While skateboard video makers are fighting for the remaining morsels of our attention spans, a new #trend is elongating video parts for unclear reasons. Over the past few months, prominent videos have began to include footage of obviously talented skateboarders not landing flip tricks mid-part. And these aren’t slams or epic bails a la Andrew Reynolds’ sneaky Aldo campaign. No, they’re basic flatground tricks that laypeople primo on each day at the T.F. — the sort of maneuvers that a younger viewer may be lead to believe are only missed when pros participate in a bracket orchestrated by a SoCal warehouse with no natural light.
Say what you will about pro sports and how we’re not like them because “we’re artists, dude,” but at least they show us the missed layups and incomplete passes. Skateboarding’s most commonly digested media form (the skate video…pretty sure those are still more watched than contests) only shows you .5% of the blood, sweat and tears that go into a skate career. This latest trend seems poised to do otherwise, as it reminds us that Jason Dill misses switch varial heels just like we do when playing S.K.A.T.E. against our most white rapper-resembling friends.
In some convoluted way, bailed flat tricks in curated video parts bring us closer to Kevin Durant missing a game-tieing free throw than Gatorade or Sunny D or whatever the old guys on the porch choose to believe is “ruining” skateboarding today ;)
“You couldn’t have known what I did for this.” — Future & Every Pro Skateboarder.
