1 post tagged “extreme sports”
Skateboarders are known for many qualities. Among these are bravery, independence, and a lack of concern for the laws of society and physics. Literacy, however, is not typically a word associated with skaters. While there might be some pioneers willing to make a trick of speed-reading Moby Dick while grinding the library stair rails, the printed page is not always up to the nuts-and-bolts task of teaching the next newcomer how to perform the “ollie impossible.”
The thing is that no mere description of suicidal insanity can make the jaw and stomach drop with amazement at how little some experts value intact bones. For the true visceral experience, skateboard video clips bring every sight and sound of a mind-blowing afternoon in the rugged life of the celebrity skater.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, each second of video is practically a book in itself. Any expert, no matter how inarticulate in speech, can use a camera and a simple editor to convey at variable speeds exactly how they make the magic happen.
Skateboard video clips are able to show what words all too often fail to describe: the delicate nuances of timing and execution that make the difference between being slick and being slammed.
The first video recordings of skateboard teams appeared with the advent of the VCR in the 1980’s. The new medium revolutionized the sport, and also standardized it to a certain extent. Skate teams began to emerge to take advantage of the growing potential for exposure in what had previously been an underground, solo sport. The most prevalent of these teams was the Bones Brigade, featuring such icons as Stacey Peralta and Mike McGill.
Skateboarding came into the sporting mainstream during the nineties, when cable TV companies began scrambling for content to fill the sudden programming gaps between standbys like auto racing and tennis. ESPN led the way, sponsoring the historic X-games in 1995, followed trendy stations like MTV.
A new phenomenon emerged: spectator-driven skateboarding, exposing the sport to armchair enthusiasts who didn’t know an ollie from a kickflip. Lack of understanding wouldn't stop anyone from sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a fancy trick to go wrong though.
The newfound celebrity skaters had a rougher road than many conventional athletes, battling the volatile ride to stardom while executing never-before imagined flying feats and making tremendous personal sacrifices for the sport. A generation of kids took to the streets, empowered with a repertoire of concrete-thumping moves hammered out by these old-schoolers.
The vert skater has been a perpetually endangered species, in a skateboard world increasingly dominated by the urban landscape crowd. Legends like Tony Hawk, who could sail the half-pipe with ease, have struggled personally as well as professionally with the shifting fortunes of a sport which had not yet found its destiny.
Today, video skating is finding a cozy home among some of the most popular titles on sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion. Predictably, the amateur wipeout variety consistently outperforms the instructional skateboard video clips. The future of skateboarding as a spectator sport may owe more to the hapless slam victim than the pro making it look all too easy.
