Taunting Death, Finding Transcendence, and Bombing Hills on a Skateboard

[upbeat music]

[Zane] Bombing is like going fast, feeling the wind,

feeling, like, the board rumble on the asphalt,

just getting past that point of any return.

You are giving yourself to the speed.

If you stay on the tight rope

and you're tiptoeing it effectively,

once you're on the other side, you feel amazing.

It's like, holy shit, I just escaped that,

that was beautiful.

Not, it's just a manhole cover,

like you're on another spot. Okay.

[laughs] Exactly.

Well, it is a spot, of course it's a spot.

[laughs]

Oh, there it is. Damn.

How pissed? That was the most pissed.

We're going this way.

[funky music]

I see a skateboard as a limb.

It's like, I feel more comfortable riding a skateboard

than walking.

It's like my community.

It's what I love.

It's, like, what gets me out of bed.

And, like, if that's not what we're all looking for, like,

I don't know what is, truly.

I moved to San Francisco in 2013.

I moved to the city for the Hills.

There's something that's just so special to me.

It's such a freedom.

I really do get to escape while I'm going fast.

I pretty much moved here

to skateboard,

specifically to skateboard down the Hills

and to just be a part

of the larger skate community here,

'cause it's kind of like the Mecca of skating.

It's a Holy place for skateboarding, or an unholy place.

My father, he absolutely hates bombing.

He's supported me in skateboarding through all of it,

taking me to contests, like, seriously, such love

and support being offered to me.

But the one thing that like he cannot get behind

is bombing, and it's understandable.

People have died doing this shit.

Like, it's not a joke.

It's not something to take lightly.

[Adam] As you're going down,

you're definitely cautious and aware.

But a lot of that starts to kind of float away magically,

'cause you're experiencing this, like, euphoric feeling

of just going fast.

And if you're with friends

it's, like, you're sharing that experience

[Zane] For regular hills, like, we're going around

20 to, like, 30 miles an hour.

You're feeling the rumble under your feet.

You're feeling the wind.

I associate howling with it,

'cause it's, like, at the bottom, you're just screaming.

[hip-hop music]

I'm usually bombing around with my camera bag

which is, like, 20, 30 pound bag.

I kind of started to just get used to it,

kind of counterbalances me.

It's really important for me to be

in that good mental space when I'm out filming with people,

because if I'm not,

then it's totally going to affect the outcome.

I think in extreme cases, where you're doing

life-threatening things, you have to know

for certain that you're going to be okay.

And that everything is gonna work out.

The moment you sense any doubt in the air,

whether it's from yourself or from others,

then, that's when things get weird.

For sure.

Oh my fucking God!

[Zane] I think because of the inherent danger of bombing,

you're forced to be as present as possible.

You're not really thinking about dinner

when you're halfway down Quintara.

[Man] I like going a little bit before green.

We can make it down in 10 seconds.

No, see the countdown?

7,

6,

5,

Right now.

[Zane] Timing traffic lights is important.

It's a little bit more of a guessing game,

but if you pay enough attention,

you can find the pattern and you can assess risk

and be able to go down when it is most likely

that you will be able to have a clear path.

It's dangerous. It's scary.

[hip-hop music]

[Adam] If you've got a full squad,

they'll see you going through the intersection.

You just make more of a presence.

If you got like four or five or six or 10 homies,

like, they kind of treat you as your own vehicle.

[Zane] There's been such a culture

surrounding bombing in SF.

It's been going on for forever.

First footage I ever saw in SF, was in future

primitive, was the Powell Peralta video.

It was Tommy Guerrero taking, just driveways,

down in the sunset, I believe.

And so he was, like, bombing in that sense.

And that's the first footage I saw of SF.

What makes bombing in SF very special,

is the way that it's so densely packed together.

And you can take a Hill for 15 minutes,

get on a bus, go to the top of a different Hill.

You can be bombing for a long period

of time through an urban landscape, and,

like, swerving through cars, pushing through intersections.

Thank you for making those Hills in the way that you did,

whoever was the architect for this city.

