Video by Mick Posey and Blair Burns
Photos by Mick Posey
Words and Interview by Justin Hill
With a wondrous venue for its premiere, plenty of condiments for the hot dogs, and a bonus accompanying photo book, Rhododendron, a West Virginia skateboard video by Mick Posey and Blair Burns, debuted earlier this month to a crowd of smiles at Base Camp Printing Co. in Charleston, WV. Filmed entirely within West Virginia and using only West Virginian musicians for the soundtrack, the video showcases what a rural, collective imagination can accomplish. Hoping they might also recommend a decent pepperoni roll bakery in Texas (spoiler: there ain’t one), I hit up Mick and Blair to learn more about the video.
How the hell are y’all!? Wanna get the introductions out of the way?
Mick: Sure – I’m Mick Posey, I grew up skating in Teays Valley and live in Charleston, West Virginia now. I work for WVU, in their Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design as a multi-media specialist. Outside of work I do a lot of photography and am just generally interested in creating.
Blair: I’m Blair Burns from Charleston, West Virginia. I work at Kin Ship Goods as the social media coordinator, and I help out at Elk City Skates and Elk City Cycle. I’m also team manager and co-owner of Apartment Skateboards, do some photography and got a cat named Tilly.
What are the origins behind the video? Was it something you had a concept of from the beginning?
Blair: This video kind of came about because me and Mick were doing so much filming and getting some good stuff, so we wanted to include some more people into it. Then Mick had the idea to make a video that was solely shot in West Virginia with the music based from West Virginia as well, using local artists. We knew WV had some videos in the past, but they always felt kind of scattered, because those videos use WV footage but also stuff filmed out of state, like clips from Ohio, North Carolina, DC, Pittsburgh and Richmond. So it’s nice to showcase solely West Virginia and show what we have because a lot of it is untouched. The main premise is the state and what’s here, and maybe we can get more people to visit and skate some spots.
Mick: And we can take you to’em! I think showcasing the state is the concept. You know there’s so many videos that come out now it’s impossible to keep up, and I feel this video came about pretty organically between Blair and I. We’ve known each other more than ten years, ever since Blair used to have his skate shop in Huntington, so we’ve always been skating together, filming, shooting photos and traveling – going all in on West Virginia was our way to put a spin on the video, make it a little bit more unique. I mean it’s a traditional feeling full-length skate vid, clocking in at about 30 minutes, but it’s theme is West Virginia.
Blair: A niche, we’ve got a niche.
Did you include any of West Virginia’s beautiful landscape in the video?
Mick: Yeah, it’s a bit of a hodgepodge with shots mixed in throughout the video. Like you know the spot under the New River Gorge bridge, those abandoned, concrete halfpipe things tucked in there? Our homie Josh did a back disaster there in the video, and in the 8mm footage the New River Gorge Bridge is in the background. We got some shots of the Cranberry Glades, the Mothman statue – there’s a good bit in there.
Blair: I think that’s why me and Mick decided to do the photo book too. There’s landscape footage mixed in the video, but I think the photos are a bigger representation of the process, because when me and Mick would go places, we weren’t just there skating, we’d be going out to swimmin’ holes with buddies, meeting up with people for camping and hiking, and the photo book is a good way to cap it all off.
You guys filmed from 2019 to present? Was it you two behind the camera the bulk of the time?
Mick: Yeah, it’s footage from 2019 to now. There’s some clips filmed by other people, like Christian Haffer, Zach Johnson and Ryan George down in Huntington, which is 45 minutes away – they’ll go out and film down there, or I’ll film when I’m visiting Huntington. Plata filmed some, but as for a wide range of filmers in the state, I don’t know there’s a lot. There’s some bubbles, like Wheeling, the Morgantown/Fairmont areas, Consolidated skate shop up in Parkersburg, Martinsburg by DC, down in Beckley, with everyone kind of working on their own things, so Blair and I were traveling to different spots checkin’em out.
Blair: It was more or less like, ‘Hey dudes we’re headed up to Morgantown, or this town this week, anyone wanna come out and skate, lets skate.’ We wouldn’t always say we were filming for something though, because a lot of times when you try and make those type of plans, like, ‘we’re going out, meetup 11:30am, let’s get some clips’ and there’s like eight of us – plans like that usually fall apart. When we’d travel outta town it was our goal to have it naturally happen rather than making it a mission to get things. It’d be Mick and me warming up with the guys, but then we’d be off to the side getting the camera and everything ready.
