With the world’s population of skateboarders rapidly approaching one billion, skate videos now, more than ever, are exercises in personnel management. Who gets their shine and for how long before we scroll to a “Pop The Balloon” video?
And skate shops — even moreso than the mega-teams housed under footwear giants — have to toe the line between the kids on team skating eight days a week, the O.G. who’s going for that last big score, the grom who you throw in to be encouraging, and the recovering maniac who’s been skating since the 80s that insists he’s gonna come out and get a clip before deadline. Before you know it, your video is four hours long.
(And just because The Brutalist had the bladder-consciousness to throw an intermission in midway, that doesn’t mean any of youse submitting 64-minute homie videos with no titles to the QS inbox should be getting any fucking ideas.)
Ted Purtell and our friends up at Orchard Skateshop figured it out.
The formula is: the two homies going the hardest at that very moment, everyone else sandwiched in the middle for posterity’s sake, and a “holy shit, was that Chima Ferguson?”-moment as a treat on the way to a 14-minute runtime. Is this formula revolutionary? Absolutely goddamn not, but let it serve as a reminder to our brevity-averse colleagues.
After an almost Photosynthesis-ian intro, Eddie Vargas Jr. kicks it off with probably his best part yet, and a style that looks like it was honed at the USC Blocks thirty years ago with a Hi-8 being pointed at him — not to mention an absolute banger of a [second] song. A who’s who of New Englanders that includes Brianna Delaney, Sean Evans, Connor Noll and many more takes up the midsection. And the proverbial curtains belong to Cooper Qua, on loan from Seasons, and also with his probably-best part, which includes on obstacle course on his way to an up-rail.
That’s all we need to merit a rewatch — rather than a walk around the block for some fresh air once it’s over ;)