Bones Brigade Presents 'The Search for Animal Chin'

Let's face facts.  The soul of skateboarding has really been lost these days.  It's either about what tricks you do, what clothes you wear, or how hard you can party. And even though skateboarding was born out of a punk rock, surfers-in-exile attitude there were really only three reasons to bother with it: to hang out with friends, hunt down new spots, and have fun.

The Search for Animal Chin defines what skating and skate videos should always be.  There are no parts; nobody doing trick after trick after trick.  There isn't any excessive partying,  There is nothing serious about the movie at all.  Just a bunch of skate kids hanging out and traveling the world to skate while trying to find a legendary skater by the name of Animal Chin.

This is the original right here. A Powell-Peralta production featuring the dream team of the late 80s; Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Tommy Guerrero, Lance Mountain, and even an appearance from the father of flatland, Rodney Mullen.

Sit back and enjoy, but be warned. This movie will get you stoked to go out and skate. And not skate in the sense of sticking that new trick, but skating for skating's sake... just getting out of the house and rolling around, doing whatever stupid shit comes to mind.

Bear Mountain Presents 'Sunday'

The 2007 season was a rough one for Bear Mountain.  While the weather was cool enough the clouds never came, and Bear had to rely on their snow making system if local riders were going to enjoy a season.

One of Bear's biggest investments, where they spend most of the money we bring to the resort, is in snowmaking.  Being located in Southern California, dry seasons like the one in 2007 are almost guaranteed, and a strong snowmaking fleet is the only way to know for sure that your resort is going to survive.

Bear can open top to bottom with only two to three days of snowmaking... that's how expansive their system really is.  Even though things were looking gloomy, everyone was stoked when the last minute announcement was made, "Bear will kick off the season in a couple of days".

Ironically, even given the fact that most of the snow they had to work with came right out their reservoirs, Bear Mountain managed to make 2006/2007 one of their greatest seasons.  After all it only takes a little bit of snow to take advantage of the "best snowboard park in the world", and that year Bear really lived up to the title.

'Sunday' was Bear's promotional video to let everyone know that even with barely any natural snowfall, Bear Mountain still kicked ass!

Bear Mountain 2007 Promo - Sunday from Deserts Don't Snow on Vimeo.

Zero Skateboards Presents 'Misled Youth' - Video Saturdays

Zero's  Misled Youth tops my list of all-time favorite skate videos.  There I was, just a little tyke with my very first skateboard setup... I would watch this video on repeat every night, and this was back with VHS when you had to rewind the tape every time you wanted to watch it again.

What makes this video so great? I always think of Misled Youth as the defining video of the street era of skateboarding.  It was so damn raw; unadulterated.

This is when skateboarding had finally made it's comeback, and these dudes were hungry for a piece.  It represents street skating back before the industry got insanely wrapped up in image versus passion.  I mean, just look at Jim Greco--no frilly lace, no gypsy adornments, no oversized chick sunglasses...just the skating.

Misled Youth also has one of the raddest skate video soundtracks ever! Come on; you've got Sabbath, old school Modest Mouse, Queen, The Doors, Slayer, and the list goes on. 

Unfortunately a lot of the soundtrack was lost to YouTube licensing bullshit, and equally unfortunate I had to try and piece together the movie from memory for you to enjoy...but the good news is if you never had the chance to, at least now you can:

Blind Skateboards presents 'Video Days' - Video Saturdays

There were a lot of things happening to skateboarding in 1991. Gone were the days of neon clothing, and super wide asymmetrical vert boards. The cost and liability of running transition oriented skate parks forced many to close their doors for good; if skateboarding was going to survive, it needed to take to the streets.

Blind Skateboard's Video Days showed the world that skateboarding wasn't dead.  Fusing innovative street tricks with a taste of the golden era of vert, Video Days paved the way for the progression of skateboarding and skateboard videos as we know it.

Take a trip back to the good old days when Jason Lee wasn't Earl Hickey, Guy Mariano was just an ankle-biter, and Mark Gonzalez was... still the Gonz--some things never change.