Twenty Years Of Hot Chocolate (Whatever It Is)

Part documentary, part tour video, part full length; whatever Hot Chocolate is, it turns twenty this year.

Hot Chocolate (dir. Spike Jonze, 2004) simultaneously is and is not a tour video. At its worst, it is an hour and fifteen minute film featuring a team talking about the video that the team made and are now appearing in like a weird commentated snake eating its own tail. At its best, it is a document of a post-Yeah Right world where Crailtap is able to soak in the glorious juices that ooze from the fruits of its labor.

We are talking peak Crailtap. The most crailed that tap had ever been, and the middle point between the two great behemoth skateboarding moments of the 2000s, Yeah Right (Girl, 2003), a video that solidified Girl/Chocolate/Crailtap as the biggest thing in skateboarding in the proper way that videos like Mouse and Goldfish had laid the groundwork for just a few years earlier, and the impossibly fucking massive hour and a half skate-epic - either beloved or despised depending on who you ask (exempting, of course, Pops’ part which, though it was shit on unmercifully at the time, is now universally adored because the culture has since decided that they want to be on Supreme and have therefore come around to the concept of the ‘East Coast’ as a worthwhile, non-tokenized skate culture whose lack of picnic tables and schoolyards adds to its appeal rather than detracts from it) - Lakai’s Fully Flared (2007), a skate video so impactful (or completely blown out, again, depending on who you talk to) that Lakai made a documentary about Lakai’s Fully Flared called Lakai’s The Final Flare almost immediately after.

Of course, if you have clicked on an article about Hot Chocolate and read this far, you are probably nitpicking the above paragraph’s interpretations of skateboarding history. While you may point out those interpretive differences, and while I do respect them, I might point out that you likely weren’t even fucking skating back then. You are a child. I am old. Shut the fuck up. 

Anyway.

Hot Chocolate by virtue of it existing in this space of time holds a special place in the Crailtap canon. It exists as a secondary, almost supplementary showcase of talent; the Chocolate side of the tap. Though many if not most of Chocolate’s 2004 riders appear in Yeah Right, Hot Chocolate highlights new additions such as Chris Roberts, and Kenny Anderson still in the burgeoning years of their careers, and suiting, are awarded minutes of time both to skate and to address the audience directly, introducing themselves, their attitudes, perspectives, and experiences as youngsters soon-to-be biggers. 

This is the important point at which Hot Chocolate differs from all predecessors. It features direct-to-camera interviews, quite heavily. An estimated 48% of screentime features direct-to-camera shots of riders or their voiceover, and in this way, it is difficult to determine whether it can be counted as a true skate video; rather a documentary. 

Interestingly and often painfully, the interviews address things that never occur on screen. The members of the team actively and enthusiastically reminisce on interesting and unifying moments of the month long tour that are never observed on camera. The interviews emphasize the camaraderie that develops between people when they spend two months in a van together, and are so insistent (if not persistent), that it can leave a viewer wondering who they are trying to convince. The clips of them helping each other up and supporting one another are few and far between, perhaps for Ty Evans’ lack of interest in the moment to point his camera in that direction, or perhaps simply because what they discuss is more abstract than applicable. 

One cannot help but speculate that Hot Chocolate isn’t meant to be the other half of the coin to Yeah Right, nor a standard tour video the likes of which have been known for decades prior. It is more a supplement, a solidification, and an obligation. 

Despite being sold as a tour video, Hot Chocolate doesn’t do a whole lot of touring. The cities that they visit - each demarcated by a board with the present city’s name printed on the bottom - are the least memorable aspects of the video. In the extensive team interviews, they speak very little (and, apart from Mike York, my favorite member of the Chocolate crew at any point in time if for his sheer not giving a fuck-ness and the insistance on wearing a Sixers jersey regardless of day, activity, or weather) about the city that they are in or the kids that they are meant to be talking to or really any aspect of the trip that doesn’t involve talking about how much they like each other. A fun drinking game would be to take a shot everytime someone says anything similar to, ‘it’s just like a really close family kind of thing,’ and finish your drink every time MJ does a double flip. You will be hammered. 

