Sacramento isn’t just hosting the X Games today. It helped create them | Opinion

Long before the X Games trucks rolled into town for three days of competition concluding Sunday, Sacramento’s skaters were carving their own legends — down Stoker Hill in Old Sacramento, across K Street, and in every do-it-yourself spot claimed with a board and a dream.

This isn’t just another stop for the X Games, an annual competition founded by ESPN and featuring elite athletes from across the world competing in skateboarding and other extreme sports. It’s a homecoming of sorts.

The 31-year-old event staged in Sacramento for the first time is poetic given that the local skateboarding story is a blueprint for the entire sport — and now, the rest of the world gets to see why. Sac Town’s skateboarding roots run deep, shaped by a mix of punk spirit, working-class grit, and a relentless drive to create something authentic.

Quite frankly, the X Games wouldn’t be what they are without Sacramento’s imprint. The city’s skaters and innovators, especially the N-Men and Don Bostick, helped define the contest formats that now set the standard for extreme sports. N-Men started as a crew of teenagers skating in empty pools, becoming legendary in their community.

Bostick, an N-Men legend who lived in Sacramento as a young adult, didn’t just skate the city’s streets; he helped design the very format of the X Games, making Sacramento’s influence foundational to the event itself.

Locals of every age, background, and creed walk the embankments known as Stoker Hill, which connects Old Sacramento to DOCO (Downtown Commons). Yet many people in Sacramento may not be aware that Sacramento is one of the birthplaces of Northern California’s skateboarding movement.

This tradition is nearly a half-century and lives on as riders push their worn boards down K Street, leaving black marks in their wake, a tell that our roads have been used well. Skaters aren’t donning shiny new Vans shoes or Pacsun clothing.

That legacy isn’t nostalgia — it’s what modern skateboarding aspires to be. When you see the X Games staged here, you’re seeing the roots of creativity, inclusion that shaped what skateboarding is today.

Just kids who loved to skate

Watching the documentary N-Men: The Untold Story, I reveled in the skaters telling their stories. They fashioned their own skate parks out of parking lots, grinding on curbs or junk cars. All of that was on display at the Sacto Street Style competitions in the 1980s.

What set the N-Men and Sacramento’s earliest skaters apart was their passion. They came from every part of the city and every walk of life, united not by fame or sponsorships, but by the thrill of discovery that informed their skating. They’d masquerade as pool servicemen just to drain and ride in abandoned pools, proving that the pursuit was never about status, but about freedom and friendship.

This spirit—pure, underground, and welcoming to all — shaped the city’s skateboarding identity. Even now, you’ll find N-Men alumni skating alongside kids and parents, living proof that in Sacramento, skateboarding is a lifelong bond forged by shared joy.

Bringing back genuine skateboarding

By hosting the X Games, Sacramento has the chance to showcase the undeniable influence Sacramento has had on skateboarding’s evolution. To understand where skateboarding came from, and where it’s headed, you have to start with the stories and people who built it here.

For one weekend, the world will witness skateboarding as it was meant to be in the city that helped build the sport from the ground up.