Words: Danny Wilson // more Gleaming The Cube
It’s been a big week for online skate video releases. The latest Bones video premiered online and was closed out with another balls to the wall part from everyone’s favourite four-eyes and my outrageously early pick for Skater of the Year 2013, Ben Raybourn. The latest Blood Wizard video, brainchild of master lensman Mike Manzoori, 90s powerhouse Chris Senn and SF institution Toad also got a release on Thrasher’s website and you should probably drop what you are doing right now watch it and then come back to me. And finally in “skateboarding its actually super cool to like right now” news Shawn Powers finally got a proper Palace introduction clip which, despite its hipster trappings, is a must-watch for the fakie tre flip over the bench alone. But all these top-notch releases are secondary compared to the latest Girl video. Well, sort of.
A few days ago “Dog”, a companion piece to the classic Girl productions Goldfish and Mouse, surfaced online. Dog though was not an official Girl skateboards release but rather a re-edit of pre-existing footage taken from various tour videos and clips from other parts that were already in wide circulation and it might just be the greatest skate video of all time. In keeping with the established aesthetic and “vibe” of the golden age of Girl skateboards (and arguably skateboarding as a whole), Dog’s makers, the man/men/ladies behind the mysterious Tenyson corporation Vimeo channel, have managed to do what some of the biggest name skateboard manufacturers and film makers have consistently failed to do: give skateboarders exactly what they want. Dog is obviously the product of somebody who has a great affection for the early days of Girl and in some quarters the video has almost been adopted as a modern example to appeal to when one discusses what a Girl video “should” look, sound and even feel like. This notion of an “ought” when discussing skateboard videos, companies or even just skaters is part of a wider school of thought within skateboarding – a notion of a sort of entitlement from the consumer that is perhaps particular to skateboarding alone.
Some justify themselves in the watching, but not all re-edits are entirely agenda free. Some home-editing hobbyists use their edits to make a comment on the content or perhaps the way the content that was originally presented. When one talks about a re-edit laden with meaning like this the first names that have to spring to mind is noted New York no-good-nicks behind Quartersnacks.
In the last few years the Quartersnacks re-edit has become something on an institution itself and in some sectors there is no greater honour than a Q.S. re-edit, certainly for the skater anyway if not the editor of the original part. By its nature though a Quartersnacks re-edit is almost a statement of how the part should have been. One could argue that these criticisms of a sort are made with tongue placed firmly in cheek and in keeping with the tone of the sites content over all. That being said, though, it is hard to consider the re-edit of Dennis Busentiz’s section from the latest real video as any laughing matter when it is so clearly superior to the original, edited by Dan Wolfe, a man who it would be easy to say has lost his touch if not for the consistently high quality of the work he does for Adidas. On the other side of the coin though Jason Dill’s re-edited Alien Workshop part is clearly a joke and a particularly good one at that (below).
