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I have watched, in the last couple of weeks, several different times (ESPN has been showing this, for some reason, nearly every day), a movie called 'Dogtown and Z-Boys'. It's a documentary about the Zephyr Skate team, a group of boys and one girl who were surfers-turned-skateboarders in 'Dog Town', California.
There's a lot of footage that was shot in the early seventies by other skaters, a lot of black and white images and man....
It's a really gorgeous film, really amazingly interesting and a little bitter-sweet.
This is a city that, at the time, at least, was a decaying, abandoned playground. The 'Coney Island' of the west coast that fell on hard times, and the surfers dodged collapsing boardwalks and fallen amusement park rides in search of the perfect wave.
The kids were from broken homes, poor homes, were 'troublemakers' in school, were 'thrown away' kids. They had a fierce sense of neighborhood and ownership. You did not surf if you did not belong, you did not skate if you were not part of the crowd. 'Like the mafia', 'like a street gant'. And - 'A z-boy was always with another z-boy'.
But the *images*.... The thin-muscled, beach-tan boys, with long hair and ripped jeans and Vans, curling into waves or over their own knees, hitting water and pavement with equal grace and fearlessness, 'skateboarding as stream of consciousness'.... And the lone girl who skated 'better than some of the boys' at a time when girls weren't *supposed* to be better....
Now i want fic, damnit. J2 Dogtown Z-boys, up at dawn to surf and sneaking into school playgrounds and backyards to skate empty pools all afternoon. With images like this, who could blame me?
In news that sucks, Chango-the-cat got out of the house two days ago, and we still can't find him. Damnit. It's over 100 degrees out there, and we walked around the neighborhood today calling him, hoping he was just lost and hiding but.... I really, really want my cranky old man cat to just come home.
There's a lot of footage that was shot in the early seventies by other skaters, a lot of black and white images and man....
It's a really gorgeous film, really amazingly interesting and a little bitter-sweet.
This is a city that, at the time, at least, was a decaying, abandoned playground. The 'Coney Island' of the west coast that fell on hard times, and the surfers dodged collapsing boardwalks and fallen amusement park rides in search of the perfect wave.
The kids were from broken homes, poor homes, were 'troublemakers' in school, were 'thrown away' kids. They had a fierce sense of neighborhood and ownership. You did not surf if you did not belong, you did not skate if you were not part of the crowd. 'Like the mafia', 'like a street gant'. And - 'A z-boy was always with another z-boy'.
But the *images*.... The thin-muscled, beach-tan boys, with long hair and ripped jeans and Vans, curling into waves or over their own knees, hitting water and pavement with equal grace and fearlessness, 'skateboarding as stream of consciousness'.... And the lone girl who skated 'better than some of the boys' at a time when girls weren't *supposed* to be better....
Now i want fic, damnit. J2 Dogtown Z-boys, up at dawn to surf and sneaking into school playgrounds and backyards to skate empty pools all afternoon. With images like this, who could blame me?
In news that sucks, Chango-the-cat got out of the house two days ago, and we still can't find him. Damnit. It's over 100 degrees out there, and we walked around the neighborhood today calling him, hoping he was just lost and hiding but.... I really, really want my cranky old man cat to just come home.