Fair warning. I’m about to go on about Tony Alva again…
Every few weeks I do a YouTube search for new Tony Alva footage. From what I can see, Tony doesn’t go out “to film.” He goes out and skates, and maybe someone shoots some video, and maybe some of it is pretty good, and maybe it ends up on YouTube. Such is the case with this video below.
After watching this video several times today I texted it to some friends with some comments about how relaxed this skating is.
When I see rippers today on nearly any terrain they look frantic to me. Maybe it’s because they are going really fast, but I think it’s more than that. Not sure what, but I’ll figure it out. The propagation of skateboarding video, first on VHS tapes and now streaming to your pocket idiot-device has to some extent homogenized skating. I think it’s hard to argue against that, so I’m calling it a fact. I see it in freestyle skateboarding too. Where once skaters only had access to see the skating of their friends, or maybe the best person in town, or a group of local pros, now everyone has immediate access to everything. I think to some extent this permeates not just skateboarding but probably everything. Culture, pop culture, subculture, is now global. How sub can a global subculture be? Not very.
So now I see clips of rippers skating parks as fast at they can, every trick seems rushed and on the edge of disaster. Now the edge of disaster is often celebrated in skateboarding and rightfully so. Still, seeing someone blast around like a lunatic simply doesn’t connect with me.
Yes, this is likely a function of my age, but not entirely. I’d have said the same thing if I was 23 right now. Correction; 23, but with the same formative skate experiences.
At the start of this video, Alva does a little axle stall on a small wall, then does a casual 540 spin on the opposing bank. Relaxed. Styish. Smooth.
I heard him in a recent interview that what he thinks about now when skating isn’t so much learning new stuff but refining what he already knows. It shows. That line looks so satisfying. I can guess that when he does that line, he isn’t like “Wow, look what I just did!” but rather “Damn, that felt good!”.
Same with every line in that bowl.
My friend The Lone Sentry says Alva has Groove.
Earlier this year I was at an Aikido seminar taught by an 85 year old 7th Dan, Harvey. Harvey’s knees are kinda worn out. He’s a bit broken down, but he’s still teaching, and still learning. He told us the thing he loves about Aikido is that no matter how old you get there are still thing to learn, things where understanding can be deepened. I think skateboarding is the same way.
Leave a Reply