Is 2024 The END for Skateboarding?

what's up skaters hello and welcome back to another video today we're going to be checking out a video that I saw that I thought looked very interesting is this the end for skateboarding by Ricky glaza So I'm thinking we could watch this together I could maybe offer my two cents see how it looks cuz this video looks interesting and my theory is that due to the thumbnail it's about the barracks being destroyed and I don't know any backstory on that at the moment so with all that being said let's jump straight in going to go ahead and by the way make sure you subscribe to Ricky if you haven't already I'll put the video in the description if you want to watch the original version the skateboarding industry as a whole has been downtrending and we been affected by there is this great you called why rading see I've seen this video thumbnail but I've never actually watched it but I assume since he's mentioned it he's going to give us a little bit of backstory it covers how rolling is one of the fastest growing Sports of all time in the 90s only to fizzle out 10 years later the nail in the [ __ ] was in 2005 when the X Games cancelled all roll blading events and yeah that's weird how they did that like it's not like a sporting place to cancel one of the events obviously it must have been because they weren't selling enough it wasn't being watched on tv anywhere near as much as the skateboarding or BMXing bling is still far more impressive in my opinion than something like riding a scooter obviously completely different sports I know but for me personally I much prefer to watch a rollerblader than I do a scooter rider basically downgraded it from extreme sport to bad all the I find it super sketchy how you can't like remove your feet the thing about skateboard scooters bikes is if something's going wrong you can like kick them or throw them away whereas with the rollerblades you are trapped in there it's like dying in quicksand sh doll is drying up and basically the industry collapsing in on itself that's really cool Ricky I don't really care about rollerblading talk about skateboarding okay okay well if that happened to lady could that happen to Roller boarding skateboarding could it happen to rollerblading could it happen to skateboarding well to be honest with you I think skateboarding has such a dieh hard culture and there's so many big people into it celebrities actors musicians so many people love skateboarding for the culture and with rollerblading you just don't see that like maybe I don't see that because I'm not involved in the world but for me I've never seen a celebrity also go ahead and say oh yeah I do roll blading oh I really want to get into roll blading or this that and the other you never hear that so maybe the skateboarding is there just because it's popular and the celebrities want to feed into that but it seems to me that quite a lot of them actually love it like the video we did on Justin Bieber it seemed like he absolutely loves skateboarding Little Wayne loved it you don't see them sort of same status people doing rollerblading at least I haven't seen them so maybe that could play into the fact that skate body might stick around for a bit longer at least I would hope so die right what's up anak the barracks recently announced that they are moving out of their private skate park we have yeah so I've actually not seen this bit before I've seen the videos and clips on Instagram of them like destroying it breaking the bits down I thought that was super interesting I just thought they were maybe like doing what I didn't realize they were moving premises I thought they were just destroying the skat Park to rebuild a new one like a little revitalization scheme have a big announcement everybody we're moving we're moving guys wonder if they're going to a bigger place symbolic Cornerstone of the skateboarding industry where all the top pros come and try their best tricks in a controlled environment they didn't announce the move was due to hard times but I can only spec that there is probably my favorite trick that ever went down at the barracks excuse me if you look at how intense this is right so he's popping from up here this ramp here is so steep compared to your average ramp and he's doing a full cab flip into it so a fakey 360 kick flip insane watch it back with me pick sign that one look at this that kicks and then watch how he lands in the bank and then just goes just PS down but I can only speculate that the Giant waree in La isn't that cheap and with the industry declining and inflation Rising moving out seems like more of a necess Jeff skateboards also posted this video yesterday where he explains a similar situation in a much l dramatic and ambiguous fashion I have some bummer news and I'm going to tell you things are changing here at revive skateboards and the shred quarters we've finally had to kind of lower overhead and we'll be moving the distribution warehouse into this one if you've been watching for a long time you remember that this room used to have a skate park and our boards and stuff well we're going to go back to that times are tough and we're scaling yeah that's just how business goes sometimes if you grow super fast like