Art At Its Purest: Rieder v.s. Sinner

listen to dubstep

Citizen Kane is famously Orson Welles’ only film without studio intervention. He was given a blank check and final edit to produce what has up until two years ago, been considered the greatest film ever made. It was one man’s singular vision, pure and unhampered by the wills of studio executives. He would spend the remainder of his career struggling with financing, re-cuts, and creative control over his projects.

Skateboarding does not allow such a thing.

Many talented skaters are plucked from high schools and put into tour vans before they receive their diplomas, or form a concrete understanding of rudimentary social codes that high school is good at providing. They don’t really know the outside world in the same way normal people with rocket switch flips do, as they are both blessed and cursed with the ability to ride a skateboard for a living.

In turn, industry father-figures are required to look after their best interests. “Don’t wear that stupid hat, people will think you’re a kook,” “Don’t skate to that corny song,” “Stop doing 270 shove-its out of everything,” “You need to take a shower and put on some deodorant,” etc. Trusted team managers, video editors, photographers and journalists are appointed guardians of many pro skaters’ #trueself — the one that never finished cooking in the oven known as “the real world.”

There is an understanding that genius on a skateboard is best left on a skateboard, and that we let the people who aren’t nearly as good at riding skateboards (the “studio execs” in this analogy) handle the mediated version of that genius.

But the system broke this summer. We have our Citizen Kane(s), so to speak.

Have two parts ever encapsulated all you can come to know of a skateboarder with a single section the same way Rieder’s HUF commercial, or Sinner’s Theatrix part have? Never before have two companies given their riders such free reign in allowing us to experience the very depths of the skater’s soul in just a few minutes. (Even if it is to the chagrin of our British collegues.) We have seen the unmasked face of two of skateboarding’s greats, and the debate has raged on ever since. Summer 2014 will forever be the end of video parts as we know them, and the beginning of a new wave where skateboarding gets more attuned with its emotions and confronts its demons.

It’s okay to have feelings y’all.

What is the purer representation of the artist?

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36 Comments

  1. This is ridiculous. Can’t we just vote on whether or not we like the orchestrated, board grabbing, driver’s side, “skitching” Levi’s ad, complete with the fake taxi cab that have replaced the epileptic seizure inducing Supreme ads up in the corner there?

  2. In my second year of community college, I handed in a paper on Citizen Kane. My sister wrote it for one of her high school classes. Teacher gave me an A minus, because it was too good. She thought I didnt write it. After som politicing, I got it changed to an A.

    I refuse to vote in this experiment. Its like asking, broken leg or broken arm? Both shitty outcomes.

  3. Thank you Ruggedpictureposer, you are the voice of reason. I too second the motion. I refuse to vote.

  4. Now if you asked me which “part”(as I can’t justifiably call the Reider “commercial” a part)((damn knows it hard for me to even call it a commercial)) was worse, I would absolutely vote that the Reider clip is worse. It’s an absolute stain on society, completely canceling out the significance of the switch backside flip. Thank you very much.

  5. Reider’s Huf It’s the MAD-TV version of who he is supposed to be. I’m pretty sure that whole ad is tongue-in-cheek. All them are having a laugh.

  6. never heard of sinner before, and dylan is in an advanced stage of self-intoxication; in any case, both have good skating and a total absence of pep, ginger and the right spirit.

  7. “sinner’s” part s probably a truer representation of the man behind the ‘listen to dubstep’ t-shirt than dylan.’s self-aggrandizing tourtured-artist masturbatory commercial. but at least dylan. has the self-respect and self-awareness not to do a nollie back smith and have it re-shown in slomo

  8. Wait…this “Sinner” guy is Pat Pasquale?! He used to ride for Baker, wore baggy ass clothes and had a cleaner style. This part was cool, but I was kinda surprised when I realized who he was.

  9. The real question here is who is skateboarding’s Casablanca representation. Casablanca > Citizen Kane.

  10. The real question is who the fuck ruined skateboarding?!?!? Where did these clowns come from?!? Back when Kasper and Simon Woodstock were around they basically got ridiculed into obscurity, now this shit flies uncontested. I guess I’m just an old man. We need to bring bak that blog where the guy hates on everyone. We need to bring back Bo Turner to start bearing the shit out of these fools, or at least call them out. Sinner can’t skate, all this is a big joke. QS doesn’t go from backing Forrest Edwards to backing Sinner. No way.

  11. dear god @ “dominic”, lol. never got it never will, but still keeps tabs on skating? i wonder if you’re that dipshit that owns brooklyn projects. might as well be, either way.

  12. To be completely honest, it seems as though both of these parts are equally pure in different ways—Reider wanted something emotional and something that probably most people wouldn’t like. Sinner’s (aka Pat Pasquale’s) part was equally pure. However, to me Sinner achieved that [what Reider achieved] without knowing it (Sinner’s part made a lot of people mad and I’m almost positive 70% of the people who viewed the whole thing were disgusted.) Whether or not that was contrived from the genius of Mr. Pasquale is completely up for discussion..

  13. I’m all for these polarizing skate parts. There’s way too many clones in skating these days. I’m still waiting for someone to man up and skate to the Grateful Dead. Screw the kids and their meaningless opinions of what is and isn’t “cool”.

  14. I’d rather watch Jason Byoun skate up University Place in the pouring rain than watch the Huf advertisement

  15. sinners part is born of pure enthusiasm, and dylan’s is bogged down in pretension. it’s like, the more stupid you are the harder it is to be mad at you.

  16. Rieder’s was lame but at least it was something new.

    Sinner’s looked like anything else shat out by the Shake Junt crew

  17. Since when do all you Kansas City but now I’m from NYC fools make the rules up. There ain’t no rules in this thing that’s why we do it. Y’all don’t like looking at titties or bandanas then don’t watch dat shit homos

  18. industry father figures?
    like the dudes who told antuan to stop doing drugs and getting all those tattoos on his face?

    but yeah, there have been parts that

    gonz in video days
    PJ ladd in PJ’s horrible life
    any daewon part
    ali boulala in Sorry
    everyone else in sorry
    dill in photosynthesis and dill again in the DVS video
    jeremy klein in Ravers
    either gou miyagi part
    dan gesmer in Public Domain

    etc this could probably go on forever

  19. like what was actually so bad about it? please inform me. was it the fact that he had some naked model bitch in it and that was just too much for you guys? or did he not do enough “cool tricks”?

  20. I think the thing that would move Dylan’s career to the level of pure art would be a signature cape. Just imagine how beautiful that would be.


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