Depression Session

“Its about getting stomped on for being the dude that you are.”

Ethan Fowler on Bummer High.

I don’t really blog that often about skateboarding or I should say how much it was a part of my day to day life from twelve years old through the end of my undergraduate collegiate years.  Even in the two years after I graduated, before I went to graduate school I worked for a skate shop in Richmond, a skate shop I had been going to and supported since the very first days.  Its funny to think how differently I feel about it now, compared to how I felt about it then.  Obviously it’s no longer a crucial part of my life, and I’m OK with that, but every time I hear someone talk about people quitting and good riddance I cringe a little bit.  I still love it, care for it, because what it gave me growing up, but when I look at it then and when I look at it now they are no longer on the same plain.  I guess I could say that my tastes became more refined as Ive gotten older, the spectacle of going big no longer impresses like it did at fifteen.  I came to, thanks to some friends that I don’t see as often as I wish I did, appreciate the stylish.  I was lucky, getting into skating just before Welcome To Hell and all the jumping it inspired.  No, the first skate video I ever purchased, Eastern Exposure Three, I still have it and the fold up poster that came in the plastic sleeve.  Then came Transworld’s second video, Four Wheel Drive, and probably a few 411s or something like them, videos didn’t come out in those days and the Internet did not exist.  As a young kid, you’re definitely influences by what you see, growing up in a town with no older skaters to hang out with, I always looked to mags like thrasher and videos for inspiration and much like everything else in my life, I threw myself into skating.  I wanted to know everything about it.  Where am I going with this?  Well, in 1996 I was thirteen, I guess I had gotten my mom to take me up to Backdoor, the earlier incarnation of Dominion if you don’t know, to buy a skate video, I had probably saved up some money cutting lawns or something and all my money was going to skating if I had any.  As I mentioned before, skate videos weren’t coming out like they are now back in those days.  I still remember going in and asking Ryan what if any new stuff had come out and if he could recommend anything.  I cant recall if he simply pulled the two tapes out of the display case or if we talked first narrowing down what teams or whatever I was into, but it came down in the end to two tapes.  Etnies’ Five and Stereo’s Tincan Folklore. He said, “With the Etnies video there are a lot of people, but shorter parts.  Stereo is longer, but has artier filler.”  OK technically that probably isn’t word for word what he said, but it was the general gist, that one was shorter, about fifteen minutes with a huge team and the other about thirty with far fewer people.  I went with the Stereo video.  Probably then more because it was the longer video, but as far as influences go, I couldn’t have made a better choice.  I had no clue of stereos history, having gotten into skating after Stereo’s A Visual Sound, and I can still remember when I got my hands on a copy, but that’s a different story.  In Tincan Folklore, I knew I had found something special, though I think I was disappointed at first, what was this thing?  Lots of film and montages?  No hucking down stairs?  People doing lines?  Going fast?  Big wheels?  All very confusing for the times.  Regardless, last part was held by Ethan Fowler, someone who is still going strong in skateboarding some almost fifteen years later.  I grew to appreciate this video more and more throughout the years, more so when I had a conversation with my friend Adrian about it years later, I remember him saying something about the red Nike’s line, and the skating at Union square (you can see those below).  There’s just something about the way that he skates that is incredibly fluid, never strained, it just seems so natural, sometimes sketchy, but that’s skateboarding.  Hell, the constant quest for perfection and filming I think had a huge hand in my faltering interest in the activity.  Since it’s possible to find just about anything on Youtube these days I tracked down all of his video parts that I really like so check them out.  This summer after I finish my current class I’m setting up a new board and hitting the streets of DC, come find me.

All the video parts are in chronological order, except for his part from That’s Life which doesn’t seem to be on-line anymore.  They all have great music, I used to have a taped copy of the Visual Sound soundtrack on a cassette, but it wore out, both its usefulness and its ability to be used by modern audio playing devices.  In fact one of the reasons its a disappointment to leave out his part in That’s Life is because the song People Get Ready by the Chambers Brothers, fits perfectly and makes it that much better.