#throwback:
1984’s Bones Brigade
Video Show
F
ollowing its dawn in
the 1950’s, skateboarding
regularly rose and fell in
popularity – approaching
the mainstream before hitting
another bump like safety
concerns or a shortage of skate
parks. For all the passion the
sport fostered, there were still
those concerned that it may just
be a fad, doomed to drift in and
out of popularity without ever
really establishing itself.
At the start of the 1970s,
however, a few key things
started to fall into place. On
the technology front, the same
developments in plastics that
gave your grandparents exciting
new rotary phone designs and
horrific avocado bathroom
suites were solving some of the
sport’s main concerns. Urethane
wheels (pioneered by Frank
Nasworthy) were more durable,
grippy and most importantly
vastly smoother than traditional
clay or metal variants. Safety
equipment like helmets and
knee/elbow pads became lighter
and more affordable, reducing
the demonisation of the sport
among parents. Along with
the establishment of national
competitions in the USA, these
helped the sport grow in a much
more consistent – and less likely
to roll back – manner.
By the 80s another new piece of
tech would give the sport a boost:
VHS and home video. As the
sport stayed true to its counter-
culture roots, media options were
limited until skaters were able to
take matters into their own hands.
At that point, from the outside,
114 | FreestyleXtreme.com
The video edit is an action-sports staple, and
although it has evolved with technology and
tastes, many of the conventions we still see
today were laid down over 30 years ago by Stacy
Peralta, Craig Stecyk, and George Powell.
skate seemed to be moving in
a more competition-focused
direction but Stacy Peralta,
Craig Stecyk, and George Powell
decided they wanted to make a
film that painted a picture of the
sport and lifestyle they knew,
rather than the commonly held
view.
With their skate hardware
company, Powell Peralta, well
established and a healthy roster of
riders at their disposal - including
Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero,
Mike McGill, Lance Mountain,
Rodney Mullen, Stacy Peralta,
and Per Welinder - they were able
to gather footage of street, vert
and freestyle skate, while telling
the story of the scene as much as
the sport.
The simple concept was to make
a film that could be played on
loop in skate stores (the idea of
people commonly having VCRs at
home was still a little far-fetched),
covering a wide breadth of the
sport without having a definable
beginning or end.
The finished film was as close to
a viral video as you could get in
1984, watched by skaters around
the world and spawning both
an ongoing series and arguably
the whole skate edit scene. It
established Powell Peralta as film
producers as well as a hardware
company – a dynamic which
would be aped by many brands
right up to the modern YouTube
age.
To give the classic film a look,
head to FreestyleXtreme.com/
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