Birthz/Krookz

For my birthday I was basically doused in technology (a phone and a dvd and the less-newfangled invention: bookz). My cell phone had had Mahoney disease, which is when you take off your pants to get busy and your phone cracks on the floor creating a supernova-looking phenom on your display screen. My sis and pops got together to float me a new one and it is simply fresh, complete with photo-taking ability and even Internet poker.

The real prize though was that I got a new skate video thanks to my little brother. Back when I was in High School my two brothers and I pretty much could just go to the skate shop to get a gift for either (or both) of the other two.

Since college, things have gotten complex and it no longer suffices anyone to receive a series of stickers, t-shirts, and videos of guys spinning tornadoes down seventeen flights of stairs. Intellectual growth meant more books for birthdays and more rap CD's for Christmas...so nostalgia is necessarily on my mind when I look at this vid.

The thing is, Krooked is run by oft-name-dropped-as-influence Mark Gonzales, who basically turned 80s powerpink lightningbolt halfpipe skateboarding into the cool hiphop ledgelord bluejeans streetcruising skateboarding it is today. He skated on Blind for Video Days, a video that taught kids everywhere that 360 flips could happen and was one of the first commercial video appearances of pro-actor-pro/Earl Jason Lee.

Somewhat ironically, Gonz wants Krooked to bring skating back to an era he helped destroy. He skates one-directional boards, reprising stuff from his early career, and often commits smooth Koston/H.A.M.M.E.R. skating no-nos by picking up his board and running around with it or jumping down stairs in just his shoes, with his skateboard nowhere in the frame. This is all cut very fast and smoothly, and, along with cameos by Neck Face and other skateboard "artists," contributes to the feeling that this is a creative skate video.

Gonz used to kickflip fakie in pools on banana boards and it looked silly but there was a gravity to it, like no one used banana boards to do semi-jokey tricks, whatever soul skating might have had in the Dogtown days had surely been defeated.

Fine, and I love Tiltmode Army videos and the Baker franchise's series where they are all just skating around drunk in some summer heat, smashing beer bottles with their skates, skating on plywood in the backyard, etc. And I like Gonz's spastic style on the board. But his non-sequitur-laced monologues in between parts and the unforgivable obsession with loafers that drag us through the interludes reek of strained effort, which is the opposite of why anyone would watch skateboarding (or maybe anything for that matter), least of all for over a half an hour.

This weekend we were drinking in a circle, chatting about DC real estate and the future of our assorted and non-existent careers when a young undergrad held up his cigarette and said "I think I might be an alcoholic." In reply, I asked him, "Then where's your drink?" Two years ago I was skating the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and this kid was doing monster 180s (maybe even switch) into the fountain but looked around after he landed to see if anyone saw him. As if to say, "I think I might be a skateboarding legend," Gonz keeps looking for the camera to see if we saw/admire him, killing the post-skate-trick/orgasm emptyheadedness that every amateur skater knows and is the reason that landing silly tricks is worth it. It's like he's hoping that his spazoid antics will bring back the moments of yesteryore when the camera seemed to just be on him at the right moment and it was only joy that fueled the whole eccentric tic-tac crazed phenomenon.

Jury's still hung until later, when I watch the apparently more Neck Face-centric Disk 2. Maybe I'll liveblog it.