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Memory screen was groundbreaking for totally different reasons. Alien only became a real contender with Timecode.

No YouTube in 93. Only had mates with videos tapes and that was what they had when I started.
Useless wooden toys was the first ever skate vid I watched , then block head adventures in cheese then knocked for 6 by questionable.

I blame my mates for not having video days

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Yeah man, I’m joking. I only wanted to see the new stuff back then too, we weren’t really about watching a two year old video back then, it’d be like a 20 year old video nowadays.

Ha yeah I know . I think also the fucking about and teenage angst in questionable ticked the box back then too. Although driving the car off the cliff in VD was memorable as a 2 fingers up to the skate vid norm

First vid I saw was Propaganda, I watched that and Rollersnakes 540 for a solid year and nothing else, I older skater I met gave me Zero Hero, Now n later and Useless wooden toys. I then saw H street Lick and 720. I was blown away by how different they were. Then it was all about virtual reality for me. I didn’t see Video days or questionable till way later, maybe late 90s.

Don’t hear much talk about Spirit of the Blitz which was among the first vids I saw.

Shit, yes, same, I should have added that to the list that my mate gave me + some Rad mags. Mouly was my hero. Americans are cool, bullshit!

Weird how Rubbish Heap isn’t really remembered as an ā€˜important’ video. Spike made that before VD right?

Around the year 2000 when we were about 16, a mate of mine got a copy of The Search for Animal Chin. we loved how odd and different it was to what we had been exposed to with modern skating. We then proceeded to get hold of copies of Wheels of Fire and Streets of Fire. ā€˜Wow these sound tracks are awesome!’ we thought.

I then got a copy of the Alva and Z Boys video and it was about 2 hours of badly filmed kick turns in bowls with crazy Atari type screen wipes between them. I stopped hunting down older videos after that.

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Think the term ā€˜Best Ever’ gets mixed up with the first to do something influential a lot, especially in film.

If you look over a ā€˜Greatest Ever Film’ list more often than not you won’t find much made after 1970 with a lot of stuff from the early decades of cinema. If you go back and watch a lot of that stuff now it really doesn’t seem all that great as in a modern context things have gone on to build on what they did but better.

I find the mindset of Greatest Ever becomes quite narrow minded and people just go along with the status quo

Not to say I don’t love Video Days but I think a lot of people who voted for it deep down would prefer to watch whatever video they have personal nostalgia for but you just get bombarded with ā€˜Video Days is the best’ by older generations you just go along with it. Much like old film critics who say Citizen Kane is the ā€˜Best Film Ever’

Much prefer ā€˜Your Favourite’ as a yardstick that ā€˜Best Ever’

I think an online vote would subvert that then and people would vote against want ā€˜they’ve been to told to like’ and vote for what they actually like.
Maybe they just like Video Days :man_shrugging:t2:

fuck yeah the alva videos were so bad, they aged real bad, real quick

I’d disagree don’t know what being online has to do with anything

Don’t think any sort of ā€˜Best Ever’ list is done physically with a ballot box? Always online or post in the past

I’m not saying Video Days is or isnt the best ever just think if anyones confused as to why it won it’s because it was the first to a lot of stuff which is still done and built upon to this day whcih is where a lot of ā€˜Best Ever’ classifications comes from

Anonymity to not be ā€˜called out’ and vote the way you want too.

Says the most anonymous forumer ever.

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Lol

To add to Mick’s comment I think you also have to look at VD in historical context as well to understand why it’s almost universally viewed as the most groundbreaking video of all time even now.

It was released at the beginning of the shift from a vert dominated industry to a street one but VD (particularly Gonz and Jason Lee’s sections) managed to combine both ā€˜the past’ and ā€˜the future’ into one company ethos effectively disabling the ā€˜street skating is weak and not real skating’ argument that dominated media discourse until later on in the 90’s in an attempt to keep the status quo (i.e. pros skate vert / kids skate street) going.

Video Days bypassed this by having pros who could stall eggplants on vert like Neil Blender and frontside 180 fakie 5050 down handrails on the street.
This had never happened before and aside from Danny Way/Colin McKay in early Plan B videos, has never happened since.

In that respect, Blind of VD era was able to tell the whole industry to fuck off in a way that no other brand ever has - vert dudes couldn’t talk shit on Jason Lee/Gonz and thus, the way was paved for the next generation, represented by Mariano/Rudy to take over.

Also - Gonz was already a legend long before VD came out but he’d never had a proper part as whilst he was on Vision, the vert skaters = the proper pros thing was still in the ascendant and meant that he got less attention than the likes of Gator.

Look at Useless Wooden Toys (1990) and consider what the top street pro in that was doing on a board (Ed T - impossibles down little stairs) and compare it to Gonz ripping vert and boardsliding double kink rails (only ever touched by Frankie Hill previously) with style and grace.
EDIT: Forgot Danny Sargent as it goes - he was the closest to Gonz I guess in terms of contemporary videos and whilst nowhere near the same level kind of represented the same thing - OG Vallely too but they were not as mind-blowingly good on either terrain.

I do take HH’s points as well but the above is why I think VD is objectively (as far as objectively means anything in skate culture) the best/most important skate video of all time.

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I understand all this stuff about influence and how it should be viewed at as a product of its time but sorry and tdgafau are better videos imo and I can’t take this poll seriously for not featuring either

It was so hard to actually see it for my generation. It wasn’t until what if came out before I even saw it. I suppose it kept it a bit mysterious.

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There’s no way you can compare the Lordz video to Video Days

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