Skateboarding in the empty city: a radical archive of alternative pandemic mobilities

Abstract

COVID-19 ruptured mobilities within and between cities during 2020–2022. Empty urban landscapes came to define experiences, representations, and memories of lockdowns and ensuing periods of recovery. However, empty cities provided opportunities for play and exploration in subcultures like skateboarding. Skateboarders, among other groups, took advantage of relative emptiness to access known skate spots and to discover new spots, charting new cartographies of urban landscapes in the process. Performances at these spots were captured and circulated through skateboard media, especially video. Skateboarding footage captured in empty cities acts as a radical archive of alternative mobilities during the pandemic, unsettling dominant tropes of immobility. By analyzing a preeminent skate video shot in Sydney during the pandemic, this article makes three points of argument. First, skate video archives shifting speeds and scales of mobility and immobility during the pandemic; as some mobilities halted, others accelerated. Second, confusing legal geographies, what was permitted and where, created new surveillance priorities and multiple surveillance glitches. Skateboarders took advantage and accessed patches of cities usually obstructed. Third, as cities try and regain their buzz, playful, unpredictable, and unregulated mobile performances with the power to enliven the streets deserve reconsideration, even if they defy control.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• skateboarding
• media
• Sydney
• empty cities
• alternative mobilities

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle for supporting this project through the PPP scheme, Greg Hunt, Izrayl Brinsdon, and the anonymous reviewers of the article for their generous input.

Notes

1 Parts once referred to sections of a larger whole. A standard skate video might have between 5 and 15 individual parts. Each part features one skater or perhaps a montage of skaters. As stand-alone skate videos featuring one skater have become more common since the 2010s, there are fewer long videos, fewer ‘wholes’ from which to isolate a particular ‘part’. However, the descriptor ‘video part’ has stuck.

2 According to the Skate Video Site database, searchable by year, where were 214 skate videos released in 2020–2021. See https://www.skatevideosite.com/videos?year=2020%2C2021 accessed 12 October 2022. Not all videos released in the first half of 2020 were filmed during COVID. Not all videos released ruing this period are captured in this database.

3 Ultimately won by US skater Mark Suciu who released four parts in 2021 and he too benefited from empty urban landscapes in various US cities. Chima’s Nice to See You part was voted video of the year in the Australian skateboard magazine, Slam. See Slam Skateboarding (2022).

4 The 1.4 million view count is current in October 2022 taken by adding views on the Thrasher YouTube channel combining views of Nice to See You as a whole video, Chima’s edited stand-alone part, the Raw Files of Chima’s part. By way of comparison with videos by companies with a similar profile, Nike SB’s Constant (Travis 2021) has 1.65 million views (released 4 months earlier), Supreme’s Stallion (Strobeck 2021) has 1.49 million views (released 5 months earlier). Videos from footwear and clothing brands average more viewers than videos from hardgoods brands, for example, hardgoods brands with high views in the same period are: Chocolate’s Bunny Hop 532k (Marello 2021), Palace’s Beyond the 3rd Wave 408k (Palace Skateboards 2021), Creature’s Gangreen 504k (Rhoades 2021) and Krooked Magic Art Supplies 337k (Scharff 2021). The big surprise from 2021 is board brand Worble’s Worble III (Mull 2021) with 1.4 million views.

5 Chima has Nigerian heritage (his father is Nigerian) and in interviews he has reflected on the ways race plays out for him as a skateboarder in Australia and in his years living in the United States. See O’Dell (2015) from 01:00 to 04:05.

6 Fakie kickflip: traveling backwards the board flips in the air after being flicked with the toe while the skater’s body stays in the original direction of movement in the air above the board before landing back on it.

7 Frontside kickflip: the board flips in the air after being flicked with the toe while the skater’s body turns 180 degrees, and the board also turns with the skater to face the opposite direction.