Sony Pictures Classics, directed by Stacy Peralta, 2001
Review by Michael Christian
Rating: two stars out of three. Stars for sincere, personal storytelling; fascinating, original subject; good soundtrack. Although it may be appropriate to the subject matter, I didn't like some of the harsh, jumpy editing.
The experience of most skaters of my generation spans the entire, brief, important history of skateboarding technology.
First, we took apart our sisters' old metal-wheeled roller skates and nailed their trucks to two-by-fours. Later we bought commercially fabricated versions of the same rickety machines. Boards with clay-composite wheels slightly improved on what we had jerry-rigged in our garages. These devices barely roll on smooth pavement and cement. They transmit harsh vibrations from the pavement, though your bones, to your teeth. If a wheel hits the slightest obstacle, such as a pebble, the board stops and your body hits the pavement. If the rider attempts any but the mildest turns, the board slides and the rider hits the pavement.
Polyurethane wheels changed everything. They liquefied the urban and suburban landscapes. It was heaven on wheels. And everyone who experienced the change from the old technology knew it. Instead of grinding, the wheels swished. The sensation of simply rolling was a joy. Traction went from nearly none to nearly perfect. Hard turns became possible. In fact, the skater could profitably assume a low stance and turn so hard that the body could lean close to the skating surface, and a slide could be controlled. With the combination of momentum and traction, you could defy gravity and skate on curved surfaces that reached vertical and beyond.
But no one knew of these possibilities when the new wheels came out. They had to be discovered and invented. Whatever people had done in the past with skateboards became mostly irrelevant. What might be done in the future was unknown.
And so for a period that began around 1972 and lasted for at least ten years, rapid innovation in skating styles and maneuvers earned great rewards. The currencies of those rewards were personal satisfaction and the adulation of one's skating peers. Skateboarders, in their skating lives, didn't care about the Little League or their parents or teachers or friends who didn't skate. The rewards from such groups could not hold a candle to the excitement of carving out new territory with a skateboard.
So what happened? An energetic, low-brow subculture was born. The skateboarding subculture had its own language, scarification rites, clothing, and hierarchy. And, for a few glorious years, at the top of the hierarchy were the Z-boys.
The Z-boys were a skate team spontaneously generated from the ooze around Santa Monica pier. They were like a cross between a street gang and a club of scruffy kids come down from the tree house. This bunch of misfit teens and pre-teens invented what we might now call extreme sports.
They were at the top, because they dramatically innovated while maintaining aesthetically pleasing styles. They explored the possibilities of polyurethane wheels with skating styles inspired by the surfing that they admired and participated in at the Santa Monica pier. They skated streets, school yards, paved banks, drainage ditches, and empty swimming pools. They competed with each other and encouraged one another. They formed a tribe. Stacy Peralta was one of them. His documentary, Dogtown, tells their story.
Peralta uses old photographs, video, and magazine articles to show what the Z-boys did. He interviews them and people who were close to them to show how they saw themselves and how they now assess what they did back in the 70's.
Dogtown is a documentary built around two simple organizational devices: chronology and portraiture of people, places, and things. Peralta gives us chronologies of surfing, skateboarding, Santa Monica, and the Zephyr skate team. He profiles several Z-boys (members of the historic Zephyr skate team). He paints a portrait of Dogtown (Venice Beach and south Santa Monica).
Peralta's techniques succeed. If you weren't there, you can get a very good idea of what it was like by watching this film. You feel the excitement of discovery and the thrill of outlaw skating in the empty pools of the suburbs during a drought. You watch the most unlikely young subjects rise in fame until they are treated like rock stars.
Especially moving are the struggles of the informants to express their conviction that they were part of a significant movement. Everyone interviewed tries but fails to say why the revolution in skateboarding that the Z-boys spearheaded was important. All of the surviving Z-boys (and the one Z-girl) feel strongly that they were involved in something momentous. But none of them can put his finger on it.
One of the former Z-boys said, "It was like a Mafia." Meaning that you had to earn membership, and they enforced their own rules. I think that another former Z-boy, Bob Biniak, came close when he said, "There were no goals. There were no aspirations." In fact, they had clear goals. Much of the film shows how the Z-boys pursued the goal of innovative skating. I think he meant that none of their goals were conventional or received. None of their aspirations could be measured in terms outside the subculture. They freed themselves from other people's goals. That sort of freedom only comes from profound wisdom, extreme youth, or bitter disenfranchisement. The Z-boys had two out of three.
They weren't (at first) trying to make money or get famous. They weren't looking for the approval of anyone but each other. Freedom from received goals and criteria for success deserves more attention.
One common measure of a liberal society that gets a lot of attention is equality of opportunity. Is opportunity determined by arbitrary factors such as birth, or by talent and hard work? A liberal society is a meritocratic society. A less common measure of a liberal society is diversity of opportunity. (When I say "diversity," I am speaking English here, not using a code word of the politically correct.) By how many different yardsticks can you measure success? In a rich, populous, liberal society, there are so many yardsticks that you can't count them.
Diversity of opportunity is a notion that first occurred to me in 1987 when I began working in downtown Los Angeles. The west side of the city was all about the entertainment industry. Downtown was about everything else. Downtown we didn't give a damn about entertainment industry. On the west side, they never thought about anything else. Looking around a little, I found that Los Angeles was full of all kinds of enclaves ignorant of one another or at least indifferent to one another. In my mind, I contrasted this with Boston where various groups hated each other and vied for supremacy, and where everyone knew who was on top of business and politics. In this sense, I think Angelinos have more freedom.
If diversity of opportunity is a kind of freedom, then at one extreme are traditional, tribal societies exemplified by villages I once visited in Africa. In those villages there is very little diversity of opportunity. Almost everyone must strive for the same things. No subcultures. No clubs. No hobbies. No room for private life.
In a place like Los Angeles, you can choose from among thousands of tribes or make your own. That's what the Z-boys did at a propitious moment – at a moment when new technology rewarded the rule-breakers. They created the clan of the polyurethane wheel. The existence of this clan and the technology that inspired it enhanced liberty all over the paved world by adding to diversity of opportunity. You can flunk out of school, fail at all team sports, earn the ire of mom and dad, yet still achieve greatness on a skateboard.
I'm not very fond of the hippie ethic, but there's a lot to be said for the value of doing your own thing. The greatest success stories are often about people doing their own thing. People get rich that way, sometimes without trying. They even get happy.
The Z-boys did their own thing in a big way. Dogtown nicely documents how it happened. The former Z-boys interviewed by Peralta and, I think, the director himself vainly strive to put their achievement into social and historical context. The strain and the failure are part of the film's charm; the men can't fathom what they did as young boys. The young boys wouldn't care.
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