The traditional ‘sports’ understanding of skateboarding isn’t just present in NASCAR style branding on the people speaking but on the ‘biggest, longest, bestest, mostest’ understanding of what makes skateboarding great that seems to be so prevalent within all the interviews. Stuntman is a term used in more than one interview as a form of high praise, the implication being Way has managed to somehow go beyond the limitations of skateboarding to “proper stuntman stuff”, the fact that his life is more obviously at risk or that the feats he is performing are more understandable to the uninitiated makes his approach to skateboarding somehow better, in the opinion of many interviewed the best that has ever been achieved.
This mentality is genuinely baffling coming from anyone with a background in skating (like many of the interview subjects) it just seems ludicrous to think that jumping out of a helicopter into a ramp or whatever other gimmicky nonsense is just unquestionably better than a Gino Ianucci nollie back heel on flat ground to the strains of a classic Wu Tang joint just seems to be such a spectacular missing of the point from lots of people who really should know better.
With this stuntman understanding of Skateboarding’s worth it seems to me that Way and his acolytes have lost site of what makes skateboarding so special: skateboarder’s ability to totally repurpose a space and do something amazing with it. Taking a ledge or a bank or some stairs or whatever and through vision and skill doing something that the creators of that space had never envisioned. Even street skaters who could be understood to share a stuntman mentality to some degree as they jump down bigger and bigger flights of stairs or gaps, Aaron “Jaws” Homoki springs to mind, still push themselves to overcome obstacles that were not designed to be jumped down.
