Most people reserve Sunday evenings for staring at TV screens (unless, you know, you actually skateboard), but the Sunday primetime grid is usually empty in the summer and basketball season is over. So if you’re looking for something to do tonight, and haven’t seen Deathbowl to Downtown yet, they’re screening it over at the Ace Hotel on 29th Street and Broadway. (N train to 28th Street and walk up one block, or B, D, F, M, N, R, Q, W to Herald Square and walk down five blocks.) Happy hour from 8 to 9 P.M. The documentary itself starts at 9 and runs for about 80-90 minutes.
We can nitpick about omissions and stuff being glossed over all we want, but when it comes down to it, it’s amazing that something like this was actually thought of, and executed so well. Hell, even twelve-hour Ken Burns documentaries leave things out, and Deathbowl does a great job with what details it chose to dwell upon in its eighty-minute runtime. If you have any interest in skateboarding history, or even the cultural history of New York, and you haven’t seen it, you probably should.
Trailer here. Ryan Hickey Deathbowl outtakes at the bottom of this post.