This may sound like my theory of skateboarding’s virtues entirely overlooks skating on any “made to skate” structures, but no. Skatepark skateboarding also leaves massive scope for the kind of personal expression Way’s stuntman jumping from point A to point B is bereft of as weaving interlinked concrete bowls like the ones which have been popping up all over the states (particularly the pacific northwest) over the last 10 years or so have countless different potential lines throughout them and it is down to an individuals own vision and awareness to forge their own way through it, pushing the park it’s self to find new possibilities. An entirely more creative process than just like hopping out of a helicopter or whatever.
Waiting for Lightning isn’t all bad and there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half or so but if you spend too much time thinking about the opinions being presented in the film, the general over-riding understanding of skateboarding present throughout is somewhat worrying. Ultimately though, it’s a portrait of a man not of an activity or an industry as a whole and I guess the man in question is one I just don’t particularly like so I was never going to be its biggest fan. Stacy Peralta’s recently released Bones Brigade: An Autobiography (available on Netflix) offers a much more insightful and broad view of skateboarding throughout the 1980s while still being a touching and illuminating character study of a number of considerably more likeable men, Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, the certifiably insane Rodney Mullen amongst and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Way’s position in skateboarding is no doubt problematic but if he wants to convince himself he is the best there ever was simply because he is doing something others never did then more power to him but I can’t help but feel I’m not alone in the view that simply is not how value is determined in skateboarding.
