37:23)
• The archive is a living, participatory community: collectors, fellow skaters, academics, and even older "dudes" contribute, making this a movement, not just a book.

12. Women’s Skate History Archive & Social Media

• The online archive acts as a digital hub, organized by decade, featuring 350+ bios and digitized zines—a resource for anyone to witness women's presence in skateboarding. "It's just a great sort of hub. It's just a tangible mother load of research and so no one can deny that we did not exist." (41:12)
• Social media was invaluable for connecting with isolated skaters, crowd-sourcing information, and enabling intergenerational recognition—sometimes bringing families and forgotten skaters into the fold. "I found my people online and discovered like there's other skateboard nerds and academics and people are really interested in the topic and want to share their story." (42:27)

13. Reflections and Future Directions

• Museum and exhibit consulting is expanding, with Porter acting as a subject expert to ensure women's contributions are documented—highlighting upcoming exhibits in connection with the 2028 LA Olympics.
• She continues to work as a librarian while maintaining the archive as a living document, ensuring new stories and materials keep surfacing.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the necessity of the archive:
  "I joke, I call this the wrath of the Skater librarian because, like I have, yeah, loaded it up." (41:12)
• On the feeling of validation and power:
  "When you're cruising down the street with a group of girls, you feel like, so invincible and powerful. And often, like, in society, girls don't always get to feel like that." (19:41)
• On zines' radical power:
  "There's no gatekeepers. You can just do it." (24:17)
• On skateboarding's gender-neutral potential:
  "It takes a courageous person to really call out this myth. Skateboarding doesn't need to be gendered. It's literally like a piece of wood and four wheels." (27:50)
• On research as activism:
  "It's worth the effort to, to seek out these stories and, you know, and have fun. And my gosh, like so many times whenever I reached out to someone... they're just like, oh my God, like, I thought I was forgotten. I can't believe you found me." (37:23)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:29 — Natalie’s background as a skate librarian and skateboarder
• 03:05 — Origin of the research; building archives and community
• 05:24 — Main hopes for the book’s impact
• 07:09 — Diversity of women’s skateboarding experience across decades
• 09:40 — How skateboarding became gendered; impact of industry/commercialization
• 11:55 — Debunking myths about women's absence
• 13:13 — Thematic, non-chronological structure of the book
• 19:41 — Girl gangs: early examples and empowering effects
• 24:17 — Zines: history, significance, and influence
• 27:50 — Intersectionality: exclusion from mainstream & subculture
• 30:38 — Why she included spotlights/vignettes in the structure
• 33:18 — Porter's personal reflections and integration of her own journey
• 37:23 — Research process as activism
• 41:12 — The archive as a living hub and community project
• 42:27 — The positive role of social media
• 45:03 — Consulting on exhibits, next steps, and keeping the project alive

Conclusion

Natalie Porter’s Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides is not only a history of women in skateboarding but a blueprint for recovering marginalized histories. By documenting zines, amplifying “girl gang” solidarity, and integrating her own experiences, Porter demonstrates the ongoing, collective effort required to rewrite the record. Her book and online archive serve as both resource and rallying cry—ensuring that, in her words, “no one can deny that we did not exist.”