Skate Jawn’s ‘FIDDY’ Video — A Survey Of Skate Scenes As We Wind Down The Decade

Keeping any physical media enterprise breathing in 2019 — even a zine — is an important, yet difficult job. We don’t need another long-winded rant about how social media “changed everything,” but we do need to remind those toiling behind skateboarding’s printed word that what they do means a lot to us. No Instagram account is going to lasso fourteen crews from fourteen different scenes, and tally up their visions for something as comprehensive as FIDDY.

On the occasion of their fiftieth issue, Skate Jawn enlisted videographers from all over the country to contribute a section to their Cinematographer Project x E.S.T. hybrid. Fiddy is a survey of skateboarding if you were to pare it down to the guys whose coverage mainly comes from homegrown zines and scene-specific videos.

On the surface, it feels like skating has changed a lot in the past decade: cities across the country have tried to further legislate us inside skatepark fences, spots that endured for decades turned to rubble in a matter of days, and skating itself is more popular than ever. Except from the outside looking in, the Richmond of Cell Out doesn’t feel much different than the Bust Crew montage in Fiddy, the blueprint for skating cutty L.A. spots laid out by the Dylan video is still being followed in Austin Leleu’s section, and Brian Panebianco’s contribution hasn’t lost any of the feeling from the original Sabotage videos, even though the crew has no Love Park to retreat to.

Skating’s changing — yeah, there’s more than ever to process and reflect on — but it’s also fine.