fully flared, regarded by many to be a pinnacle achievement in skate videos
as a child of the 90s, it was hard not to love them-- they were fresh, edgy, and awesome. I found them to be utterly captivating, and here are a few reasons why.
you have to remember that things worked a little differently during the rise of the skate video. the internet as we know it today was still in its infancy, due in no small part to the fact that dial-up was the connection of the day, meaning photos were enough to break your bandwidth, so music and video were far from the norm. TV was still the gatekeeper for media-- but thankfully channels like MTV and VH1 were readily accessible on cable and were thirsty enough for young eyes that they'd occasionally tolerate media from skate culture and the communities surrounding it (DIY video, underground music, action sports).
that said, skate videos hit me like a mac truck. i was chatting with a new friend recently about how huge skate videos were, and this friend turned me on to two legendary skate videos i've gone back and watched. these videos have reminded me why i loved skate videos so much: they had the look, the sound, and the impact.
nothing else looked like a skate video. low angles, fisheye lenses, and the type of fast, smooth movement that comes from riding a skateboard let you know immediately that you were watching a skate video. and that's just the technique; what filled the frame was just as iconic. hot, fit dudes in action, leaping off the edges of a gritty, urban landscape, sometimes cutting up & acting a fool, other times busting ass and bleeding real blood on camera-- the people in skate videos didn't look like anyone else, and didn't act like them, either.
and when they started wearing skinny jeans, it just got even hotter and more counterculturally unique. plaid, skate shoes, graffiti, junk food, busted camera gear-- nothing else looked like a skate video.
a still from pretty sweet (i believe?) YOU CAN SMELL THE ACTION!!!
just as important and unique as the visuals was the soundtrack. punk, metal, ska, indie, and hip hop got less play on TV & radio in those days, and napster and the iPod were just about to blow up, but you just knew that every skate video was going to have a jam that would get stuck in your head. it was shit you couldn't hear anywhere else, like Goldfinger, Rage Against The Machine, Three 6 Mafia, or Mannie Fresh.
even better, skate videos tied their soundtracks deeper into the video itself, by cutting to the music, flashing fast montages over musical vamps, and other next-level creative direction & integration. this paralleled the evolution of the music video, which had grown out of the televised live performances they had started with into more of a stand-alone short film. in that sense, skate videos were their own brand of kickass music video.
not just anything could make the cut at MTV or VH1 in those days. sure, those networks were thirst for young eyes, but they were also big businesses led by old people who ultimately wanted to make money. as a result, many emergent creative forms never made the cut, and communities like the skate scene weren't given the same exposure. maybe this was because the skate scene was more easily monetizable than other movements-- from skateboards and skate shoes to the look and the sound, so much of what made skate videos unique was for sale, and was peddled by the growing genre of skate magazines and skate shops.
since the skate scene was largely young, male, and urban, and not insignificantly white and affluent, it was an easy target both for old folks looking to make a buck, and for those looking for evidence that the youth were up to no good. skating was extremely unpopular among adults and community leaders where i lived at the time, as an unfortunate reactionary movement (you have to remember that the federal government was investigating everything from death metal to dnd at the time-- things were fuckin wild).
every attempt to ban or criminalize skating just made it even cooler and edgier, and you better believe it became common practice to include shots of crews getting kicked out of public places into skate videos. the trend was unstoppable.
that's just a few of my favorite things about skate videos. all these reasons and more combined to make skate videos incredibly influential in my life. there were few things as distinctly stylistic or as mesmerizingly exciting as skate videos, and i'm grateful for their influence and inspiration to this day.
