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This is a pretty awesome little video I found floating anonymously through the Internets. It’s a short history of skateboarding in New York City called The New York Skate Movie and it features a ton of old footage and interviews. Deathbowl to Downtown may have stolen its thunder just a little bit (actually, a lotta bit), but it’s still an interesting view into NYC skateboarding’s glory days. Basically, before it was just 16-year-olds in front of Union Square who care more about what shoes they’re wearing than if they can actually kickflip in them.

You know, skating might have been born in California, but it was when kids in Connecticut, and New Jersey, and New York got a hold of it and actualized it in their own environment, that it really came to life. 

Given that it’s coming an East Coast skater like Mike Vallely, that quote might come across as a bit biased, but I think there’s a good amount of truth in there regardless. Skateboarding has always benefited from an influx of different viewpoints and perspectives. Whether you prefer a backyard pool session to an afternoon of ledge dancing is besides the point — without a constant surge of originality, without new ideas, skateboarding will get boring. Which is exactly what happened to competition vert. Look at it this way, without new ideas, we’d all still be wearing huge jeans, and that alone should be enough proof of evolution for all the creationists out there. Go to hell, you bunch of goddies.

The relentless push of progress does take its toll, though. Edmund Burke said that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” however, he was not a skateboarder. Unfortunately, this is not the case in our beloved subculture, and simply knowing of a time when security guards had better things to do than harass skaters is not enough to make that the case once more. Retrospectives like this one are valuable because they can provide a glimpse of a time that we’ll never get to experience for ourselves.

It’s a shame — these days, cities often view skaters as more of a nuisance than the passed-out junkies littering their many delectable stair sets. Which is fair, I guess, since skateboarding is pretty noisy and everybody knows that city-dwellers really value peace and quiet.