Indeed, the interviews are only overtaken by the skating, which is in fact, very very good. The clips are fucking stacked. They did not spare the lights and Ty Evans did not spare the cruiser wheels on a nine-incher as a makeshift camera dolly. Ramped slo-mo is the chakra and the chi of this video, and it is fucking aligned. There is much to be slowed and even more to be mo’d. 

Of particular note, Chris Roberts’ switch flip switch manny in LA (appropriately the YouTube thumbnail) in addition to his incredible ability to bigspin into and out of and onto and down absolutely anything on the fucking planet (a side note: this video is truly the epitome of manual-flip/shuv-manual and manual-180-manuals as was in fashion for the first half of the 2000’s), both of which never fail to make me go, ‘oh yeah, that guy skates.’ 

Other highlights include Mike York spinning on SF’s three up three down (RIP Mike York’s knee, you are dearly missed), Chico’s freestyle battles, Gino Iannuci hucking, Kenny Anderson skating like when you’re playing Skate 3 and your XBox glitches and the skater’s feet aren’t connected to their board, Richard Mulder doing the most talking and getting the least amount of footage, ~ fullcab a wooden bank to bank in ____’s least soggy warehouse park ~, the board on fire montage that is genuinely extremely entertaining and holds up to this day as two and a half minutes of worthwhile Girl/Chocolate hay day antics, Justin Eldrige being clearly better than his generational peers (not only because of his instinctual ability to nollie nosegrind) and Marc Johnson fucking around but still filming better clips than any of you (and also, me) could ever possibly hope to film. 

Despite the wealth of footage, the heartwarming if somewhat over-abundance of ‘we’re a family who loves each other!’ quotes, and the staged bits that showcase Spike Jonze’s directorial ability all of which I slurp up with a spoon like spaghetti from a can, I fail to see Hot Chocolate’s utility beyond it being an address to the audience in the way that a newly crowned King may appear in the palace balcony to address the hungry masses on the state of the empire; a victory lap; a Motel 6 trip across the unforgiving flatlands of North America, doing double flips and playing soccer in a gas station parking lot at one in the morning, but perhaps that is all that a tour video should be. 

At a certain point, Marc Johnson, one of skateboarding’s most introspectively vocal legends, admits to wondering to himself, ‘what am I doing here?’ and watching Hot Chocolate again, as I have for twenty years, for maybe the two hundredth time, I can’t help wondering the same thing. What am I doing here? Why do I have the VHS copy? Why do I cling on to this video? Why do I love it so much? What does it do for me? For the answers to these questions, I return to the introductory paragraph. Hot Chocolate exists in a time post-Yeah Right!, but pre-Fully Flared. They are riding the high of their crowning as the best fucking thing in skateboarding (they were, there is no arguing it, Crailtap was for sure outselling God at that point), and aren’t corrupted by the behemoth that Lakai would turn out to be. It is sweet. It is innocent.

They are no longer in search of themselves or the crown, but haven’t succumbed to the hype that Fully Flared will soon deliver to them. They are pure, and secure, and finally have the space to enjoy. They can go on tour and film a whole full-length around it and hardly feature the fact that they are indeed, on tour, and you will watch it and love it because fuck you! It’s good! The skating is good! And the interviews are interesting because the skating is interesting.

Hot Chocolate begins (in earnest, not including the Keenan Milton section at the front (rest in peace, Keenan) and the section during which Daniel Castillo addresses being shot in the leg in a horrible incident of gang violence) with a shot of the Chocolate team pushing down an empty American street, but they aren’t alone. They are backed by dozens if not more what appear to be random fuckers, pushing toward camera with as much vigor and excitement as one would expect from being featured in the introduction to the new video by the best thing in skating. Those random fuckers, they’re you. They are the masses. They are the ones that this video is for and they are the ones that this video is able to be eaten by. The Chocolate team doesn’t give a fuck about winning you over. You’ve already been won. While this video is weak as a skate video, it is extraordinarily strong as a cinematic and historical piece of work. It encapsulates the aesthetics and attitudes of a moment in time before a countdown clock and a thirty-person team and a documentary about a skate video got in the way. It was fun, it was enjoyed, it was easy. Were it so, now. 

It’s been twenty years of watching Hot Chocolate. Here’s to twenty more.