Skateboard videos are fairytales: a solitary skater or chosen crew plus filmer, showcasing the fruits of their labor within a rotation of backdrops. If a pedestrian, security guard or lurker is particularly memorable, they’re sometimes allowed inside of the tale for an interlude. But otherwise, every skate video is its own bubble, cordoned off from any factors that might impede the illusion that skateboarding is the only thing that exists.
The skateparks are closed, there are barely any people on the streets, Black Business just celebrated its first birthday, and today, Naquan Rollings uploaded a new edit, “Pre-Roll.”
Between its beginning in L.A. at the time of Kobe’s death, and a second half in New York as quarantine was beginning to take hold — there’s something particular in the way this video manages to discreetly capture the this surreal clusterfuck of a year (or third-of-a-year, fuck.) Videos with these dudes always have this special feel because you see a crew in the background doing crowd control on the rollaways, but now the sidewalks here are just …empty.
