If you need reassurance that skateboarding would survive the apocalypse, watch any Pittsburgh scene video.
And if you need a glimpse of where the post-apocalyptic skateboard sphere of influence would headquarter itself, watch Tape Eater, the new video from Eric Calfo and the good people at Radio Skateshop.
This is by no means calling Pittsburgh the city apocalyptic — Pittsburgh’s beautiful — we’re just pointing out that the people who excel at skateboarding there really thrive at spots that feel plucked out of a zombie movie. A perfect ledge on good ground probably feels like some bullshit to them.
In Tape Eater, the fellas skate abandoned house porches, oxidized car hoods, roof panels of box trucks, a dirty mattress (…eww), and a myriad of weed-strewn bank-to-ledges made out of concrete that was probably poured 100 years ago — and had to be refurbished, rub-bricked and lacquered back into the 21st century by skaters. It was hard not to have a built-in parental mechanism go off on some of the clips: “Bro, you’re skating that …in shorts?!”
Like John Petras, another Pittsburgh videographer, said about the generation before him in an interview about his pandemic-era video back in ’21: “Those guys make Pittsburgh look the way it should look. They’ll pull a fridge out of an abandoned house and skate it.” These guys are still at it. In fact, Zach Funk — one of those generational Pittsburgh talents he was alluding to — has a banger of a first part in this video.