Skateboarding Thesis Review? YouTube Skaters Better than Pros? #AskRadRat 67

This time on Ask Rad Rad, I review someone's thesis, and we also talk
about what makes a skater good. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to Rad Rat Video, where three times a week: every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday, we're learning something new about skateboarding. So it
could be trick histories, game reviews, learning new tricks on the Shred School,
catching up with old pros on Retro Rippers, and answering your questions on
this series Ask Rad Rat. I've got two pretty beefy questions for you today, the
first of which is from Von Spencer. Now Von actually wrote a thesis for his
University about skateboarding.. well, let me just get into my notes here. So he
talks about how skateboarding was about taking obstacles from the public, and
reappropriating them into skateboard obstacles. So in other words, taking a
wheelchair ramp, which is designed for a wheelchair to get up to a door, and
making it into a ramp where you ollie over the rail, or something like that. And
as skateboarding sort of took these things and made them their own, that the
graphics and the brands were doing the same thing. They would take art and just,
you know, change it around a little bit. Make a parody of it, make like a -- take
some art and put like a demonic pentagram on it or something, and just
like be more offensive. But also kind of take stuff, and so this question is about
how that has kind of cooled off. It seems like things are less offensive and less
in-your-face, and he wonders how skateboarding and graphics will continue
to parallel each other in the future. So, really big question. I didn't read his
entire thesis, but we talked about it a bit, and I thought that was a pretty
interesting idea: just that, you know, skateboarding is conquering the public.
Conquering street obstacles. And so we're just going to take stuff, and make it our
own, from the graphics and everything. But I think there's a pretty big issue with
that idea. I've read a lot about how they made graphic back then, and some of it
maybe it was supposed to be, you know, whatever, offensive
and all that, but some of it was just really lazy. So they talked about -- there
was an interview, it came up in one of the research topics I did. I don't
remember who, but they were talking about how with this brand, they would go to the
library, they would get, like, you know, like a coffee table picture book, you
know, like a photography book, and they would just take a picture out of it.
They would make copies of it and just print it on a board, you know, it'd be
blown up and it would look all crappy and everything, and it wasn't -- there was
no point to it. It's just that the company was run by a 19 year old who
just started it last week, and they just want to get something on a board. Plus,
what people were doing back then is they would peel off the graphics and
they would paint solid colors on it, and they would skate them like that. So I just
don't think graphics were that important at the time. Also you had a lot of really
crappy, like, Photoshop first came out. I don't remember what
year, like 92 or something like that, and so you would see stuff where it would just be
like a picture of someone's face, but it had to fit a certain spot ,so they would
just stretch it, you know. You see all that kind of just really terrible
looking stuff. So in part, I could see what you're talking about, but I think as
time went on, these brands are still owned by the same people, and they've
just gotten older and they've matured. You know, graphic design and everything:
it's gotten better. Skateboarding, like these brands in
particular, have gotten more prestige, so they could attract actual talent and
not just someone who's going to, you know, make something in five minutes. A
lot of those graphics look like something your grandma would have made
in Word with Wordart or something. So I think a lot of it is more maturity in
general, and not just about, you know, the culture of skateboarding. Because that
hasn't really changed. People are still going out and conquering stuff. They're
still trying to do the next biggest gap no one's ever done before, they're still
trying to figure out how to skate this thing better, all that kind of stuff. I
don't think that culture has really changed. I just think there's a little
less youthful anger in skateboarding these days. So let me
know what you think about this below. It's a really big topic. I don't know if
I can really cover it all that well in this format, but that's what I had for
that. Next question is from Flip Lange: what makes a skater good? And he talks
about how there's those really technical YouTube skaters who will spend a whole
week trying to land some crazy late whatever, and then you have someone like
Cole Wilson, where he does a lot of really simple grinds and he gets more
attention from that. So he agrees with that being the way it should be, by the
way, but the question is: how does that work out? I remember back when I was
younger, I first started skating, all that mattered to me was how good a trick was
on paper. So if you did a 50-50 down a 15 stair handrail, and this guy did a triple
kickflip on flat doing one mile an hour, I would think the triple flip was better
because: triple flip? 50-50? Like, come on, obviously the triple flip is more
difficult. And that's how I always used to think, and I think a lot of people
still have that kind of mindset, so you think of those people on YouTube, they're
out there just trying to do the craziest trick, spending a week on it, filming it
constantly and then they cut out the one two second clip where they do it. That's
kind of like the guys, I think likeDude Perfect or something, where they're doing
all the trick basketball shots. Stand on top of a building and throw the ball all
the way down there, and you know, after 200 tries, they happen to make the basket.
Like it's it's cool, and I like watching that I like watching the basketball, I
like watching the skateboarding stuff we're talking about, but it's just not
really at that level. And compare those guys to LeBron James: who is a better
basketball player? Obviously, it's a guy who actually has, you know, more rounded
skill set and all that stuff. In particular with Cole Wilson, if you watch
this part: yeah, the tricks are generally pretty
basic, but the places that he's doing them - the weird kink rails and all that kind of
stuff, that stuff really takes a lot of skill.
You can't just skate that handrail all day, put in a thousand tries, and land it.
You'll probably die if you just throw yourself on a rail, and you don't know
how to do it. So it's more about the actual skill that you've built up, and I
think that makes a lot more sense. Like the Harlem Globetrotters versus an
actual basketball team. It's just not really the same, and the skill that it
takes to do that kind of stuff is a lot more
impressive from, like, a legitimate standpoint rather than just fluking into
something, because -- I recently taught how to do a semi flip, check that out
right here, and I feel like if I had some kind of, like, a really mellow fun box, I
might be able to do a 360 double semi flip, or a 540 triple semi
flip, or something like that, you know, it would just take me a whole week, I'd land
it sketchy, and it really doesn't show skill, it just shows how much
patience I have. You know, how much time I'm willing to sink into something. I
think that was one of the big differences is. So let me know what you
think about that below, also let me know all of your questions for next time. I
have a link to my Instagram and my Twitter below in the description. Send me
a DM on one of those to get your question in, and I will try to record it
next time, so thank you for watching, here's some more videos to check out and
don't forget to subscribe, so you can learn something new about skateboarding
three times a week. Thanks for watching.

Skateboarding Thesis Review? YouTube Skaters Better than Pros? #AskRadRat 67

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