"What is this, Avril Lavigne Day?"

So asked one confused onlooker last month, as a group of more than 60 people, wearing dress shirts and neckties, gathered at the corner of Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave.

They also brought along 42-inch skateboards — it was the Toronto Longboarders' second annual "Board Meeting" (hence the attire). We riders, so often maligned, got to claim the road for ourselves, cruising down the world's longest street in what was billed as "the biggest longboarding event in Toronto's history."



For that onlooker — your Avril Lavigne Sk8er Boi will ride a 24- to 26-inch board designed for jumping and ramp riding. Longboards, made for speed and long-distance riding, are usually 42 to 47 inches long, though some can reach 7 feet.

After spotting a flyer inviting all longboarders to "rip Yonge Street like a fat man's g-string," I hit the Meeting. In a sport as notoriously individualistic as skateboarding, the Toronto Longboarders' rides are an attempt at community building.

At the pre-ride gathering, everything was smiles and good-humoured banter. People checked out each other's boards. One 18-year-old mohawked skater punk looked forward to seeing female riders — "I've heard they're out there but man I never see any," he said. Several did show up.

For a sport that gets a bad rap, our ride lived up to the highest ideals of sports. When we bombed down the hill just south of St. Clair Ave., no one tried to out-race anyone else; when we stopped at Yonge and Bloor, it was so stragglers could catch up; when we ran across College St. holding our boards above our heads and yelling at the top of our lungs, it was as if we had already found what it was we hoped to find; and when the ride finished at Queen and John, we all laid down in the middle of the intersection to declare victory together — no MVPs, no trophies, just the joy of the ride.

To outsiders, it may have looked silly. But for us — from 18-year-old Janelle Leclair, in her purple velvet-rimmed sunglasses, who just moved here from Barrie and was glad to hook-up with other riders, to 40-year-old IT recruiter Rob Sydia (his two-year-old son already has two boards) who rides because "it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, you get caught in this stuff and you're not going to let it go" — there was fun. The fun of cruising through Toronto at 30 kilometres per hour, of carving huge turns out of the concrete sea as pedestrians and drivers looked on in confusion.