When was the golden era of skateboarding, the time when everything was at its peak? Let’s assume it’s not coming in the future for the sake of argument, but hopefully it is. I want everything to keep getting better forever. Thanks to LeRoy Jackson for the question.
Here are the criteria I want to use:
- Media (videos/games/tv/magazines)
- Availability/popularity
We’ve got 5 decades to work with, because honestly, the 70s isn’t going to win. But let’s compare the 80s through the 2020s.
First, let’s take a look at media in four forms: skate videos, games, magazines and TV. To be the best era of skateboarding, there needs to be an easy way to access skateboarding content to learn more and just enjoy seeing your favorite pros.
The 80s had skate videos, like the Powell Peralta ones, and the amazing H-Street ones. Most of the skating in them is basically done in a weekend though. Magazines were huge, and there were some arcade and NES games, but they weren’t very compelling. There weren’t any TV shows or on-air competitions going on. Shoutout to Gleaming the Cube though.
The 90s ramped all of this stuff up. More skate videos from more companies that took more effort. The Tony Hawk games came out, with tons of competition from other skate games like Thrasher. Magazines were still big, except they were completely in color now. Sk8-TV came out in 1990, and the X Games were on TV. It was an improvement across the board.
The 2000s kept the trajectory, for the most part. The Tony Hawk series put out their best games in the PS2 era, and even the Skate series got its start. Skate videos were still coming out very frequently, including some of the best ever made, like Fully Flared and Round 3. At the same time, skate videos were starting to make it online as video sharing became a thing. I loved watching amateur videos back then. You could even get a full-length freestyle video, as the internet let people in smaller niches find each other and help each other out. Skateboard magazines and televised skate contests were still going strong – es Game of Skate, Goofy vs Regular, Maloof money cup, X Games, Gravity Games, and probably more that I’m not thinking of.
The 10s ramped up niche content, with Instagram and YouTube really blowing up. Full length skate videos and magazines took a plunge. Video games were still pretty good, with Skate 3 coming out in 2010, but not too much else. Televised skate contests mostly stopped, except for Street League. For the most part in the 10s, if you’re watching skateboarding, it’s on a computer or phone.
The 2020s are young still, but it’s about the same. We have SkaterXL, Session, and a new Skate game coming out. Full length skate videos are coming back to a degree, but all online with very limited physical releases. Magazines are very close to dead, although not quite. Street League is still around, and the Olympics are in the mix now. In a way, it’s easier than ever to watch skateboarding, but it’s also much easier to watch everything. Just ask your increasingly specific OnlyFans subscription list.
Next, let’s look at popularity and availability. This is a tough one to nail down. You want enough popularity that skate products are available. Skate shops stay in business, there are other skaters in your city waxing up spots, pro skaters can afford food so they can record stuff for you to watch.
On the other hand though, most skaters don’t want things to be too mainstream, with the skateparks packed to the brim with an entire elementary’s school’s worth of kids spilling out of it.
So when was this sweet spot? The 80s were good. The 90s were a bit too low. I started skating in 2001 and there were no skate shops around me, and I was a little embarrassed to be seen with a skateboard around that time. Of course, I had anxiety, so I would have been embarrassed to be seen in a Bentley with Britney Spears. The 2000s got a bit better as they went, and you could argue that things have swung to be too popular in the 10s and 20s. I actually get emails making that exact claim all the time from you guys.
In my mind, there’s a clear winner, but I want to make a couple points. First, there are some more criteria that might be more important to you, like big pro skater personalities, how vibrant your local scene is, or your favorite internet communities if you grew up in the middle of nowhere like I did.
The second point is that you can submit a question that might get turned into a video by going to radratvideo.com and submitting it through the form on the homepage. I always appreciate that. A like and subscribe would help the channel out too.
The last thing I want to show you is this chart. If you look up how people’s music preferences change with age, you’ll find that most people’s favorite music came out when they were about 13 to 16. Regardless of what era that is. It just hit them at the right time in their life and made an impression, with stuff coming out before your birth being okay and modern stuff being trash. So the most likely answer is that the golden era of skateboarding was when you were 15.
For me, that was 2003… Which is coincidentally the correct answer. If you’re older or younger than me, then I’m sorry but you’re just wrong. The 2000s had the perfect blend of old media with skate videos and TV, but still had new media of video file sharing and YouTube. It was the best of both worlds.