Back in the summertime of 1995, a group of professional skaters associated with 2 groups — Real Skateboards and Stereo Skateboards — stuffed into a single van to visit the United States. They drove around the nation in 5 weeks, skating demonstrations and remaining in inexpensive motels. This was back when skateboarding was still underground, a real subculture, prior to energy beverage sponsors, prior to Olympic approval, prior to skaters promoted themselves on their blue tick Instagram accounts.
“It was very underground,” states Greg Hunt, among the skaters in stated van. “It was our own thing. A lot of people loved the fact that your parents didn’t know about it, that not all the other kids in your school knew about it. It was a special thing that you were a part of that was yours.”
It was a subculture owned and run by the youth; it was unimaginable to have a profession beyond the age of 25 at that time. “Basically, if you were a pro skater, you were between 15 and 22.” Greg is launching a book of his photos from that journey called 20th Century Summer. In it, he records the downtime on trip, the in-between minutes, the monotony, skaters fantasizing in bed, peering out the windscreen at a limitless American roadway, hanging out in car park behind skate stores like in Jonah Hill‘s Mid90s. Greg’s not thinking about skate pictures here. “For whatever reason, I didn’t shoot the skate demos,” he states, “it’s all just us in motels, or in the van or whatever else it was that we were doing.”
At the time, Greg — who’s best understood for his skate movies for Vans and directing video for Cat Power — had actually simply got a cam and didn’t consider himself much of a professional photographer. For him, the video camera was something to reduce his social stress and anxiety on the journey. “It gives you something to do if you don’t feel completely at ease,” he states, confessing he’s not an outbound individual. He was quickly connected on photography, shooting 12 rolls — around 400 images — alone that journey. He was the peaceful observer who beinged in the very same back corner of the van, week after week, snapping away. His pictures are a marvelous time pill of mid-90s skate culture. You can’t error the renowned patterns of the day — big cutoff pants, high-top Vans reduced to low-tops, Tee shirts so saggy they might fit a household of 5.
I question how he feels recalling at these patterns. “I personally look at that as skateboarding’s dark ages,” he states. “I think the fashion in skateboarding was awful.” This surprises me, considered that a lot of skaters today appear they fell out of 1995. “It’s a little weird to see kids basically dress like how we did at that time because it’s derivative,” he states. “It’s not sort of an organic thing or a sort of fashion evolution where there’s that small nugget, like a person or a crew, influences a bigger crew, and then that influences the world. It’s mostly coming from people just loving that era and recreating that era.”
The skate style at that time was something we had actually never ever seen prior to. There was absolutely no fond memories connected to it, and it was era-defining without understanding it. It’s difficult to understand where it even originated from. “I don’t feel like it was really borrowing itself from another era, all of it was influenced 100% by the skateboarders that were in the magazines and videos, and a lot of those skateboarders were my friends or skateboarders that I knew.”
Is the modern-day analysis of 90s skate style any much better? “It’s almost like a costume, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, I think it’s great,” including that today’s patterns are somewhat more fitted, somewhat more elegant. “I honestly don’t think people are brave enough to go there, as far as how bad it really got. The pants at one point were so huge, they were cut off, the shirts were gigantic, and the pants would be red, the shirt would be green, you’d have some weird hat on.”
The people in the van were in between the ages of 17 and 24 and had no duties besides showing up to skate a demonstration and finalizing items for kids. Once that was done, there may be a little drinking in the van, or they would come across a half-ruined storage facility and smash it up some more. As to be anticipated, there were some hairy minutes, Greg states, although he explains himself as “pretty square”, as if he were the sober storyteller in a coming-of-age film — though he did handle to have his own love subplot.
“I really kind of fell for this girl on the trip,” he states, pointing out that he fulfilled her in New Jersey which they invested simply one night together, however obviously, when you’re young, it’s an extreme thing. They stayed connected for a bit, talking on the phone, however when you’re that age, Greg states, “What can you do? We just lost touch with each other because I wasn’t gonna fly out there; I didn’t have the money; she was probably 19 or 20, I was the same. But really, it was one of those things where you meet somebody, and they really leave a mark on you.” Greg shot an image of her locket, which remains in the book.
The journey would have been various had they had social networks and smart devices. But however, what makes the book and the period it records so unique is the lack of that force in youths’s lives. You take a look at the images and understand the impressive cultural shift that was to come. “The book captures this last chapter in time before we’re in our modern era where everyone has a phone in their hand,” states Greg, including that skaters aren’t unsusceptible to these modifications. You can’t visit the nation in a van today and anticipate a comparable experience as a professional photographer searching for reflective bits of life. Just like individuals on a bus or train, skaters are scrolling, examining their DMs, their Whatsapps, their video views.
“I still find myself in situations in the van that are similar to that trip, but I find it really hard to shoot now because everyone is on their phone all the time. Once phones came around, it just became really difficult… if you’re in the van, usually nobody is talking; everyone is looking down.”
Looking back through the pictures from that summertime, everybody is residing in the minute. No one appreciates their views, likes or fans. You pick up the flexibility, the life that’s taking place right here, today. You feel the spirit of this is our culture; this is our own strange world. As Greg puts it, “skateboarding really embraced freaks and being unique; you never wanted to copy someone else; it was about adding your own thing to it.”
’20th Century Summer’ is now readily available to preorder by means of Film Photographic.