Before Instagram clips and skateparks, Los Angeles kids turned cracked schoolyards and drained pools into the blueprint for global skate culture. All you needed was a Hi8 camcorder, a fisheye lens, and a crew down to bleed for it.
The 90s in LA weren’t glossy. It was busted curbs, chain-link fences, and VHS tapes that got passed around until the image warped. It was cheap apartments in Venice or Hollywood, backyard pools left dry from drought, and schools that doubled as obstacle courses. Out of that grit came a scene that rewired not just skating, but music, style, and the way kids around the world thought about culture.The Perfect StormYou could actually live in LA back then without selling your soul. Skaters, artists, and musicians crammed into apartments blocks from spots that would end up legendary: Lockwood’s smooth banks, Los Feliz High’s picnic tables, and the Santa Monica Courthouse ledges. These weren’t designed as skateparks—they became skateparks because nobody could stop kids from grinding them down.If you wanted to stay in the loop, you didn’t scroll. You wore out copies of H-Street’s Hokus Pokus or Plan B’s Questionable, rewound Video Days until the tape hissed, or flipped through a beat-up Thrasher. Chocolate’s Las Nueve Vidas De Paco gave LA its own cinematic language, and Girl’s Mouse was a milestone—showing how far style and storytelling in skate videos had come. But the thing was—by the time you actually saw a mag or video, the game had already changed. The only way to really know was to show up.And showing up wasn’t chill. There were no legal parks, no padded contests. Cops broke up sessions, security guards swung flashlights, and locals sized you up just for being there. A typical day might blur into the unexpected—you could stumble upon a day rave at the Venice Pavilion, then drag yourself back to the ledges after. If your legs still worked, you skated; if they didn’t, you just soaked it in. That edge kept you moving—fast, restless, always chasing the next hit of chaos or inspiration.Soundtracking the StreetsMusic was baked into skating from the start, but nowhere did it hit harder than in the videos—where cultures collided and soundtracks jumped genres without apology. Guy Mariano skating to Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” in Mouse was funky and smooth enough to shift how people thought about parts. War’s “Low Rider” cracked open Video Days with a wink, while Motown slipped in through Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “Love Child,” which didn’t just play—it titled a whole World Industries video. Together, those choices made skate videos sound like LA itself: eclectic, soulful, unpredictable.Black Flag screamed out of the South Bay, Suicidal Tendencies carried Dogtown’s pissed-off energy into the 90s, and N.W.A. rattled car stereos across South Central. That defiance bled into skating—raw, confrontational, ready to front on cops or eat concrete.By the new decade, Cypress Hill and The Pharcyde carried that resistance in different registers—Cypress blunt and smoke-filled, Pharcyde playful and surreal—but both tuned to the city’s economic struggles and its running battle with law enforcement. After the ’92 riots, that distrust of cops wasn’t abstract—it was daily life. Skaters felt it too, treating police less like authority and more like another obstacle in the street.The Hi8 AestheticHi8 camcorders and fisheye lenses gave the era its look: stretched angles, concrete bending, kids eating shit in glorious detail. These weren’t film crews with budgets—they were friends with cameras documenting their world.Tapes were copied until the color bled, dubbed in shops, and mailed overseas. Footage that started at Lockwood could end up in Tokyo. Everyone was part of it. Spike Jonze and Socrates Leal elevated the visuals, sure, but the real magic was that anyone could grab a Hi8 and contribute.Mark Gonzales, skate and art world royalty once said, “It is better to live in a world of poetic meaning rather than hardcore reality.” For a lot of LA kids, skating was that poetry. It turned cracked sidewalks into canvases, gave kids from rough upbringings a way to push forward, and made falling on your face feel like part of a bigger story.In their own way, those kids with Hi8 cameras were prophets. Before social media turned everyone into a broadcaster, skaters were already documenting, sharing, and building community hand-to-hand. They showed how culture could spread without platforms telling it where to go.The Scarcity EffectHere’s what made it hit so hard: scarcity. There was no Google Maps to find spots, no YouTube clips by the hour. If you wanted to know what was happening, you had to be there. Lockwood at three in the afternoon? That was your feed. You’d throw down a line, watch what other kids were trying, and pick up tricks in real time.In hindsight, that’s why they kinda felt like prophets—skaters were mapping out how culture could spread without the internet. They built community through presence, clout through word of mouth, and influence through tapes and demos, long before anyone called it social media.Magazines and videos mattered, but they were built for spectacle—pros stacking their biggest tricks for the camera. Off camera was different. Every session had tricks that never made the cut, lines that lived once and disappeared. That’s what kept the streets buzzing.Compare that to now: clips drop instantly, attention’s fractured, and authenticity often gets performed for views. Back then, brands were small enough to take chances on kids no one knew, but big enough to bankroll real projects. The tech was limited, which forced invention. Constraints bred creativity.What Remains in the ConcreteThe 90s LA scene wasn’t built in boardrooms—it was carved out of asphalt, police chases, and late-night edits. It thrived on grit and love, and it left a mark you can’t replicate in a world built on endless content.Girl / Chocolate Skateboards co-founder and skate legend Rick Howard once said, “There are other people that come into skateboarding, but that’ll come and go and skateboarding will always be there. And people that are there for the right reasons will always be a part of it.” Ultimately, the skaters who made an impact weren’t chasing views, sponsors, or fame. They did it because skating wasn’t a choice—it was the whole point.Although other cities had their own landmark cultures—New York with the Brooklyn Banks and Zoo York, San Francisco with Embarcadero and FTC—those stories are for another day. This one belongs to Los Angeles.