Mitch Abshere and the boys at RVCA have just released a new, twenty-five minute longboard movie titled Tales From The Black Van.
As longboard surfing evolves and new-school rippers like Alex Knost, CJ Nelson and Robin Kegel become household names as the most identifiable of the longboard hipster generation, this sub-culture is bound to spin off a few precious pieces for surfing's collective historical record. Kegel's Gato Heroi clothing label, Knost's artistic endeavors (evidenced by his signature-style boxcover art) and Steve Cleveland's top-selling longboard dvd, Another State of Mind, featuring CJ Nelson are a few of the initial shots being fired across surfing's collective bow.
Tales From The Black Van adheres to the hipster image. A quick twenty-five minutes, all rendered in black and white and stuffed with enough radical longboarding and music from bands including Knost's own Japanes Motors is a lesson plan for wannabe's in far-flung locales who don't have immediate access to the streets of Newport Beach and Laguna, the centrifuge for this post-modern beatnik culture.
Surf videos and more recently, surf DVDs to be more exact, have been the major torch-bearers of surfing's historical record for over fifty years. With the advent of video and the eventual lowering of the price barrier to make filmmaking more accessible to the masses, surf DVDs have documented the niche categories that might otherwise go largely unnoticed by the surfing populace at large. Big wave surfing, contest surfing, the fish revolution of the 90's and feral hell-men like Timmy Turner have all found an outlet--and an audience--in surf videos. Witness Timmy Turner's landmark movie from 2004, Second Thoughts. What started out as the documentation of a group of young Huntington Beach pros on pilgramage to Indo became a full-fledged commercial success and secured Timmy's place in surfing's pantheon.
Tales From The Black Van may not have this kind of impact, but Mitch's contribution to surf dvds will likely be reflected upon as a lens through which to view the changing image of longboarding and a moment in time when a small group of surfers had an influential impact on the style consciousness of surfers globally.
Tales From The Black Van is available on DVD from Mutiny Media, Inc. Dealer inquiries can be directed to 949-443-9020 and the video is available online for $24.95 at www.BoardSportsVideos.com and www.ActionTrail.com.
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