Joe Krolick Chases Away This Blog-Site’s Case Of The Mondays

The burgeoning web 3.0 endeavor “Already Been Done” nets a gimme mention on our web-space today by posting up some 411 industry section-era Josh Kalis footage that has the Love Park ledges, DC Lynx and wind pants you might expect, but also spices things up some with a few lesser-used arrows from the Kalis quiver (switch frontside crooked grind, reverse Pupecki) and some of that urban camo with the dark red blotches. A cursory search of Wikipedia’s camoflague page has revealed little as to the technical name of this camo persuasion. If anybody (such as the camo professors of Quartersnacks maybe) should know the identity of the black/white/dark gray/dark red camouflage pattern please chime in below so I can avoid looking so silly next time some good footage pops up that somehow incorporates this pattern.

On And Off Again: A Video Magazine’s Tale

In case you don’t understand, I’ll make it understood again

ON Video: a FIC x BTO collab

Right up front let me just tell you how I’m generally unreliable and a veteran procrastinator: I hollered at frozen in carbonite quite some time ago to see if he wanted to do kind of a point/counterpoint thing about 411’s star-crossed “On Video” series, after I issued some smart remark about it and he nobly rose to On’s defense. So he wrote some shit and sent it to me. In the ensuing months, love affairs were launched, puppies lost and reclaimed, missiles deployed, a presidential election.

Oh, and in all that time I didn’t watch or download or stream a single piece of On Video footage, and I know there’s at least one floating around my hard-drive. I think it’s the Rodney Mullen one, which I did watch at one point, and downloaded years later in hopes that it was the Love Park issue and I could comb it for Kalis footage to include in this project. But, I didn’t even watch that. And, I never bought any.

Which is basically what I imagine the guestbook at the On Video wake would have read. “Never bought one.” “Watched part of it at my cousin’s house once.” “Got ‘Reel to Real’ instead.” “Too much talking.” Et cetera. On Video, beloved by some, ignored by others, bought by very few. It was definitely a much-welcome lifesaver those long Wednesday mornings when I worked a skate shop, but even then I don’t recall watching one more than once or twice, with the possible exception of the half-hour Danny Way love-feast. And didn’t ever buy one, even with my mighty 10%-above-cost discount.

I did purchase the Arcade tour video, but that’s a whole other ball of worms.

Which is not to say the forward-thinking On series, and their magazine ads with the inexplicable giant red dots, served zero purpose aside from running down the Natas-Satan name imbroglio to dull-eyed sixth graders. Fueled by a great abundance of tour footage, in an age when each and every road trip was deemed worthy of its own 411 segment (or a section in the “Around the World” videos), On got people thinking about the history, personalities and places skateboarding has produced over the past few decades as a subject worthy of serious consideration for your independent documentaries or vanity press books or what have you, at roughly the same time the current incarnation of skateboarding was powdering its collective nose for star turns on ESPN, MTV, and any numbers of theaters near you.

Frozen in Carbonite lauds On Video, rightly, for parsing the process behind pivotal video parts, people, places in skateboarding, ideas that were picked and expanded upon by the Stacy Peraltas and Epicly Later’ds and various others. Interesting, and usually at least marginally entertaining. But when the chips have been counted and so on, to me the process will forever be second to the finished product, burger over bun, the four-point-five second clip rather than the 90 intense minutes it took to climb the fence, pass over the generator and camera bags, patch the cracks and set up the lights.

Hearing Marc Johnson emphasize the stress and drama that went into making “Fully Flared” doesn’t put the proverbial balls any closer to the wall when it comes to Alex Olson’s part, or make the see-saw slow motion any less distracting. Commentaries are fine, and I enjoyed hearing about Guy Mariano’s favorite hat and the Girl honchos’ ruminations on rap music in video parts, but after one or two times through I’m back to the Earth Wind & Fire.

There’s something to be said for the apocrypha of skateboarding, stories that belong to them what who was there or somehow passed down via skateboard shop bullshitting, post-video screening mullings or after you’ve been at the spot a couple hours and everybody’s spending more time shooting the shit than trying tricks anymore. The Andy Roy Big Brother interview remains a document of its time and perhaps for some a manifesto for living, and there’s something vaguely sad about the idea of it being reduced to a handful of jpgs to be bandied about messageboards. It’s in a strange way sort of disappointing to think that anybody with a cable modem can click through the highlights of “Tim & Henry’s Pack of Lies,” a video that used to be next to impossible to see, much less own.

