QuickGlance: Five Initial Takeaways From The New Nike SB Video, QuickStrike

At forty four minutes long, it is a feast of a skate video. 

The Nike SB family - and it is an extended fucking family spanning four continents and three or four skateboarding generations - assembled under the capable guidance of skateboarding filmmakers Will Miles, Johnny Wilson, and Anthony Travis to create an ambitious snapshot whose size and scope is something to marvel at, particularly given the fact that it was shot cut and assembled in a mere ten months. Having watched the video twice (six times if you count the collective viewing of the three people whose opinions are referenced below), my brain is busted open and I have never felt more inadequate as a skater. That in mind, while it is still fresh and I have not had enough time to develop reasons to be a hater, here are five immediate takeaways not purchased by or in favor of or necessarily against Nike SB and their newest full length video (which you should definitely watch immediately), QuickStrike. 

Antonio Durao could very well be the best skater alive.

It is a long-running point of contention in certain circles of New York City skating that Antonio Durao is in fact the greatest skateboarder to ever live. It is as debatable as SkateGoat’s stance, only more divisive, and with more elusive evidence. For example, you can see footage, or a photo, or hear a story, but you only really believe in Bigfoot when you’ve seen him for yourself. Likewise, Antonio Durao’s skateboarding ability. 

Critics will say that he doesn’t have enough footage out, that he doesn’t take skating seriously enough. However, I would argue that if this is how good he is at skateboarding when he isn’t taking it seriously, just think about how good he therefore actually is. He is already doing tricks in this video that leaves onlookers laughing rather than clapping, a reaction only elicited by achieving a trick so fucked that it is as funny as a joke, imagine how good he could possibly be. 

(Quick(Strike) side tangent: skateboarding takes itself so fucking seriously these days that to have a guy laugh and smile when skating and not pretending that what they are doing is anything other than the most unserious and fun thing on earth (I’m looking at you, kids at Tompkins who break their board when they don’t land a trick when really its because Strobeck isn’t noticing them, and also you, guys who don’t acknowledge your presence at the spot until they see that you are in fact better than them at skating and can therefore climb up a social ladder by being seen with you) is extremely refreshing, so thank you, Antonio, and you, Karim, for being happy on camera and not making yourselves out to be tortured artists.)

In Dragonball, Goku was a weird, funny, silly little kid who laughed a lot but didn’t take things too seriously, but his readable power level was through the rough. That is Antonio Durao. That is all. 

The full length video is not a ten course meal, but a medley.

Ishod having footage that doesn’t either open or close a video is a strange sight in this day and age, and having lines sprinkled in the middle of a full length feels almost insulting to the talent of who I believe is one of the top five most fucking incredible skateboarders to ever live (based on the criteria of both style and pure ability). That method of editing, though - that people don’t necessarily get first or last parts, or full parts at all, so much as the clips are thrown in a margarita blender and set to spin - is in style and does not appear to be going anywhere, and I, for one, do not hate this.

It feels more like a buffet than a ten course meal. There are no sections to skip, no parts to dislike. When the clips are blended in this way, you either like the video as a whole or you don’t, which makes for a more determinate viewing experience. 

The only caveat I would lay is that I am old, and I do not know a lot of these skaters by their face, nor do I follow them on Instagram, and I therefore put forth that name title cards would be extraordinarily helpful. It seems as though name titles for each skater went out of style because it is uncool to care so much about your ‘part’ that you’d want your name on it, but say that outloud and tell me you don’t sound like a fucking moron. Obviously you care if you are killing yourself for clips. If your reply is, ‘eh this is just for a brand video, whatever,’ that brand is paying your rent in exchange for your physical usage. You are already a prostitute for Nike, selling your body and your likeness, so just put your fucking name on so that I can credit you appropriately for your mind-bending tricks. 

We may not be smart enough to understand this.

A good friend of mine described the video as weird, but near euphoric.

‘The music, the randomness. Like, you have half the limo team and then a Jake Anderson part? The skating was incredible, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, but it felt like I was a kid again, walking into Zumiez before I understood anything and watching a video that was such a flood of foreign information. It was basically impenetrable. That was the vibe of the video, like I didn’t understand it.’ 

