The 2009 X-games is creating a surge of interest in the video I posted of Tony Hawk completing a "900" in the 1999 games. I guess ESPN has been touting the tenth anniversary of the event and that has got all the kids scouring the web for more information. The result for me is more than ten thousand hits on my youtube video in the last three days. You'd think that would be a cause for joy, but of the more than 200 people have left comments on the video, about a third of them were just complaints about the music choice.

I think this is an interesting glimpse on how culture and sub-culture evolve. When I was skating, techno was the music of choice for my friends and me. There were a lot of Punks that listened to thrash metal and skated, but they weren't tricking, they used their boards as transportation and weapons. (For you young'uns: "Punk" is a sub-culture not a pejorative. They dressed like Goths, but instead of being Emo, listening to Marilyn Manson and cutting themselves, they did a lot of coke, listened to MDC and cut other people.) I guess they eventually got tired of skating somewhere, beating the crap out of the people there and then skating home and started doing tricks. Eventually, they morphed from thugs into skaters and became the core of the next generation of skaters, bringing their music aesthetic with them into the mainstream of skating.

What concerns me is the complaints I get about how long the video is. (eight and a half minutes.) The accomplishment of the 900 wasn't just a single run. Those of us who were there watching and those who shared that moment with us on TV watched an epic struggle of a man pushing himself further than anyone had ever gone before. He failed eight times.

Eight times, he tried the 900 and failed.

He picked himself up and kept trying.

That's why the 900 was significant. Not because it hadn't been done before, though that is part of the mystique, but because Tony wouldn't quit. And he wouldn't let us quit. And, somehow, the television producers picked up on his determination and broadcast the struggle without cutting away to another event or bitching about how that particular segment was running over its allotted time slot. The trick itself pales in comparison to the struggle and determination that built up to it.

When he landed it, he wasn't alone. Every person on their feet in the stadium and every viewer sitting on the edge of their seat at home landed it with him.

I tried to capture that feeling. I know I didn't quite get there, but it does upset me when people don't get it.

Irony:
~25 comments pointing out that I mis-identified a trick.
~0 comments on the fact that I misspelled "San Francisco."