The Filmer's Edit
The filmer is running backwards. This is the first thing to understand. A skater approaches a twelve-stair handrail at full tilt. The filmer is already ahead of him, fisheye lens two feet from the ground, sprinting backwards down concrete steps while holding a twenty-pound camera steady.
The Yet
Eight of us are here. One is skating. The other seven showed up to make it possible.
Terminal Velocity
The bricks were red, Italian-style, inspired by Siena's Piazza del Campo. By 1989, the Embarcadero Plaza had transformed into something the architects never intended. Five years later, it was dead. This is the pattern that kills skate spots—and what cities destroy when they install skate stoppers.
Burnside Never Asked for Permission
On Halloween night, 1990, three skaters showed up under the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon with some bags of cement and an idea that was certainly illegal.