Pro skater Brian Anderson. Photo: Instagram/@nolimitsoldier
“My name is Brian Anderson, I am a professional skateboarder, and we are here to talk about the fact that I am gay.” Those are the first words from skate legend Brian Anderson in a moving new mini-doc from Vice Sports.
B.A., a former World Champ and 2003 Thrasher magazine Skater of the Year is loved for his smooth, powerful style and classic tricks like his infamous shaved-headed frontside blunt slide at Hubba Hideout.
Throughout most of his long and illustrious skateboarding career, Anderson kept his sexuality secret, before coming out to a few friends and fellow skaters, and now the public. While not the first gay skateboarder to come out, Anderson, at the top of the game by any measure, definitely has the highest profile.
Though he says the most difficult person to come out to was his mom — and not anyone from the skateboarding industry — Anderson describes the pain of years of isolation as he kept his personal life secret.
“Hearing the word faggot all the time made me think at a young age that it was really dangerous to talk about it,” he says. “I was really freaked out and people would have perceived it a lot different had I said this 15 years ago.”
As Mike Carroll, who appears in the piece, puts it, “There’s a lot of homophobia in skateboarding. There’s a lot of homophobia in everything. It’s not skateboarding, it’s the world.”
Anderson, who lives in Queens, New York, says that his frustration fueled his aggressive skateboarding style. “A part of me was so irritated and angry from holding that in that it made me more of animal on my skateboard,” he says. “I kind of considered myself a skateboarder first and gay second.”
Skate legend Ed Templeton weighed in on what it means that a skater of Anderson’s caliber has come forward with this. “If he were to come out and say ‘I’m gay,’ it would be: I’m gay, deal with it. All the kids who are sitting there at home thinking like, ‘Wait my favorite skater’s gay?’ would be forced to decide, what does that matter?”