I couldn’t agree more. I like to think that I have been in skating long enough to know what is reasonable - what is possible, even. QuickStrike proved me wrong. It felt glossy, and almost like a simulation. It is an overload of names and faces and styles, it feels like what I imagine that girl from Willy Wonka tasted when she ate the gum whose flavors shifted between the courses of Thanksgiving dinner in just a few seconds. Was it AI? No, it was just Hugo and Grant Taylor and Chicken Little and Eric Fucking Koston in one video. Confusing, inspiring, but mostly confusing.

Nike SB has the best team in the business (duh, but still).

Does quantity equal quality? In the case of QuickStrike, yes. 

Featuring - somewhat obnoxiously - in order of appearance: Antonio Durao, Max Palmer, Noah Mahieu, Hugo Boserup, Nick Mathews, Brian Anderson, Stefan Janoski, Oskar Rozenberg, Arin Lester, Nicole Hause, Eric Koston, Mason Silva, Carlos Ribeiro, Hayley Wilson, Donovon Piscopo, Dashawn Jordan, Sean Malto, Jack O’Grady, Cyrus Bennett, Jake Anderson, Vincent Huhta, Vilma Stal, Sarah Meurle, Ville Wester, Raph Langslow, Casper Brooker, Eetu Toropainen, Kyron Davis, Nils Matijas, Gus Gordon, Kevin Bradley, Blake Carpenter, Poe Pinson, Georgia Martin, Ishod Wair, Tanner Burzinski, Karsten Kleppan, Ben Lawrie, Dylan Jaeb, Noah Nayef, Korahn Gayle, Joe Campos, Troy Gipson, Seven Strong, John Fitzgerald, Vince Palmer, Daan Van Der Linden, Youness Amrani, Grant Taylor, Karim Callender, Elijah Odom, Andrew Wilson, Enzo Kurmaskie, Nik Stain, and Didrik Galasso.

Fuck me. That’s a lot of names. 

So when you are a massive corporation with more money than God, so much so that you can still sponsor and film and feature more riders in one video than total Baker Boys in history (just about) even after famously dropping dozens of flow riders, your skate video is going to be very, very good, and it is. 

If I go to a casino and have a massive corporate fund to draw from that allows me to put money on dozens of numbers, I will get some big fucking winners. This video has Donovan Piscopo being more hesh than I think he really needed to be in the same sequence as Sean Malto’s mid-thirties hucking and a fucking backside flip fakie manny half cab into the courthouse bank. With names like this - names and talent that money was able to buy - is the skating really that good or was it simply a matter of statistics? Who knows, not me. 

What now is the purpose of a skate video in the culture and in business?

As was touched upon in the above point, while the skating was absolutely fucking impeccable, the vibe was very ‘what?’. The musical choices, the editing, the sequences of b-roll and lines all made for a delectable bit of eye candy (love you, Johnny Wilson, Ant, Will Miles, you are as much in my heart as your work is in my eyeballs at every opportunity I get), but it is difficult to tell what was achieved with this video. What was the purpose? The vision? Was it simply a showcase? Am I meant to want to go and buy Nike shoes now having seen it? Because I don’t. I have a greater appreciation for Max Palmer and Dashawn Jordan, but I do not have a greater appreciation for the swoosh. 

I hate to be that guy, but back in the day, videos not only showed off the skill of a rider, but what the brand was about - what the aesthetic was, what it stood for. Baker was into partying and being hesh. Cliche was french. Lakai was tech. Things made sense. In 2009’s Debacle by Nike SB, I gained an understanding of the sort of company that Nike SB was aiming to be (and was also fucking amazed by the skating). With QuickStrike, I do not have a better understanding of Nike SB’s aesthetic, direction, or purpose. The skating and editing in QuickStrike is absolutely remarkable, and the filmmakers and skaters should be applauded endlessly, but as a branding tool, it fails to inform me, or even specify itself as a separate entity to the aesthetics of Limo, Supreme, or other East Coast/ Euro videos. It is a video that feels more like ‘2024’ than ‘Nike SB’, and I’m not sure that that was Nike’s ambition. 

All together, QuickStrike is a fucking mindblowing skate video and - whether it’s to see skateboarding’s Bigfoot or Karim’s good vibes (front crooks) - the video is extremely rewatchable, a difficult feat in today’s internet instantaneous attention departure, and was achieved in only ten months. Due to its size and scope, I believe that it will serve as a definitive showcase of skateboarding in the early 2020’s, and will be returned to again and again, because it deserves it.