Abstract

In the mid-1980s, the skateboard company Powell-Peralta revolutionized skateboarding subculture by using promotional film. Since then, the “skate video” has become a template for successful skateboard manufacturers, the prerequisite for successful professional careers, and the primary medium with which skateboarders create subcultural capital. Using a small collection of intimate confidential interviews with industry insiders, this article maps the way skate videos have shaped the contours of skateboarding. More specifically, it argues that while the skate video’s historical emergence and endurance is inextricably bound by its commercial impetus, it is nonetheless key in explaining why, despite a contemporary renaissance of elite competitive skateboarding, the subculture has retained an anti-competitive aesthetic.