"When I first started skating I’d see a kid walking around wearing skate shoes and I knew that person skated," says AJ Kohn. "Now people wear Vans like they're Keds. Skateboarding has become very entrenched in youth fashion. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s a bad thing with respect to that kind of commercialism, but it’s great because there’s a lot more people able to do it for a living and do good things with it."

The 34-year-old Kohn is one of those people. Through 22 years of skateboarding, he’s made his dream his everyday work, both as a professional skater and as an advocate for youth education and engagement. His current projects use the lure of the board as a tool to educate, organize and create. It's a carrot he understands well—for Kohn, skating is more than a job, more than a hobby, more than a collection of tricks.

"Skateboarding is more or less a lifestyle," he explains. "It’s a sport and it’s an art and it’s also a lifestyle. I think of skateboarding every day. I go past something or I look at something and I think of skating it. I kind of live my life around that." Not that Kohn's life revolves around seeking out skate spots—his vision is much grander and his focus more diffuse. These days, his energy is directed towards the Franklin’s Paine Skatepark Fund, a Philly skateboard design and funding organization; his wife, Shannon, who skates and snowboards professionally; and a tiny can-do Prius with a hidden secret. 

That secret is the brainchild of Wondergy, a Philly-based initiative aimed at making science fun for kids through a variety of programs and methods, from lessons in freestyle skating to demos on electrocuting hot dogs. Kohn works specifically with the organization's SkateScience program. "We’re going to schools K-12—public and private, and special needs kids as well—and we teach skateboard science." says Kohn. "It’s a combination of both, so we explore the science that goes on behind the act of skateboarding. We have a little skatepark. We fit it all in a Prius. We took the backseat out and we have two fold out ramps that are kick out, two launch ramps, a flat rail and a fun box that we can split into two if we need to."

The show focuses on physics—more specifically, how things in motion stay in motion."We talk about spreading out mass and force, and everything from safety equipment to balance and Newtonian laws," says Kohn. "We show example of how [science] applies to skateboarding. I do different tricks based on these principles. I’ll talk about rotation and do tricks based on that. Then, at the end, we wrap it all up and talk about how all of these aspects come together to make a more complex trick, the olley, and we break down how to do it and how it works."

When we caught up with Kohn by phone, he was in Vermont on his fifth week of touring. In the next few months, Kohn plans on splitting his time between the road and working on Franklin's Paine's Creative Commissions, a program aimed at getting live performance and art into local skateparks. Kohn and his team are heading up a multi-use community center in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philly where they'll host science, art and music programs, in addition to a skate shop and general meeting area. 

"We hope to get these kids into positive and healthier lifestyles," he explains. "We will be working with Franklin’s Paine and Wondergy, as well as several other groups in the community who are involved in arts, music, health and wellness." The working name is "The Collective," though Kohn is not sure that’s going to stick. The group signed a six-month lease that starts in January. 

"Nothing like this has really happened within the skateboarding community, especially in Philadelphia," says Kohn about the multi-use shop/venue/gallery/forward-slash-so-many-other-possibilities site. "It’s going to be trial and error, and we're lucky to have some elder statesmen who still live in the city on board. Josh Nims is part of Paine; he’s also a lawyer who’s been skating for 30 years. You've got a lot of guys who grew up with nothing and now see there’s an opportunity to do something, to create [for today’s young skaters] all the stuff that we never had when we were kids."  

Kohn remembers that sparse skateboarding landscape well. He started organizing skate-centric events in 1997, setting up BBQ skate jams in the Poconos that operated as skate competitions during the day and music shows at night. "There was a key park up there called West End," he recalls. "We held it in the Poconos because it was a good in-the-middle spot between New York, the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia. We’d have over 150 skaters enter the contest because there was really nothing going on at that time. We’d have like 500 people show up for the concert. A lot were punk and heavy metal shows."

Kohn would organize the events and bring in other skaters to judge the competitions, including Bam Margera, Mike Maldonado, and Kerry Getz and Mark Brandstetter of Nocturnal Skateshop off South Street. Kohn went pro in 2004 (specializing in "freestyle" skating) and became extremely influential in the local and national skateboarding scenes.

"We used to all be called ‘dumb skateboarders,'" says Kohn, recalling a world before Vans made infant sizes and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater videogame topped kids' wish lists. "Now most of us have bachelor’s, if not advanced, degrees. It’s kind of sticking it to the man a little bit but at the same time it’s a positive means to an end. It’s about giving back at this point. We see the potential and we want to see how far we can push it."

To learn more about Kohn’s initiative, click here.