…and the hype, and the sales message oh, and skateboarding.

Nike Skateboarding Nothing but the Truth Premiere

The NikeSB movie has been premiering in various cities, I attended the Portland premiere last Thursday at the Crystal ballroom. Everyone there was either invited or one of Screamin’ Steve’s contest winners. I’m guessing there were 200-300 people there. I wasn’t a VIP so I didn’t get free beer but I did enjoy the outing. It was a big skateboarding related event, a scene, and I saw a bunch of people I knew there. Thanks to Kevin Imamura for getting me on the list.

The movie
With all the advance promotion about how NBTT is more of a movie than the typical skate video, it stuck to the formula. It felt a like the old Powell videos with various skits featuring the skaters but the street sections with quick cuts of riders doing a trick… followed by a shot of another trick, was pretty standard. Nike sponsors a bunch of talented skaters. I never get tired of watching Chet Childress skate and he puts together some great extended runs as well as amazing one-shots. There’s definitely some impressive skating. The crowd seemed to be seeing a lot that I was missing and seemed to be amazed by the tech action. I think it was Omar Salazar’s part that had a Thin Lizzy soundtrack which made all the difference to me as that part seemed to rock harder.

A couple of the skits are pretty funny. One of them reminded me of a certain scene from Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life and had me laughing just as hard.

Hard to imagine how you might create a story from the separate stories of several unrelated personalities with no hierarchy or narrative relationship. So, it’s a skate video with a story about making a skate video woven among the skateboarding parts. I suppose in the end it is a story about the adolescent male condition, today’s sign that the apocalypse is near.

The only women in the film are models and fantasy objects. Nike should probably try to find some women to sponsor. Or women skaters should work on becoming a more lucrative market. I think the deal is that boys are easier to confuse, so they are a better target for marketing efforts.

How did they do? Are they a real skateboarding company? Well it was a skate video. Nike applies massive resources to designing and producing shoes for all kids of athletic activities and skateboarding is an athletic activitiy. They are also a business and their main reason for what they do is return on investement. Skateboarding continues to have a big impact on aesthetics and fashion so companies will be drawn to it as a potential generator of revenue. If you have specific personal aesthetic, philosophic or social requirements that your skateboarding footwear needs to fulfill, they may or may not win your heart and mind or add you to their market share.

I have been skating in Nikes longer that a lot of skaters have been alive and they give me the protection and performance I need. That’s credibility enough for me.