Mick: Another thing I think we’re hoping with this is that maybe the younger generation of WV skaters see it, and their like oh shit, we could do something like that, and they get super excited to do similar stuff on their own and it snowballs. When I was growing up here, those guys down at Everyday Skateshop would put out videos and I’d watch’em, and remember thinking, ‘these are awesome!’ I remember feeling like making something like that was within my grasp.
So this is ALL West Virginia? You didn’t let a few clips slip through from your many neighboring states? How much park footage did you use?
Mick: Just two park clips from the Parkersburg bowl, but it’s all West Virginia to a fault. Once we got the ball rolling, we were really behind the concept. Actually not that long ago we went to this crazy bump to bar – where was that Blair?
Blair: Was that in Guyandotte?
Mick: Yeah that’s where we were, and I was like, ‘We sure this is in West Virginia, cause we can’t use it if not.’ We ended up checkin’ the map on the phone just to be 100%.
Blair: Haha, needed to make sure we weren’t on the Ohio state line, but yeah all the clips are solely West Virginia – we do have a couple skaters from other states, but they skated West Virginia spots.
Mick: There were so many spots we didn’t even get to. I mean West Virginia’s got spots. In many ways this video is our way of giving back. Our skate community is super small fish compared to others, so this was our way of being like, ‘hey we’re here, and we love where we are’. This is our way of showing respect to the state, our friends and the community that supports us.
Do you guys see West Virginia’s large creative community as a resource?
Mick: West Virginia is a smaller state comparatively to other states, in general and in GDP, so I think we pay attention more to what is directly around us, and that’s not to say other places don’t also do that, but I think because of West Virginia’s smaller size, we pay attention to those things by default. So being able to have places like Kin Ship, Elk City, Consolidated skate shop, being able to use the bands we did and having Base Camp as a host for the premiere, it sort of represents a collection of what creativity is in this state. It’s not about just skating – it’s sharing as well.
I love that! Was it difficult finding music for the video?
Blair: A lot of these people are our friends, whether through skateboarding, going to so many of their shows throughout the years or some other connection. And when we decided, for sure we’re doing the video, we just started making playlists of all West Virginia musicians, and began narrowing down what worked well with the skating, plus it’s a great opportunity to promote and showcase local musicians and artists.
Mick: It wasn’t hard finding music. The tough thing was narrowing it down. There are so many talented musicians and artists in this state; you want to use as many as you can, but you have to narrow it down to what you feel works and leave it at that. We got help too from Ben Coll, who does a lot of mixing with the Dinosaur Burps. He made some music suggestions as we were filming that were helpful. Another small underlying intention with the music was to avoid any ABD songs.
What about West Virginia do you think lends the state so well to inventiveness and imagination?
Blair: I think those two things coming together to make a larger community should always happen, because it’s hard doing this shit on your own, and when the community at large backs you, you get its back as well.
Mick: As far as imagination, West Virginia has always required a resourcefulness, so you have to have creativity and imagination to want to keep pushing past all the barriers. You kind of have to carve your own sort of way. I’ve always disliked when people follow up saying things like, ‘that was pretty good, or that was really cool’ with, ‘for being from West Virginia’, and with this video we’re really hoping that isn’t the case. You know, we hope people watch it and are like, ‘that looks awesome, I wanna go there.’ Even non-skaters, maybe they see some cool scenery or awesome waterfalls and it sparks their interest. West Virginia is an amazing place.
What do you feel has changed about West Virginia skateboarding in the last five years? And what do you feel has stayed the same?
Mick: I think what’s stayed the same is that we’re still so community oriented and kind of dependent on that, but in a good way. I mean you can go back way more than 5 years and skateboarding has been in West Virginia in various ways since the late 70’s, and even since then, it’s kind of been like what we’re willing to put into the culture here is what we get back.
Blair: What’s changed is there’s more skate shops and skate parks. Those two things brought skaters from around those areas together more, and during COVID, I think there were broader spectrums gained of what could be accomplished, I mean Apartment started during COVID, Elk City was gaining business around that time – the Hurricane skate park opened too.
A couple premiere flyers mentioned serving West Virginia hot dogs. What made’em West Virginian?
Blair: Mustard, slaw, chili or sauce.
Mick: The sauce or chili depends on which part of the state you’re in, but honestly we had all kinds of condiments – I’m not trying to yuck somebody’s yum, haha. The premiere was a blast, with a huge turnout! We were really happy with it, because being from areas that get discounted from a lot of stuff, you really have to make it your own, make it yours and be like, ‘this is our thing, we did this,’ and be proud of yourselves and your community – you know?
Blair: 15 outta 10 had by all!
