Dawn of the undead
Posted 05/13/2007 04:51:00 by i am vans
Maybe it's fitting that Saturday should dawn, sunless and overcast. And as the clouds begin to peel back and that familiar southern California sun begins to evaporate the marine layer, the grandstands are going up, the lacquer is being spread, and the energy drink is being put on ice. It would just be like any other Saturday, but it isn't. To most of the world it might seem as such, but to skateboarders, there won't come a day like this for another year. And after the dust settles no one will have the energy for another day like this until next year, it's that heavy, that draining, that intense. It's a day to forget all about industry malarkey, grudges and smack talk, and all of the little idiosyncracies that waft through the air on any other day. Go to the X-games, and witness how little of that is about skateboarding at all. Today, however, is a different story. No live television broadcast, punctuated by horribly misappropriated, targeted marketing onslaughts, geared to capitalize on young, impressionable minds . Example:
Marketing Executive: "We know that 'jackass' is hot with the tween market, let's bring in one of those people to hock our hygiene product. Maybe get that one whose signature skateboard is the hottest seller among the mainstream wannabe kids. Tell the packaging design department to shoot for the 'extreme' look, and let's use the word 'extreme' at least 20 times per 15 second spot. And don't forget to purchase spots based on maximum market penetration, in other words, at least one spot during each break."
To those of us who live skateboarding, such things are a joke, an insult to our consciousness, and affront to any sort of skateboarding reality. But rather than be offended about it we simply laugh and get on with what it is that we do. No matter how much an outside entity tries to emulate what we are and how we think, they'll never get it. We made this ourselves, without any help from Madison avenue. So when the touchy and sensitive subject of contests and competitions arises, and when we consider what they are for, few carry the weight and meaning of the Vans ProTec Pool Party. The overcast conditions of a "made for mass appeal" world burn off quickly here, and what shines through, as brightly as can be, is skateboarding. Pure and simple, and on a level which surpasses anything ever witnessed by human eyes.
Setting the scene for you, Things go from very quiet to very loud, very quickly around here. Overnight, the grandstands have been erected, Steve Van Doren's immense grill has been prepped, several thousand gallons of RockStar energy drink have been iced, and all that remains is for the human presence to manifest itself. Throughout the morning luminaries begin trickling in while the public remains outside the gates. Last year the line to get in for general admission guests began forming around 2:30 PM, this year by noon, people are already lining up. They are hoping to secure the best possible bleacher locations, of which there are a very limited number. The hardest of core skateboarding fans scrambled to get the few available tickets in the weeks leading up to today. This doesn't account for over a hundred wishful thinking types who simply showed up thinking they might slide in on luck alone. Rabid skateboarding fans flood the parking lot and the sidewalks outside and the buzz is building. Things are about to get under way, and the play by play is forthcoming...
Marketing Executive: "We know that 'jackass' is hot with the tween market, let's bring in one of those people to hock our hygiene product. Maybe get that one whose signature skateboard is the hottest seller among the mainstream wannabe kids. Tell the packaging design department to shoot for the 'extreme' look, and let's use the word 'extreme' at least 20 times per 15 second spot. And don't forget to purchase spots based on maximum market penetration, in other words, at least one spot during each break."
To those of us who live skateboarding, such things are a joke, an insult to our consciousness, and affront to any sort of skateboarding reality. But rather than be offended about it we simply laugh and get on with what it is that we do. No matter how much an outside entity tries to emulate what we are and how we think, they'll never get it. We made this ourselves, without any help from Madison avenue. So when the touchy and sensitive subject of contests and competitions arises, and when we consider what they are for, few carry the weight and meaning of the Vans ProTec Pool Party. The overcast conditions of a "made for mass appeal" world burn off quickly here, and what shines through, as brightly as can be, is skateboarding. Pure and simple, and on a level which surpasses anything ever witnessed by human eyes.
Setting the scene for you, Things go from very quiet to very loud, very quickly around here. Overnight, the grandstands have been erected, Steve Van Doren's immense grill has been prepped, several thousand gallons of RockStar energy drink have been iced, and all that remains is for the human presence to manifest itself. Throughout the morning luminaries begin trickling in while the public remains outside the gates. Last year the line to get in for general admission guests began forming around 2:30 PM, this year by noon, people are already lining up. They are hoping to secure the best possible bleacher locations, of which there are a very limited number. The hardest of core skateboarding fans scrambled to get the few available tickets in the weeks leading up to today. This doesn't account for over a hundred wishful thinking types who simply showed up thinking they might slide in on luck alone. Rabid skateboarding fans flood the parking lot and the sidewalks outside and the buzz is building. Things are about to get under way, and the play by play is forthcoming...