Fingerboarding on YouTube

It’s too bad we don’t have a better word for it. Refer to someone’s interest as a “hobby” and that someone will protest. “Hobby” signifies something silly or trivial – which is too bad.

Research shows that having a hobby – an interest, outside of work or school, something done just for enjoyment – confers many benefits. People who have hobbies enjoy better physical and mental health than the average, are less fatigued, report being happier, handle stress better and experience more success in their careers.

And hobbies often don’t stay small. They can open up a new world, introducing the hobbyist, and sometimes her family, to an entire community.

Kelsey Barker, a 15-year-old sophomore at Episcopal High School, discovered her hobby the summer before fifth grade: fingerboarding. This interest, especially popular among 12- and 13-year-old boys, involves making, collecting and performing tricks with miniature skateboards. And not the kind you can get for $3 at Target, Kelsey points out. (Parents here are nodding their heads, thinking, “Of course, they couldn’t just cost $3.”) “Professional” fingerboards are handmade out of several parts – the deck, the truck and the wheels – which, together, cost about $100 and need to be specially ordered, sometimes all the way from Berlin, a hot spot for fingerboarding.

The tricks done on fingerboards – your first two fingers act as the rider’s legs – are the same tricks done on real skateboards.

The community of fingerboarders is large and connected. Once you start fingerboarding, Kelsey explains, you can start your own YouTube channel. Hers, Kelsey Fingerboards, which she started in 2011, has over 14,000 subscribers and 800,000 views.

 Fingerboarders have started their own companies, handmaking the boards and miniature skateparks. These companies sponsor fellow fingerboarders, sending them products that they then “unbox” in videos on YouTube. Kelsey has both been sponsored and has sponsored others.

Fingerboarders hold “meet-ups” for each other. Kelsey has travelled to Boston several times with her family and to Berlin – yes, Berlin – because of her fingerboarding. She also holds a meet-up of her own, called Texas Rendezvous, every summer here in Houston: arranging for a venue (St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Bellaire), promoting it (on her YouTube, Twitter and Instagram accounts), finding sponsors to provide raffle prizes, and setting up the miniature skateparks and the sound system. “And Kelsey is on the microphone all day, running it,” says her mom, Kristen. Usually, around 30 to 50 fingerboarders attend these events, which, financially, break even.

For her next Rendezvous, Kelsey turned to GoFundMe to raise money for a miniature skatepark. Cost: roughly $2,000. Only one person, a boy from New Zealand, donated, but he donated the entire amount. “We told him we needed to know it was OK with his parents and got back a single-line email, ‘Yes, I am Harry’s mom, and I know what he did,’” says Kelsey’s mom, Kristen, who then decided they should also wait 60 days to make absolutely sure Harry’s parents have seen that charge on their credit card. The Barkers heard nothing, so Kelsey put in her order, due to arrive from Berlin in a couple of months.

Kelsey’s most popular video on her YouTube channel, with almost 160,000 views, is entitled “Teaching My Grandma and Sister to Fingerboard,” starring Kelsey’s grandmom, 73-year-old Betsy Smith, and 13-year-old little sister Rachel, an eighth grader at Trafton Academy.

Betsy is all for Kelsey’s hobby. A former arts and crafts teacher at St. Francis Episcopal School and The Mad Potter, Betsy lets Kelsey use her art studio to build ramps and has bought woodworking materials and tools Kelsey needs to make her skateboards. It was Betsy’s idea to appear on YouTube. Betsy has also done some “live streams” on YouNow, where she takes questions from fingerboarders. “I’m popular in this sport,” she laughs. “My draw is the talking; I can’t fingerboard at all. It’s hard.”

Questions Kelsey and Rachel have posed to their grandmother ranged from, “Do you know what lol means?” (Betsy did) to would she twerk (“Not happening”). In another video (“Unboxing Veneer With My Grandma,” almost 24,000 views), Betsy recounts “the worst and most embarrassing accident” she had skiing, when she knocked down the James Bond actor Roger Moore. The viewer comments on the videos where Betsy makes an appearance range from “best grandma ever xD” and “Again your grandma is so awesome” to “Dude your grandma is better at finger boarding than me” and “Grandma blink twice if you’re OK.”

Betsy thinks her granddaughter’s hobby – through which Kelsey has learned myriad skills, from videography and woodworking to marketing and public speaking – is great. Fingerboarders are, Betsy says, “the nicest bunch of kids.”