Street Survival

For those of you that haven't seen it, Street Survival, a how-to street skateboard video produced in the late 80's, it is a YouTube search away. As soon as you finish reading this blog, search it out. It is so terribly 80's that it is wonderful.

The skating in this video shows the real roots of street. Street skating isn't "founded by Mullen" the way people claim. It is founded on three things in equal proportions:

1. Vert/bowl/ditch skating without any vert/bowl/ditch to skate. This is how the slappy was born. This is how boardslides on curbs were born.

2. Freestyle. Notice that I'm not saying Rodney Mullen. In this video we see classic freestyle done on vert sized boards.

3. Skating in the street. Just going out and riding a skateboard on the streets and sidewalks of the country...you know, how skateboarding started in the first place.

Anyway, Street Survival is excellent for non-ollie based street/curb/flat ground skating. It inspired my Saturday morning parking block session, and I'm going to make it a point to delve into this style of street skating more often. Boneless tricks. Early grab to curb bashers. Freestyle on bigger boards (which is most of my skating anyway).  This stuff is great.