I think, by the way, that the rail he boardslides into the bank is in Ocean Beach, San Francisco. I think also that I stayed at a friend's apartment that was like 100 yards from that spot.
Sometime right around 1998, Chad Muska became more than just a gnarly skater. For several years after 1998, Chad Muska became God to millions of young teenagers worldwide.
Muska liked Rap music and did kickflips in skateparks while wearing a backpack and toting a ghetto blaster. When he first set out, these gimmicks didn't look like gimmicks so much as antics. Antics of a young man who knew he had charisma and talent and who could blow people away with his skating.
After "Fulfill The Dream," Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the complete explosion of Shorty's Skateboards, the tide turned. People started hating Muska. Muska stopped skating and started making music. When he did film a trick, the footage reeked of half-stepping.
Transworld's "Videoradio," which documented the C1rca team's Euro tour, market the peak of Muska ridic, when hundreds of kids mobbed the dude at a demo and he couldn't even move.
Amid the hype and backlash, people forgot a simple thing about Muska. He had, at one point, made a seven-minute part in a video that was crucial to skateboarding's cultural self-awareness. He starts out just ollieing over things as he rolls through streets, skating the way everyday people skate. He ollies three massive sets of stairs. He destroys everything.
It'd be too bad if no one took time to remember that before this,
there was this.
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