Insert here bitter old man comment re: earning it, building character, etc.

It’s certainly not like I hated On Video. And it’s not like I don’t love Epicly Later’d (though my shriveled internet grinch heart did break a bit when Pappalardo and Wenning didn’t get back together at the end of the most recent episode). Without On’s at times fumbly foundation-building, maybe O’Dell wouldn’t have been able to nail it as he seems to have done – disposable, free-of-charge slices of skateboard lore in easy-to-digest six-minute bites, to be viewed and forgotten as necessary, bought on disc by the library-builders. It remains to be seen how often I come back to the DVD of season one, which I didn’t pay for… or the Lakai box set, which I did. (Sans Blu-Ray players, too.) The grand fool-maker time will no doubt reveal which ends up being the better investment…

Five signposts en route to the grave of 411VM

This week brought the long-anticipated but no less vaguely sad news that 411 Video Magazine’s life support was finally pulled by the core bros over at Wasserman Media Group. (Commentary by another recent Wasserman acquisition: “I’m still creatively in control of the site.” Live and learn…)

411 has existed on the fringes now for a good while, and it’s been like a decade since new issues were met with any kind of anticipation. So in a way it’s impressive they made it this far, but wonders never cease when it comes to beating dollars out of dead horses in the skateboard industry. Look at NSS. Or, look at Duffs.

These days, though, it would probably come as a surprise to your average New Era’ed hardflipper that people used to pay for 411s, much less subscribe to get it in the mail. And among those who do recall 411’s glory days, you’re hard pressed to find anybody wax nostalgic about any issue past 30, with the exception of the Gino/Keenan/Pupecki “Roomies” in 38. I’ll go as high as 39 myself, but you know I stay having low standards.

The point is, 411’s demise has been written on the wall for some time now. A few of the telltale signs along the way:

Es Menikmati released

Fred Mortagne’s biopic/skate epic ushered in an age of blockbuster videos, washed down with a generous helping of slow motion, fancy graphics and generators. For better or worse the Es super team helped raise the bar as far as tricks, lengthy parts and production value, and in a matter of years poor 411 would find it more difficult to source footage of high-profile dudes to sprinkle between the up-and-comers and washed-ups in the Chaos sections.

411 decides to put dudes’ faces on the cover

The Skateboard Mag tried this one too, and the Stance approach didn’t work for TWS; even in this age of rock star pro skaters, what self-respecting 14-year-old really wants to look into Muska’s glazed eyes every time he puts on the Cliche chaos? Note to all those still considering a portrait cover: use artwork.

Lance Mountain stops hosting

The little things, you know? I appreciate Mikey Taylor and his undying devotion to Roc-a-Fella as much as the next guy, but it just ain’t the same. Like when they tried remixing the theme song.

411 911

You know you’re running out of ideas when you start taking cues from ESPN and MTV. Speaking of, didn’t 411 also put out that video of Mike Vallely’s fights?

Youtube

Podcasts and Field Logs and Wednesday Woes too. Free, quick-downloading video in tolerable quality has skateboarding on a 24-hour footage cycle now, and whatever scraps Company X might have thrown to a 411 in the past now go to the website, the Youtube channel or the “Special Edition” DVD*. Videographers like Josh Stewart will happily tell you at great length how difficult it is to sell even hotly anticipated DVD releases in this day and age, and although Weiss keeps pumping out Digitals, 411 a couple years ago gave up trying to charge American money for their videos, and in the process turned each new edition into a branding vehicle for this company or that. They’ve made some effort at orienting their site around new clips, as well as something bizarre called 411VS that appears to be some kind of fantasy skateboarding league, but there’s a lot of footage out there now, and only so many minutes in the average skateboarder’s Internet day.

Today 411’s website offers you a look at a flyer for a Krux kickflip challenge. Meanwhile the Berrics has new footage of Sean Malto, Eric Koston, Mike Barker and Erik Ellington. So long 411.