article by Dave Lewis
Today we’re going to turn the clock back and bring you to a simpler time – a time before PSL and Street League, when Tampa Pro was still a VHS, and when you could literally get away with murder. We are of course discussing, the Demo Era.
It’s important to understand that I am only writing this article because I grew up watching Harsh Euro Barge every night before bed, and Tony Hawk’s Gigantic Skatepark Tour on ESPN every morning before school circa 2003. Tour videos have a special place in my heart, showing me early on that there can be a balance between pure chaos and heartfelt sentimentality… a balance I’m still trying to find in the women I date.
The Origin of Demos
Perhaps coming into existence in the 80’s as vert and “street” demos, but really taking form in the early 90’s, demos served the purpose that they were intended for – a demonstration of modern skateboarding to kids in suburban towns that happened to have a skateshop, which was likely run by some weirdo who barely skated vert in the 80s, didn’t see the crash of skateboarding’s popularity coming in the 90s, and now had to make a living peddling World Industries boards to shithead kids while trying to work through a divorce settlement. In their early iterations, like an underground punk rock scene, skate teams would travel around the country finding sanctuary in the tender care of locals, performing demos in depressing parking lots, gymnasiums, parking lots, parking lots, and malls. It wasn’t glamorous, and the footage was mostly used in a 411VM, On Video, or otherwise included in sections combined with contest / miscellaneous park footage.
The Era of Tour Videos
As we progressed into the late 90’s, companies and 411VM began releasing full-length videos of mixed demo and street footage from the road, but it wasn’t until about 2000 that the craft began to be refined into what we now reflect on as a “Tour Video”.
The Chocolate Tour spoofs the demos of the 90’s in 1999, signaling a change to come.
So by the early 2000’s, enjoyable tour videos with legitimate skating had become a viable revenue stream for companies – and an attractive option for content-starved pre-teen skateboarders who were already dying to steal $20 out of mom’s purse to go buy any lukewarm plain vanilla dogshit content that was being put out.
Also, something else had come out in 1999. Skateboarding was beginning to find popularity again, primarily in the alternative crowds, which meant what?
Yes, you guessed it – an influx of cash was going into the pockets of smaller, “core” brands that had put a stranglehold on skate culture during a period of recession-of-interest. Wow, that must have been great for skateboarding right? Rather than having Publicly Traded, profit-seeking corporations in charge, these brands could pay and take care of their riders and grow in a responsible way. Right? … RIGHT? Of course not- instead, we’ll give our team of teens / 20-somethings a private jet, fly them around the world with a huge budget and document it all for entertainment.
So as we enter the 2000’s there is just a massive boom in Tour videos and Demo content. The Crailtap camp alone had an absolutely historic run of tour videos in the 2000’s, including full lengths – Beware of the Flare, Harsh Euro Barge, Hot Chocolate, Super Champion Funzone, Beauty and the Beast, Gang of Fourstar, and also shorts either released as bonus sections to DVD’s or directly on the Crailtap site – High Fives up the I-5, Se Habla Canuck, Canada Eh, and a million others too long to list here. All pretty much within the span of 7-8 years.
Everybody was getting in on it, The Firm’s Riding Shotgun with Weiger, Kids in Emerica, Anti-Hero’s Tent City, Baker Summer Tour 2001, Toy Machine Berzerker, Label Live and again- many, many more.
The Demo Skater
The skate scene was flourishing, and tours / tour videos were a way of mainlining skate culture into the veins of the impressionable youth, via the syringe that was The Demo Skater.
If the 2000’s were skateboarding’s unhealthy situationship that never should have happened in the first place but we’d do it all over again even knowing then what we know now – the demo skater is that mysterious DJ girl we fell for at a house party in Boston in 2016, whose allure, and disregard for society were simply too much to hold in any state of permanence…
Forged in the fire of 90’s contests, surviving by the skin of their teeth both physically and financially – the 2000’s demo skater was a battle-hardened veteran of some of the most demonic setups known to man – putting it all on the line for $5k and a pat on the back.
Look at these fucking rails.
These guys were ready to die for glory and a shot at an eS team shoe in 1998 – and now you’re saying they’re getting world-class treatment to travel around and skate parks that are half as dangerous, if that? Say no more.
So it really comes as no surprise that we ended up being blessed with truly remarkable demos and footage – stuff that honestly could have / potentially would have been used in video parts by today’s standard.
Beyond this – the demos themselves and the tour videos allowed for us as the audience to get to know the skaters themselves in a way that we hadn’t really been able to before. We were with them in the van, and on the road- we knew all the soundtracks and burned them onto CD’s, knew all of the inside jokes and could quote them to our own friends. It was beautiful.
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Now for the sad part :/
As we all have learned or will learn – all good things must come to an end. In more of a fade-away than burn-out fashion, the introduction of social media and growth of immediate access to skate content made demos less sought after. Simultaneously, generations were shifting – health & wellness were becoming more important, being drunk all the time was becoming less desirable as a personality, corporate money had found its way in, and contests had become completely sterilized versions of what they had once been.
Another critical difference between the demo skater of the 2000’s and the contest skaters of today (aside from maybe one or two), was that the former were all the top flight pros / ams who were also putting out some of the best street parts of all time. This was Arto, Bastien, Templeton, BA, Koston, Carroll, McCrank, Reynolds, Hsu, Herman, Daewon, MJ, Gino. The latter are… I don’t know, Ginwoo?
It’s a Rocky IV comparison – you’ve got Jagger Eaton in one corner birthed and raised in a training facility, and in the other corner you have Tosh in a rasta sweatband eating 20 McDoubles.
What can we take away from all of it? Nothing, really. This is just a think piece about a mid-level band strugging with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom. It does turn out that most of the rock stars we worshipped were in fact righteously dumb, but the day it ceases to be dumb, is the day it ceases to be real. These were real people who had real flavor and personality, who fucked up and did stupid shit. People who loved the culture and loved the craft – who didn’t do it for money because there was none.
If nothing else, at least they weren’t robots doing the same tricks over and over again down an 8 stair. A cheers, a nod, and a hat off to the demo skaters.
