Dogtown and Z-Boys

There's a perfectly logical origin as to the how and why of the gravity defying hot dog stunt riding of modern skateboarding getting started.  It was Southern California, mid 1970s.  There was a drought.  People would receive fines for watering their lawns.  Restaurants did not serve water.  All those Los Angeles swimming pools were empty.  A group of Venice beach (a rough area nicknamed "Dogtown") area kids from broken homes had already proven themselves in the waves of the Pacific, even daring the upward pilings of an ancient broken down amusement park.  They hit the concrete with different boards when the surf blew out and went flat.  Lips of street curbs were ridden, but there was nothing like a deep, cavernous pool.  Riding would never be the same.

The teens formed a family of sorts.  They were all excellent surfers and skaters, and were mentored by owners of a local surf shop called Zephyr.  Thus, the "Z-Boys" (one of which was a girl) took to every available horizontal, vertical, and sloping L.A. surface to hone their craft, something far more advanced than what was seen during skateboarding's brief original heyday in the 1960s.  The sport later fell out of mainstream favor as it began to attract people like the Zephyr gang: long hair, no shirts, dirty, punk attitude. But by 1975 heads were turning.  Later, corporate heads.  The band broke up.  The kids went their separate ways.  A few became quite famous.

2001's DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, narrated by Sean Penn, who grew up in the same area, chronicles the history of the riding giants as they establish themselves during the Me Decade.  Learning self esteem and branching way from their ghetto to achieve international fame in some cases.  Aside from one member, "last seen in Mexico", each of the Zephyr Skate Team are interviewed in the present, including this movie's director, Stacy Peralta.  They reminisce, mostly fondly of their glory days, recalling how reckless their environments and their riding really were.  The kids had to post lookouts and escape strategies to evade home owners and the police when they rode those pools.  They threw rocks and glass at surfers who dared invade their spots in the water.

Jay Adams and Tony Alva are agreed to have been the most talented skaters in the Z-Boy band, and are given lengthy profiles.  Both had considerable skill and brio to match. Adams' post '70s life was quite unfortunate, but only spoken of in the vaguest of terms by his buds and the man himself in this movie.  He was the tragic figure of the group, the one who couldn't justify turning what he loved into a business.  Alva conversely found a way to make it happen; he quit making the corporate guys rich and opened his own company, Alva Skates.

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS will appeal mostly to riders, but is fascinating enough to keep the interest of those who only dreamed of "doing a Burt".  Peralta uses several ultra cool rock songs (Hendrix, T. Rex, Bowie, Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, et al.) to give further exilhiration to the plethora of old photos and home movies.  This doc is a blast.

I was never as cool as these kids.  I did ride a skateboard a bit in my adolescence but did nothing even remotely close to what is on tap in DOGTOWN.  You watch these old guys smile at their memories, and for a moment or two you envy them.