It's late, and I'm just typing....

[tabaqui]

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.

Comments

[tabaqui]

Yeah, it's pretty sucky. Thanks, bb.

I'm not into skateboarding as a sport or even as a fandom, really. I just keep stumbling across this docu on the tv when i'm flipping channels, and i've seen it from start to finish now and just....

I dunno. Something about the time, i guess (my own childhood, i was eight and ten and twelve when they're talking about a lot of this stuff) so the look of things is so familiar, and then, like i said.... The images. All these young - i mean, some start out pre-teen! - long-haired, skinny boys doing crazy, sometimes death-defying things, rocketing down hills and zooming up the sides of pools and *no* helmets, no padding, no shoes, good gods.... It's almost got this sort of Outsiders vibe to it, or Oliver Twist, though they really weren't fighting or stealing.... I dunno. It's an amazing docu. :)

And my brain just slots Show J2 fandom in there and dredges up those long-haired pictures of Mr. Ackles when he was a teen, i guess and...yup, there we go, *need* that fic....

So...might that be *you* in your icon?

[blueswan]

Hee! No. That is Daewon Song who is a skater. He's mid-30ish and been at it since he was 15-16 as a pro. I heart him mightily. He's just a lovely sweet guy who happens to be among the world's best as a techical street skater.

I'm an admirer of the speed and skill that it takes to be a skateboarder. It requires an ability to ignore possible injury and laugh off actual injuries. There's no one way to be a skater, there's no rules or regulations, there's no paternalistic association making skaters toe the line and live up to anyone's expectations. It's something someone can do on their own and not answer to the expectations of a coach and team. It keeps kids out of trouble and focused on what they love. Also it is meant to be fun, witness Cheese & Crackers which is pure glee.

Theres is a Spike Jonze vid Fully Flared, I think you'd love. It's got a real apocalyptic vibe to it.

The "sport" (many skaters refute that it is a sport) is chock full of characters and truly unique individuals. I'm positive J2 would fit into that world beautifully. (And I am sorry to bore you to tears, but at least I didn't get going on the love story of Daewon and Daniel. *G*)

[tabaqui]

Yeah, i'm way too partial to my skin to want to skateboard. It just feels so out of control. I loved rollerskating as a kid, but a skateboard always felt...too wild. Of course, not like we had anything remotely decent to skateboard *on* - it was our patio and our road and sometimes a sidewalk and wow, that was not easy. (And speaking of not easy, omg, they were surfing in all this debris, these dock pilings that were falling down, rebar and crap in the water, just...insane.)

I loved how the Z-boys were the *first* doing this stuff, but of course, at the time, they didn't even think about it, they were just *doing* it. Adapting skateboard moves to surfer moves, because they were surfers first, and that's what they knew, and since the waves 'ran out', so to speak, at like ten in the morning, they had the whole day free, so filling it in with skateboards was what they did.

There was a surfer, Jeff Ho, who was doing all this new stuff where he'd touch the waves, turn back on his own wake, stuff like that, and that was so *different* and new, so the z-boys were skateboarding with his style, crouching down on their boards, hands on the ground in their turns, doubling back.... It was so neat in the docu to see them 'discovering' all these new moves and styles and not really caring or *knowing* they were innovating, they just wanted to *skate*.....

So neat. :) *goes to watch vid*

[blueswan]

I've long wanted to see Dogtown. One of these days I will. Thanks for telling me what you loved about the movie and listening to me ramble on about some of the skaters I enjoy. It was lovely.

[tabaqui]

I'm just glad i got to babble! I don't do 'sports' - as in, i don't watch them, don't know much about most, and don't really *care*, but every now and again, something will hook me.

I love to watch the old black and white footage from when baseball was just starting out, for some reason it fascinates me. And then this...just too cool.

I caught it again last night and i was geeking so hard and there was *nobody* to talk to about it, so - yay for a listening ear. :)

I really must own this dvd, heh.