Standing guard: How Habibi Skate Shop is protecting the soul of skating
There’s a voice for the true skater – this is what he has to say…
My conversation with Maysam Faraj, the man behind Habibi Skate Shop, happened on a Tuesday afternoon, quite unexpectedly. He called me out, in his unserious way, in our text exchange for taking a day to reply to his message and ten minutes later I was bouncing on the balls of my feet in our office conference room as he grappled with the technical difficulties of Google Meet. Not technologically inclined, the lot of us are.
He’s a sharp man, with a smile and a laugh he flourishes easily, and a lack of censorship I take to quite well. The intended subject of our conversation is Habibi Skate Shop – a passion project he holds so dearly to his heart, although it’s not a passion project anymore.
Deira Fountain 2008 - Credit to Greg Charbein
Evan Collisson - Ollie - Maysam Faraj - Filming - Al Maktoum Road, Deira 2021 - Credit to Habibi Skate Shop
Maysam Faraj - Crook - Deira Fountain 2022 - Credit to Evan Collisson
Maysam Faraj - Crook - Expo 2021 - Credit to Altamash Urooj
The archives…
When we talk about skate culture, we need to talk about video documentation because visuals are king and that’s how the trajectory of evolution will come about. Consider these pictures a tapestry of history, memory, places, people and the point where they all come together – a culture in the making, in real time.
“Just to even say I love it is a belittling sort of sentence,” says Maysam about skateboarding.
He then proceeds to gag at the term way of life.
“Skaters don’t need to say this stuff to each other, because we will never-we’ll say yeah dude, it’s skateboarding.”
Habibi Skate Shop is skater-owned, entirely homegrown, online and built on a sort of cellular level integration that has no language to explain it. It was founded just over two years ago – by the people, for the people, and although entirely online right now, is looking to change that soon. Like much in this world, its birth was driven by necessity, but the fire that wrought the iron was rage.
Maysam came of age in the slim thick of it, back in the late 90s when the boys would get their camcorders and go skating at haunts like the Deira Fountain. “My friends and I would call us the first generation of skateboarders in the UAE,” he recalls, speaking of a time when there were no actual skate shops in the young country and no peers to seed the local community – this was the crew.
“We did find a bikini-board-short kind of swimwear shop in Jumeirah called Heatwaves and they had some very cool looking boards in their display.”
The group was able to secure a few boards, completely different in feel from the more readily available variety – those were toys, these were the real deal – but they wanted more, needed more, and their eager pursuit led to the owner setting up a little beach themed shack, coconuts and all, that stocked the skating gear.
This was the first win and far from the last. Small and fledgling as it was, there was a new hurdle on the horizon for the community post the advent of the Internet. Suits, waltzing in with their drawing boards and pockets full of money, turning something affordable and approachable like skateboarding into something it’s not: gross mass appeal.
“Growing up, for me at least, skateboarding was not cool,” Maysam explains. “Then one day, it got really cool, and everyone wanted a piece of skateboarding, so commercials started popping up, brands started getting involved, non-skaters started businesses to really capitalise on this.”
There is a pinch of possessiveness in his voice as he speaks, a sort of urgency to protect even the words he says about it, as if he owns this. He owns skateboarding, but so does every single person who does it with heart. It belongs to each and every one of them, earned with sweat, soul and countless hours of repetition. “I’m coming up on like, 26 years now. I can tell you, I’ve got DNA all around this city. my blood, my skin, my sweat – I’ve earned my passion. What they did is they turned it into an elitist activity.”
Maysam Faraj – Credit Karim Nassar
As such, the ethos of Habibi is simple. They support the community with basic needs – fresh, quality product, fair pricing and the merit their best interest as skateboarders deserves. It’s an organic equation, heartening and humbly intended to honour the greatest prizes any skater could ever recieve: power and freedom.
Also a cultural collective, the shop takes it upon itself to teach local skaters what is good for them and what is not (which on top of the list is removing the skater itself from the formula) especially when the threat of capitalism looms low still, pop culture-fying the precious craft. Much work has to be done, Maysam tells me.
Beyond the country and into the region, Habibi is helping foster skating communities all over, from Egypt to Oman, Kuwait and beyond. An industry machinery is missing and without the logistical, geographic and economic benefits that brings, growth and collaboration for even the most authentic collectives is nearly impossible.
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“Skateboarding is all magic,” elaborates Maysam. “The industry is magic. No one has a network, no one has a contact, no one is in the in. Dealing from one person to another person to another city to another country – and I found myself taking on a lot of those problems.”
This fight for representation is an uphill battle, but there is a sense of optimism from the mere existence of a shop like Habibi; to an outsider like me, the fierceness of Maysam’s ideals and this one thing he told me that gives reason enough.
“I identify as a skateboarder therefore I have empathy, therefore I have resilience, therefore I have grit, therefore I have a DIY mentality, therefore I appreciate architecture, I appreciate arts, I appreciate opinions and difference of opinions, because this is skateboarding culture.”
Habibi Skate Shop, @habibiskateshop, habibiskateshop.com
Header image: Maysam Faraj – Credit to Ghassan Luqman
Images: Supplied
