Philadelphia, perhaps more than any other major skate city, exists in a bubble. It ignores the superficial signifiers of “cool” that we have created for ourselves. Whatever aesthetic we come to expect of a video made by a bunch of twentysomethings in the 2010s doesn’t reach Philadelphia. People from Philly will claim its four or five years “out of touch.” That number could be doubled or tripled depending where you look.
Philly kids make videos for people in Philly, where the decade-plus since Photosynthesis and The DC Video never happened. People still rock the shoes Kalis wore, do lines the way Tim O. did, and nosegrind how Wenning once nosegrinded. There’s a cult around that era and its videos, in a way that’s incomparable to pretty much any other mythologized skate scene — right now, dudes in S.F. aren’t going out of their way to track down Rob Welsh’s Aesthetics pro model or Scott Johnston Lakais.
Most skate videos reward the viewer in a simple way: you watch them to get hyped, try a trick, or maybe copy someone’s style if that’s your thing. Sabotage 4, after sitting with it for a month or so, unpacks footnotes and homages with each viewing. Just as a sample in a hip-hop song has an invitation to try and put your finger on the original sound, or The Simpsons will wink at classic movies, Sabotage 4 comes from a similar place. The video pokes the viewer in the ribs, testing the geek-levels of anyone well-versed in the folklore of peak Alien Workshop-era Philadelphia skateboarding. It celebrates its inspirations beyond the tricks.
