Thrasher Magazine

If anyone knows about what makes a good part it's Mark. Here he returns to his alma mater to breakdown, you guessed it, Verso    Photos by Maynor Castillo

Near the end of 2025, in the back of a college auditorium in Manhattan, Alexis Sablone and Tony Hawk were talking halfpipe geometry. Was Tony’s Boom Boom Huckster bigger than the old Woodward ramp? Definitely. How many feet of vert? What’s the radius? And how do the transitions at Castle Bam compare? While the architect and ramp gramp nerded out, kids filled in the seats, ready for class to start promptly-ish at 9:30AM. The subject: Skate Videos 101. This week’s guest lecturers: Tony Hawk, Alexis Sablone and Jerry Hsu. Attendance: perfect.

Check the laptop stickers to see if your professor really skates 

“One of my best experiences was while shooting Ban This,” Tony said to the room full of New School film students and stray 30-somethings. “We were shooting on high-speed film, so Stacy’s got these cameras that have to warm up to get the shutters going that fast, and they sound like lawnmowers. I hear that noise and it's like, I better make this one, ’cause they don’t have much film left.” Ah, the perils of prehistory. “This is all antiquated, but I think that was the beginning of what became more modern skate videos. You're going to try your hardest stuff and it's going to take a long time, but once we get them on film, it's worth it.”


Tony's section in Ban This is high art

In the class, officially called the Visual Aesthetics of Skateboarding (offered at Eugene Lang College at the New School University), students studied skate filming and editing while trying to learn what makes a good skate video, well, good. Some had never skated before. One found filming skating to be like filming dancing—“street jazz,” they called it. “This class is sick, though. It made me more comfortable with guerilla filmmaking. Just showing up somewhere, not calling ahead. Which, especially when you're in film school and you have no money, is what you have to do.”

Only thing missin' is a VX for the field trip to the Banks

“I thought it would just be a bunch of skaters hanging out and going to parks, but it's been a good surprise,” one student said. While another added, “I thought it'd be really daunting, but people are literally lending me their boards to use for the videos. And I'm learning a lot. Like, it's really hard to film on a skateboard. I had to go on rollerskates for the first few times.”


BA and Nathan go way back. Who do you think made this epic short doc for The New Yorker

When students weren’t analyzing black-and-white birds from Photosynthesis, they took field trips to the Brooklyn Banks, and each week learned firsthand from legendary guest speakers (like the Tempster) and SOTYs (Mark Suciu, Brian Anderson, Tony Hawk). “Nathan’s super passionate about it. He used to skate,” one student said of their professor and filmmaker Nathan Fitch—who still has a mean nollie!

Templeton Zoomed in to indoctrinate the next generation of loyal pawns

“It was great to hear everyone's ideas, even if they weren't actively skateboarders themselves,” BA added after his visit to the class. He was also in attendance when the Birdman dropped in. “In the beginning, Nathan asked about the visual aspect, and it was cool to hear what Jerry, Alexis and Tony all had to say." For Brian, one of his earliest creative inspirations was griptape. “I grew up making brown-paper-bag covers for my school books and ripping out pictures of my favorite heavy metal bands. So I was already doing my own griptape job on my school books.”

Guest speaker BA returns to Super-8 to show the beauty of black rainbows       Still: Fitch

Most people suck at public speaking—pros in particular—but this cast of A-listers knew how to work a room, and Jerry aced the assignment. “It's always hard to articulate everything you want to say in the way that you want to say it,” he said, “but I was excited to talk to skaters and non-skaters because I'd never done that in a school format. Sometimes I'm around people that are pretty worked by the world, so it was nice to be around people who are inspired and ready to do shit. All optimism, no pessimism.”


If anyone's been worked by the world, it's enjoi-era Jerry

“A lot of it was like what Alexis was saying on stage,” Jerry added. “She’s always challenging herself to do something different or do something that makes her uncomfortable.” Like the time Alexis taught herself to weld so she could build a chair—and get a skate photo on it, of course. When you have the mindset to get excited versus feel daunted, that's definitely inspiring.” Back in the auditorium, the discussion touched on Lance Mountain pioneering skits in skate videos, Tony phoning in a song clearance favor to Wu-Tang’s RZA and the harsh reality of making skateboarding a job. “It’s just not fun any more,” Jerry said, half joking. “You need to not stop skateboarding with your friends. I think that’s the only way to separate the activity from whatever business aspect you have to deal with in this neoliberal hellscape that we live in.”


Before class ended, Alexis left everyone with a motivational message: “Once you get out of here you're just floating in the world, and that's a weird thing to navigate. Skateboarding gave me that community before I was in college, and after, skateboarding was the excuse to just be with other people. It’s an excuse to be social and feel connected. So I guess what I'm saying is, you should feel lucky. Through skating and school, those are the friendships that have lasted me decades, and I think that's the most important thing in your life.”

And they didn't even have to book a Cameo

After their lecture, as Tony politely signed autographs and posed for selfies, a group of students chatted about their upcoming final, a class-wide skate video. “I'm pretty far behind right now. I stayed up until 3AM to make a 30-second video,” one student said. “But I respect it because he's actually getting stuff out of us. It’s not an easy A.”

Professor Nathan Fitch, 2021 SOTY Mark Suciu and the only nine people at the New School who fully understand that sequence of mirror lines

Will this seminar in stoke lead to the New School offering a PhD for thrash studies? Probably not. The future of the class is still in the air and there’s a chance the Visual Aesthetics of Skateboarding won’t ever be taught again. But like Tony’s first ollie 540 in Ban This, at least some of this once-in-a-lifetime experience was captured.

If there was ever a part worth studying, it's the one named after a part of a book


Take a closer look

Now, Jerry says that's a wrap. Go make you're own video!