An Ode to Great Skater Hair, From Stacy Peralta to Leticia Bufoni

What draws a person to skate? Beyond the ease of traveling from point A to point B on four wheels, the impulse to turn an urban landscape into a personal test of physical boundaries—one that’s often painfully punishing—is a search for freedom, a liberation from limiting circumstances and laws (see: trespassing and gravity), perhaps even momentary proof of immortality, or at the very least, invincibility. These are not yens that can be met behind a desk. Skaters, in other words, are nonconformists—down to the length of their hair.

Male or female, so many of history’s best sidewalk surfers have been crowned with twinning cascades of bleached strands—the precise fade of pigment acting as a visual marker of hours clocked in abandoned pools, sloping skate parks, and especially daring staircases. See teen Stacy Peralta and Jay Adams—the Ocean Park-bred Z-Boys of Dogtown who would take skateboards from goofy (albeit dangerous) toys to brave new lip-sliding heights in the 1970s. Their buttery lengths splayed out behind them like motion lines, emphasizing the sharpness of their power slides, the speed of their hill bombs.

A decade earlier, Patti McGee turned herself, and the culture, upside down on the cover of Life magazine, riding her board on her hands, her platinum ponytail reaching for the earth while her feet seemed to touch the sky. Now, more than 50 years later, long, sun-kissed strands are still an emblem of professional riders—from Leticia Bufoni to the pre-teen Minna Stess, who continues to break boundaries that belie her age. Here, a look at nine skaters for whom hair is synonymous with freedom.

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