Rethink Skateboarding
Every now and then a video part comes out that pushes skateboarding in an entirely new direction.
It's the part everyone talks about, the one you watch over and over with your friends and don't stop talking about for weeks. Sometimes it raises the bar for what can be done on a skateboard technically or in terms of gnarlyness, sometimes it simplifies things and reminds us that skateboarding is about having fun, and sometimes it introduces a new generation of skateboarders to tricks and styles that were en vogue 10+ years before.
Here's our list of video parts that made skateboarding rethink itself:
It's almost hard to process how much amazing skateboarding can be packed into one orange VHS tape. There are many sick parts in this video (AVE, Fred Gall, even a young Mark Appleyard), but out of all them Brian Wenning's stood out as revolutionary due his ability to make technical skateboarding look more clean and stylish than it ever had before. In the months and years following this video's release, the nation's streets & skateparks were filled with kids in swishy pants trying backside nosegrind pop-outs and switch backside tailslides.
A new level of technical skating was born with this part, and in addition to that, the tricks were done with so much speed and precision that skateboarding's collective perception of what is possible was permanently altered. PJ's frontside 360 heelflip down a stair set (0:00) seemed so other-worldly that it needed several rewinds to even comprehend what trick was being done. It's fair to say that PJ punched skateboarding in the face with this part.
This is the part that introduced to everyone west of Pennsylvania to East Coast skateboarding. Pole jams, ollies in lines, and skating fast through traffic were all foreign concepts to skaters in the Midwest and on the West Coast, so it's easy to see why this part was (and still is) so important to skateboarding.
Billy Marks Good and Evil - 2004
Before Billy Marks' part in Good and Evil dropped, kickflip frontside boardslides and the occasional kickflip backside 50-50 were about as technical as people got on big rails. Billy brought a whole new bag of tricks into the mix, and even though sometimes was touching just a pubic hair of the rail, it truly was eye opening to the possibilities of what can be down on handrails.
Bobby Puleo has been a style icon since Penal Code, but this part cemented his status as a major influencer of skaters worldwide. With one video part Bobby sparked a resurgence of interest in East Coast skateboarding, quickly followed by countless video parts filled with cellar doors, ollies into banks, and brown Dickies made by those he influenced. Nothing reaffirms the old adage that 'less is more' like this part.
Jamie Thomas Misled Youth - 1999
In the early 2000's we saw many a skater jumping down giant gaps and and hitting massive rails, and this is the part that ushered them all in. Jamie raised the bar several levels in terms of what can be done on a skateboard with this part and set the foundation for an entirely new discipline within skateboarding.
Shiloh Greathouse First Love - 2005
In the early 2000's, there were two camps within street skateboarding: you were either a tech skater or a gnar skater, and there wasn't much room for anything else style-wise. In addition to being the first major part of the 2000's to prominently feature multiple trick combos, Shiloh's 'comeback' part in First Love highlighted the place for no-complies, wallrides, and the occasional street grab within skateboarding. Additionally (and most importantly), he reminded us to not take skating so seriously.
Anthony Pappalardo Fully Flared - 2007
“If you watch the video from beginning to end, my part, I just wanted it to look different than everyone else, not better or worse, I wasn’t trying to change skateboarding. ”
It takes balls to film a part based on simplicity and style for a video filled with flip-in-flip-out
craziness. Anthony Pappalardo did just that in his part for Fully Flared, opting for pole jams and long 50-50s instead of the nollie crooked grinds everyone expected from him. While the part initially seemed like a flop, it's relevance is clear 8 years later based on the immense popularity of boardslides and highwater pants seen in contemporary video parts.
Skating fast has always been important, but what about skating really fucking fast? Dennis Busentitz’s part in Real’s 2005 promo video showed us all how much cooler skateboarding looks when done at intense speeds. Add into the equation Dennis’ pension for grinding every inch of the ledge and his buttery smooth flip tricks and you’re left with a badass part that pushed us all to simply skate better.
Chris Millic Worship Friendship 2013
‘Weird’ skateboarding is all the rage in 2015, but it was only a couple years ago that wearing Chuck Taylors, skating an odd shaped board and doing caveman boardslides as legitimate tricks were seen as lame. It took someone with the affable nature (see his antics in Slap’s One in a Million for a proper introduction) and lack of giving a fuck like Chris Millic to make this formerly shunned side of skateboarding popular. It’s only a matter of time before skateboarding as a whole views this part as a classic.
Thank you Rob Sissi, Pete Spooner and Mike Munzenrider