Stress Sticking And The Still-Potent Prognosticative Powers Of The Skate Vid Skit

For several years now, the skateboard video has alternatively been an object of fear, fascination, reverence and rejection for its uncannily accurate powers of soothsaying. Gaze glazey-eyed into its projection-, flat- or phone-screened crystal ball, and bear witness to a history of skits that at the time may have seemed whimsical or ‘snarky’, and yet with the reelin’ in of the years, have proven weirdly, surprisingly, sometimes distressingly true.

‘Propaganda,’ that late-period Powell + Peralta classic that captured Frankie Hill at his Kris Markovich/Pat Duffy/Jamie Thomas-anticipating prime, not only foresaw the concept of skateboard coaches and the streaming video-enabled, ill-favoured detour into skating-themed game shows, it also previewed the concept of skater-endorsed credit cards. Quartersnacks.com told of how Girl’s 2004 epic ‘Yeah Right’ teased special effects-enabled tricks that mostly would be done for real less than a decade later, and in 1996’s ‘Mouse,’ Rick Howard’s run through the woods wound up setting the stage for any number of dirt/grass/log rides soundtracked to Motley Crue power balladry and dissonant guitar squalling some 30 years on. The ‘DC Video’ skit on Brian Wenning’s untimely fade-out proved sadly prescient.

Do such Ouija-like properties, invisibly guiding fingertips from rubbery remote buttons or factory-slick smart-screens into ‘real world situations,’ extend beyond the realm of the seven maple plies, the urethane wheel and the alloyed hanger? None less than Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki this week suggests that it is so.

“Stickin’ is lame,” groused the world-weary narrator of ‘The Parallel,’ a chapter toward the back half of Girl’s 1993 video debut ‘Goldfish’ that functioned as a cautionary tale about making your passion into your job, and as a post-Plan B statement of purpose for Crailtap brain trust. Lance Mountain portrays a youthful pogoer who progresses from carefree driveway bouncing to focused questing with the homies to jaded pro, freighted with pressure and expectation, until casting off the spring-loaded shackles of professional pogoing. If the metaphor was lost on the viewer, the title card drove it home with all ten fingers wrapped ’round steel handlebars.

Yet in 2023, Year of the Iguana, the wry parable seems to have proved out. On Insta*Gram, Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki this week related fond memories of shepherding a crew of pro pogo stickers around his native New Mexico for a tour vid of sorts by pogo brand XPogo, entitled ‘Spring Break II: Tha Breakening’. In it, top pogoers footplant off walls, do BMX-style bar spins, rollerblade-style shoe grabs, bounce off rocks and trees; one dude does a no-handed backflip. There are some rail and stair-set double runs with Jaws his own self and elsewhere the pogoers do their thing near needle-sharp cacti and in slow-mo before arid mountain scenes, conveying a certain feeling of freedom that is to some extent universal in vibe.

But within the pogo sphere there is also pain, and pressure. There are repeated, gnarly slams amongst concrete slabs in the ‘Spring Break II’ vid, and in a separate XPogo summer trip to NY vid, a brutal 10-foot slam to some stairs. Dalton Smith, one of the aforementioned New Mexico spring breakers, speaks in an earlier interview on the stress and rigours of the professional life:

“During those Pogopaloozas I was a ball of stress, a rubber band about to snap, quiet and always plotting my runs, I was barely there. So I basically would black out right before big air started and then I would come to after holding my trophy. I wanted to win palooza so bad, my body mind and spirit were all geared towards that single task. I had no room for feeling anything.

After the competitions I felt satisfied and ecstatic, reaffirmed in my skills, but I also knew it was all bulls**t. Competition, especially one as loose as palooza, is never really about who is the best but rather who can show up and perform for this sliver of time with immense amount of pressure behind them. I am good under pressure, but I am by no means the best or gnarliest pogoer and I never have been. Palooza is about getting together and sharing our culture, experiencing each other and bring the sport further and further into the world. After competition I always felt empty because I knew that that trophy didn’t solve a damn thing going on in my heart, I still wanted to jump, I still had to prove myself, I still wanted to progress.”

Could Dalton Smith’s commentary on competitive stressors be cut-and-pasted, find/replacing ‘pogoer’ with ‘skater’ and ‘Pogopalooza’ with ‘XGames’ or ‘Street League,’ and be dropped into some pro skater interview from anywhere in the past few decades? Are pogoing videos right now recording skits that will foreshadow the future of still-more esoteric subcultures yet to fully emerge? With the skate video skit generally a lost art these days, are all remaining future-predicting powers now concentrated in the hands of WKND and the occasional Crailtap/MandibleClaw effort — or does the growing skit scarcity suggest no future whatsoever?

Tags: Aaron 'Jaws' Homoki, ABQ, core sticking, cynicism, Dalton Smith, Girl, Goldfish, Iguanadon, Lance Mountain, Los Pollos Hermanos, mapping space and time, Mike Watt, no-handed backflips, Pogopalooza, Powell Peralta, Propaganda, Rick Howard, shoe grabs, soothsaying, Spike Jonze, Tha Real World, XPogo, year reelin