Braydon Szafranski has always been the kind of skater who speaks his mind.
In a recent chat on the Living Proof New York podcast, the longtime pro laid out how different the skateboarding world feels compared to when he was coming up.
For him, growing up in the golden era of core skateboarding meant skating every day, filming with friends, and spending hours inside the local shop.
He was around the Baker and Deathwish crews, even part of the legendary Piss Drunx scene, so everything felt connected to skateboarding at its core.
Shops were the hub, the spot where you bought boards, shoes, magazines, and also just hung out. It was more than a store. It was where you learned about tricks, about video parts, and about what crews were doing out in the streets.
These days, he says it feels nothing like that.
During the interview he laughed about walking into a shop and seeing brands he had never even heard of. “What the f*ck is Frog,” he said, almost confused at how much the industry has shifted.
He also asked about the shelves, wondering what the shoe wall looked like, and the response left him unimpressed. To him, it’s all corporate-owned labels now, brands with little connection to the culture he grew up with.
The shift is even clearer when it comes to how people buy setups.
According to Szafranski, kids today are getting everything online. Shoes, boards, clothing, it all arrives in the mail with no reason to stop by a shop at all.
He mentioned Straye footwear, a brand that only sells online, and wondered out loud what the point was if you never stepped foot inside a shop. For him, that kills a big piece of skateboarding’s heart.
“Kids nowadays don’t even know what a skate shop was,” he said. “I loved the skate shop. I grew up at them. It was everything you wanted to be and choices all up and down the walls.”
That love for shops is something a lot of OG skate heads probably understand.
Walking in and seeing the walls stacked with boards, each with its own artwork, hearing the sound of skate videos playing on a small TV in the corner, and trading stories with whoever was behind the counter.
It was a place to feel part of something bigger.
Szafranski sees the whole culture sliding into a digital world. Ordering online might be easy, but it will never hit like walking into a shop and being surrounded by the scene.
Now it is just clicks and packages showing up at your door with no soul behind it. For some people that is just how things go, but to Szafranski it feels like the streets lost a piece of what made skating real.