The Most Fun Thing
Dispatches from a Skateboard Life

Quotes

“The year 2021 is the year of skateboarding. The ‘rebel’ pursuit was transformed into an Olympic sport. Thrasher magazine, skateboarding's bible, turned 40. So The Most Fun Thing couldn't have come at a better time [to] ponder the meaning of skateboarding.”—NPR

"The Most Fun Thing mines the value and ritual of fun… [Beachy’s] encyclopedic knowledge of skate ‘parts’ (a.k.a., films), bios, technicalities, even feuds, rolls into contemplations of Marilynne Robinson or Maggie Nelson… the book is grounded in memoir, vulnerable and direct, and often a stage for Kyle’s wit. The text can rollick… [Beachy] is now a premier chronicler of skateboarding."—Odie Lindsey, Southwest Review

"As readable as a skate mag and as complex as the best fiction, The Most Fun Thing imbricates themes of meaning, community, and the soul, and will leave you marveling at skateboarding’s mystery and hopeful for its future. A book as much for the skateboarder as the artist and the writer, the thinker, the feeler."—Mark Suciu, Thrasher Magazine's 2021 Skater of the Year

“A candid, funny, and sometimes damning rumination on why we skateboard. The most thought-provoking writing on skateboarding I’ve ever read.”—Bing Liu, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Minding the Gap

“A rewarding read even—or especially—for those of us who don’t know anything about skateboarding…. with a keen eye for nuance and an unflinching critical lens that’s as apt to magnify moments of intense beauty as to call bullsh*t on this lifelong obsession... Endlessly relevant.”—Holly M. Wendt, The Rumpus

“Transform[s] the ordinary into the extraordinary. . . . Beachy has written a book about skateboarding unlike any before it.”—The Chicago Reader

“Philosophical and provocative.”—Booklist

"A serious literary work about skateboarding might provoke a certain skepticism. I wondered. But as soon as I started reading, I saw that, as with fly-fishing, surfing and other ‘pastimes,’ the surface action has its underlying personal metaphysics, and its access to past times. Kyle Beachy explores his obsession with sinuous and reflective prose and shows us just how it matters."—Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again

"In The Most Fun Thing, Kyle Beachy assembles critique, philosophy, anecdote, personal history and imagination, while being shrewd, witty, provocative and—above all—hugely engaging. This is my new favorite book on skateboarding."—Iain Borden, author of Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History

"Skateboarding is not only the most fun thing, it is also a way of seeing the world. In telling his own story, Beachy reflects on the history of this counter-culture-turned-mainstream-culture, and shows how it shapes the fundamental aspects of life, one's approach to work and relationships, even changes the feeling of being in one's own skin. No one has captured this better than Beachy. A great read."—Ocean Howell, author of Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco