Blood and Scrapes be Damned
June 14, 2011 6:28 AM   Subscribe

Carving the Mountains by Juan Rayos. A spring afternoon in the Madrid Mountains, with the Longboard Girls Crew swooping down the Spanish mountains. SLVimeo; 4.12.
posted by bwg (18 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
That was nice.
posted by feckless at 6:38 AM on June 14, 2011


Beautiful.
posted by a non e mouse at 6:38 AM on June 14, 2011


That was cool! :)
posted by zarq at 7:10 AM on June 14, 2011


hawt
posted by ReeMonster at 7:13 AM on June 14, 2011


Question for film geeks: how do you think he filmed this? On the back of a scooter or something?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:22 AM on June 14, 2011


So cool! I want to learn how to longboard.
posted by janepanic at 7:37 AM on June 14, 2011


Me too janepanic, but I fear at 60 >> age >> 18 I'm in the completely wrong age bracket to be able to pull it off without it looking like a mid-life crisis.
posted by fatfrank at 7:41 AM on June 14, 2011


Wow. This takes me back to the early 70's. A group of friends and I in Southern California took to skateboarding the Angeles Crest Highway and its tributaries. We would drive up there in the middle of the night, and while 3 or 4 or 5 guys skated down the mountain, one would follow, coasting, with the headlights on. Then we would drive back up, trade off, and go down again. (Drugs played a not-insignificant part in this.) Gradually, ski gloves, and elbow pads became part of our getup. Even so I left some skin up there.

We went through wheels like there was no tomorrow, and, there being NO skateboard shops back then, we ended up going to the roller rinks of South LA to find parts. We experimented with wheel composition and different trucks to get the right combinations of speed, grip and rolling resistance. I favored polyurethane wheels, for their grip, and since I was the least courageous of the group, tended to skate slower. Others liked ceramic wheels, which slid, but had to be replaced after several runs.

We also favored, during the day times, those new housing developments which were springing up on the hillsides all over LA. Same protocol, other then disbelieving homeowners watching us speed by.

This story tells of a skater meeting up with Steve, the ringleader of our little group.

But my point (and I have one) is that at no time did we meet girls like this, up there.
posted by Danf at 7:49 AM on June 14, 2011 [5 favorites]


That was really beautiful. I don't think that the girls were traveling very fast, just judging by how many little turns they were making and tricks like turning around on the board. Perhaps that isn't the point of the video.

Yesterday, I was on Lookout Mountain by Golden, Colorado teaching a group of kids how to rock climb. At the end of our program we were back at the cars (parked in a pullout on the side of the road) talking about the day. A longboarder went by so absurdly fast that only a few of us even saw him. It was amazing. Here is some video of a race on Lookout http://vimeo.com/4642651
posted by fieldtrip at 7:51 AM on June 14, 2011


Meanwhile, in California.
posted by SyntacticSugar at 7:55 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]


janepanic: "So cool! I want to learn how to longboard."

I've always been totally skateboard impaired. Even as a teen, I couldn't stay on one for more than thirty seconds without ditching. My knees just don't seem to bend that way.
posted by octothorpe at 8:24 AM on June 14, 2011


Poetry in motion and excellence inproduction. As good as it gets
posted by rmhsinc at 8:32 AM on June 14, 2011


That was beautifully filmed. For some reason, this was more compelling than guys doing the same thing. Go figure!
He also has one in Madrid.
Plus they have a website.
posted by MtDewd at 8:54 AM on June 14, 2011


The big distinguishing fact here is not that they are great longboarders (They're certainly better than I will ever be, but probably only 80th percentile or so among actual longboarders), or that they are doing some radically new trick, but that they have vaginas. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I think the female half of the species is insulted when we take an accomplishment otherwise unworthy of worldwide attention but make an exception for the boobs. At the same time, seeing a video like this could inspire some tots with the knowledge that yeah, chicks can do this too. I think I would have preferred to see them boarding at the same level as the dudes in SyntacticSugar's video.
posted by cman at 9:35 AM on June 14, 2011


This is so perfectly timed for me. My husband just bought the 8 year old his first skateboard, and he told Boy to go ask me how to ride it. (I skated in college, but it's been decades since I got on deck.) Boy's response was "Girls don't skateboard." (Which of course meant I had to go do it...and good gods do I hurt...but I made my point. And praise Asphalta, I didn't fall down to meet her.)

But this, this is poetry. A brilliant example of riding, I can't wait to show it to him. (Also, any other recommendations y'all have of amazing female riders would be super welcome.)
posted by dejah420 at 10:24 AM on June 14, 2011 [1 favorite]


Kyle Chin skates the Santa Barbara foothills.
posted by Manjusri at 10:25 AM on June 14, 2011


I get your point, cman. But at the same time, the ladies in the OP look like they're having an absolute blast. While I'm sure the guys in SyntacticSugar's (great) link are having fun, they also seem like they may have a deathwish.

And I have to say one other thing about that Second Nature (Sector 9) thing. Generally speaking, wind noise is something to be avoided as much as possible in film, but it is a hugely effective element here. We even see from 17:22 to 17:42 that they are using a nice zeppelin and dead raccoon, but the wind is just too much. And of course they could've just taken it out in editing, but made the very correct decision to leave it in. Yikes.
posted by zoinks at 2:46 PM on June 14, 2011


Potomac, Juan Rayos says in the comments to the Madrid video that MtDewd linked to that he shoots from another board.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 3:36 PM on June 15, 2011


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