Words: Danny Wilson — more Gleaming The Cube
In the last few days, former Plan B videographer Jacob Rosenberg’s fawning documentary about skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, curiously titled Waiting for Lightning, began popping up on some big name illegal video streaming websites which I won’t do either of us the disservice of mentioning by name here. Though the film certainly has its merits in offering an insight into the sort of determination required for a child of meagre beginnings to go on to jump over the Great Wall of China on a little planks of wood, the picture raised a number of questions relating to Way’s somewhat confusing position within skateboarding as a whole that it seemingly wilfully shirked.
Most significantly of all, can what Danny Way does on his so called “mega-ramps” really be considered “skateboarding” in the traditional sense, or is it an activity all of it’s own? One thing that can be said with a level of certainty is that it is not simply the pinnacle of skateboarding achievement, as it is presented throughout Waiting for Lightning. There surely isn’t anyone out there that would be of the opinion that the best thing that has ever been done on a skateboard was “when yer man jumped over the Great Wall of China”.
Danny Way has always been a somewhat controversial figure within in skateboarding, between his chiselled jaw, shitty tribal style bicep tat, wrap around shades and a preoccupation with motorcross bikes and the like, his name could essentially be used as shorthand for the sort of “jock” mentality that many people get extremely nervous around having in skateboarding. This understanding of Way’s position takes on even more dark connotations when one considers that in 1993 he was present at the potentially homophobically charged assault with a brick resulting in the eventual death of a gay man in San Francisco for which his close friend Josh Swindell served an over 20 year jail sentence and with Way walking away entirely unpunished, Swindell, the less successful of the two, having taken sole responsibility.
Upon Swindell’s release last year he was immediately offered a job in the multimillion dollar business that Way had been establishing over these last 20 odd years. Of course none of this was mentioned in Waiting for Lightning. Perhaps I have taken the most extreme example I could have but it’s symptomatic of wider willingness to ignore anything potentially detrimental the notion of Way as a super talented visionary who pushed skateboarding to it’s zenith, a point that only he alone could conceivably improve upon.
It’s not just Way’s potential misdeeds that give Waiting for Lightning an air of the uncomfortable about it. The fact that there is not one but two men giving talking head interviews under the billing “Danny Way’s Manager” just doesn’t sit well. I’m not saying other skaters don’t have managers but if they do I certainly don’t know about them and that is surely no accident. Way and his colleagues in ventures like DC shoes which he part owns and Plan B skateboards are just so eager to make skateboarding into just another sport or at least that’s the impression one gets when you see people’s “managers” being wheeled out to talk to camera about the amazing and singular talents of the people that pay their salaries.
It is perhaps ridiculous for anyone to say things like “that has no place in skateboarding” as history has proven to us that pretty much anytime that’s been said before the subject of the derision goes on to define skateboarding in the future, street skateboarding’s first emergence was met with all sorts of claims of “that’s not skateboarding” for example. But that said, people’s “managers” have no place in skateboarding and I can only hope for the benefit of the culture as a whole that that sentiment won’t seem ridiculous any time in the future. The whole sports and competition focused mentality almost drips from every scene of anyone talking to camera, everyone is draped in logos is the most crass way possible, even Way’s mother is wearing a t-shirt with “MEGA RAMP” scrawled 3 times across the front in a shitty metal band font. The sheer volume of Monster Energy and Red Bull logos on screen over the 90+ minutes could probably result in some sort of contact buzz for the viewer.