[Man 2] We're doing hype? Yeah, hype.

Okay, me too.

[Zane] Basically a route, when you're bombing in the city,

is a series of downhills streets.

The OG hype.

That was like what was shown to me by the dudes

over at Potrero.

Started Potrero, lights out.

48 stop, take that up to clipper.

That's where you piss, take that down to the swirlies.

Swirls spits you out onto the sidewalk, onto the street.

You take Grand View and then

you take from the top of Jersey.

Take that all the way to the bottom.

From Jersey, you take that to Dolores,

from there, hit the 33 stop,

to the middle intersection at Corbett.

Take Corbett, it's a bit of a swerve.

Spits you out on the 17th.

Post of a church and market.

And then you skate from there to the 49 hot Van Ness,

and skate from there to the parking garage swirlies.

Take that, spits you out onto Bush,

and you're on market and it's done, sober.

Dude. It's just like a violent ballet through the city,

that just offers such unique terrain.

All of the Hills and all of the concrete

that was kind of just poured on top of them.

And that's so unique.

Unlike any other city, really?

And also just the culture here.

A lot of other places are pretty against what we do

but there's room for artistic expression here.

Dude, Sydney kids are no joke, like--

[Man 3] I was, like, you guys are raw, dude.

But, dude, like, what happens to those kids?

Do they get, like, gnarlier and gnarlier?

Or do they, like, burn out quicker?

Like bombing?

Like if you, like, start really that young

do you just get, like, mad comfy, or--

[Man 3] I don't know. There's just something

all the 12 year olds did in San Francisco, like--

Yeah. -they don't talk about it,

but they just know how to do it.

Exactly. It's just a skill.

For the system, that's set up, that we're living under,

we definitely don't fit in well.

[Adam] What?

You're trespassing.

You can't get that through your head.

That's fine. It's okay.

I don't need you to like me.

It's okay.

[Adam] We're just going to head back

down that way and then we'll be out of here.

We're just going to be one run down.

It's all good, man.

Thanks for being cool.

All right.

Alright, let's go.

Skateboarding can't really be contained.

The majority of people who are passionate

about it are still going to do it.

No matter how many times they're told they shouldn't do it.

The first year

of the Dolores three-way, fastest Hill bomb contest

was badass because we had never seen anything like it.

And there ended up being like hundreds of people going

down this one Hill and, like, the cops could not stop us.

The first one was actually really cool because it kind of

brought the skate community together.

It was like a flash mob.

It wasn't really planned. It just happened.

Over the years,

more and more people decided to show up and it became

a bit of like a party or like a spectacle.

And there were a lot of people that were just, like,

standing on the sides, just like taking photos or just

drinking beers to something to look at.

[Adam] The more crowded it gets.

The more opportunity there is, like, for injury to occur.

One person actually died.

I wasn't there last year, so I don't know the exact details,

but that's why the news started covering it.

[Newsperson] A 23 year old San Francisco man

has been identified as the person killed

during an unpermitted, extreme sporting event.

[Reporter] Police say the young bicyclist

was critically injured, as was another teenage skateboarder

in a separate incident at Dolores park.

[Adam] Other than the first one, I am not the biggest fan.

It's just a bunch of people getting together

and just doing something that isn't really for everyone.

It's not like a fun, playful thing that everyone can do.

[Zane] If you're bombing

with a hundred other people that you've, like, barely met

just, shit's going to happen.

Like it's, it's dangerous to bomb

with like four people, five people.

Like, if you don't know them well enough,

like, you have to have full trust in those around you.

I definitely am trying to stay alive

to the best of my ability.

But if there's, like, an easier way to, like, kill yourself

like, yeah, it's having a nine-to-five and doing that and,

like, drinking beer, and going to sleep, and doing it again,

like, you're just killing yourself slower.

I'm going to skate until I absolutely cannot.

And then I'm going to get, like, a lawn chair and, like,

we're gonna drill in trucks on the bottom and y'all are

gonna push me down the Hill and it's going to be great.