Video of skateboarders on brooklin rooftops is both mesmerizing and terrifyng

BOTH MESMERIZING AND TERRIFYING
01.27.2014
11:44 am
Topics:
Sports
Tags:
Brooklyn
skateboarding NYC

I never got particularly good at skateboarding. Or even reasonably good. Passably good? No. Actually, I was a really, really bad skateboarder. Sports that require practiced precision just aren’t safe for someone with my attention span, and since that precision is the only thing between you and the concrete, my skating “career” was little more than a series of painful falls.

So when I saw this promo video for Tengu: God of Mischief, an ambitious film of high-risk skating, all I could think was, “No, this one is actually going to die.” To be fair, there’s a pretty big market for skate videos featuring nothing but wipe-outs and injuries.

Director Colin Reed spent over two years collecting footage of Brooklyn rooftop skaters for the video, in addition to other terrifyingly dangerous feats in San Francisco, Tokyo, and Bordeaux. Much to my teeth-grinding relief, no one went kersplat, and upon the second viewing, I was able to unclench every muscle in my body for long enough to see some really beautiful shots of some incredibly impressive skating.