Prevent This Tragedy (2010)

Converse Presents: Prevent This Tragedy (2010)

Dirs. Various

It was only a matter of time before I made a post about my love of skating. After some consideration I chose Prevent This Tragedy because, while not the best disc on the market, it's easily available, it's short, it was free (as a cover-mount DVD with Thrasher magazine, also available for a while from their own website) and is currently on YouTube for all to see. Overall, it's a decent and undemanding dip of the toe for anyone new to the activity.

The main skaters are listed in the orange box on the picture on the right, so I won't list them again. Each one gets a segment in which they're the star, often accompanied by a Sabbath-esque tune or two. There's a nice mix of street, small ramp and pool action, sometimes in dedicated skate parks and sometimes not.

Parks are a useful, safe place to practice, but personally I prefer seeing skaters getting creative with public spaces outside of such areas. And I feel that, occasional accidental property damage aside, looking at existing environments, humps, steps and rails in schools, alleys, outside malls, etc, and figuring out how they can be re-purposed to skate on is a skill in itself.

The back of the sleeve claims the running time is approximately 60 minutes, which is untrue. The main feature is approximately 30 minutes, with an additional 40-ish minutes of bonus material.

The bonus stuff isn't as tightly edited, allowing for a more rolling, realistic capture, which is something that I prefer. It also has less music, but in place of that we get the beautiful sounds of skating, tails kicked, trucks on rails, breaths held as steps are ollied, etc.

-Post is dedicated to J.W. I miss you, cuz.-