Given that most mainstream media outlets tend to make skateboarders look like complete retards when they’re on TV (Dill, Bam, Sheckler, etc.), it is always nice when they don’t fall victim to the otherwise inevitable propensity for fucking up anything skate-related. I say this with wholehearted acknowledgement that skateboarders dominantly are retards, with a select few exceptions, so making them come off as seemingly coherent and competent of existence in modern society at large is a feat in and of itself.
I haven’t seen HBO’s latest show, “How to Make It in America,” largely due to the fact that, like 70% New Jersey-ians, the one cable-having resource I had canceled HBO the morning after the series finale of The Sopranos aired. However, according to what I have been told, it hasn’t really dealt as explicitly with skateboarding as people had expected when they heard Javier Nunez had been casted for it. That’s probably a good thing, as seeing Kid Cudi doing kickturns at the Banks with a film crew would be an unfortunate image to see.
The promotional video for it is great though, and almost the sort of thing that you wouldn’t expect from a network tailored to reaching a fairly wide audience, as I’m not exactly sure how well it would resonate with a audience that doesn’t know who Sean Sheffy is. The whole thing is an account of Javier’s character, who is otherwise seldom seen in the series, but supposedly a very large background player. It’s not hard to figure out what cast of characters is responsible for informing the cocktail of seemingly fictionalized accounts of “Wilfredo” by everyone from Gino to Reda to Luis Tolentino to Koston. There’s a handful of actual tricks in it too, which I’m not mad at. It’s the best thing on TV since Jersey Shore.
Watch it over at HBO.com, The Legend of Wilfredo Gomez.