skateboarding did in lockdown you're guaranteed to have to have that point where you either level off or have to cut your overheads like he's having to do whether it be downsizing the skate park or just like he said he's doing moving stuff into the skat Park to double up on space that is just sadly the way things go when it booms on such a trend like that it's hard to determine where it's going to level out and these guys obviously thought it would level out a bit higher up than it has skateboarding here in the UK seems to be doing pretty good when I released my first decks they sold out within a day the skateboarding industry is still there in my opinion but definitely a lot smaller than what it was faing back and it's affecting some of the lives here in our little shred quarters family unfortunately we were having to drop some of our staff and um and that and that hurts that's that's really where I feel like that's where that is definitely where it's the worst if they have to get rid of staff and people lose their jobs especially people who lose their jobs in the skateboard industry because if someone's grown up wanting to work in the skateboard industry their whole life and they finally get a job working for shr all of a sudden it's gone heartbreaking but you know no one's really incap to be rich and famous does go on to give a little bit more of an explanation as to why being involved in the skate industry this is something I've known for a little while but I've never seen anyone really publicly discuss this during Co there was this huge surge ofev people were stuck at their houses boor with not a whole lot to do and they thought skateboarding was the perfect thing to fill in that time every company skateboard sales went crazy and yeah I remember in this part of the year right when you were trying to find like skateboard parts in 2021 in in Co it was so hard to find like independent trucks Spitfire Wheels they were so rare few and far between it was just impossible to get them and then all of a sudden everybody got them and then the interest in the trend died down so now everybody's got an abundance of these products they've probably paid over market value for because they were desperate to get them at the time so a lot of skate companies did fall at the end of Co for sure I'm back sorry about that I had to uh answer the door anyway back to business all the products that's great right well what went on to happen is due to the nature of Co and a wood shortage that came from it no one was able to get get any more skateboards despite ordering more after a while the world eventually did go back to normal and people kind of got over skateboarding and didn't really care about it anymore and then all these yeah you find that during lockdown so many like twitch streamers celebrities and that actually did get into skateboarding just for that reason fun fact though I will tell you one celebrity that is actually a good skateboarder and was way before lockdown and that's xqc there's a video of xqc doing a decent trade flip on stream so we obviously skated for a while skateboarding brands were left with way too much stock and not enough sales and businesses can create a lot of problems we also saw this with dwindle distribution for those of you that don't know how in skateboarding sometimes a company like dwindle will own a bunch of different brands in this case it's these ones I'm just specul yeah I haven't seen blind almost or enjoy for a while yeah almost enjoy and blind I haven't seen around here for ages but it seems like these factors caught up with them as well leading them to a point where they couldn't pay their team Riders anymore as well as firing legendary former pro skater Bill whis who is an integral part of the operation hey everyone how are you my name is Bill whis I've been with dwindle distribution for 19 years and I just got a phone call uh letting me know I've been fired I wanted to start by saying thank you to all the amazing people I've had the that sucks man 19 years and then for just a phone call to just nip it in the bud like that heartbreaking opportunity to work with at dwindle over the years I can't thank you enough and it's been an absolute honor it was cool to see the skaters rally behind Bill and support him by quitting these Brands but it's devast ating to see these Legacy Brands and skateboarding become this empty shell of what they once were yeah funny thing is right as I own a skateboard company myself I know a bit about the back end of this stuff so with like blind I'm not sure blind actually but I know enoy and almost and stuff like what's that I know like Android almost enough they do this like licensing thing where you can basically take the name and their graphics and I could potentially just start printing their boards as long as I pay them a little bit of a fee on top which is how places like Walmart and that they end up stocking like Dark Star it's cheap companies licensing the names of these skate companies to try and give themselves a bit of a reputation boost that's why you'll see like Dark Star blind boards and stuff in Walmart because they're just licensable products ites so anyone can make them down in popularity many people thought it being featured in the Olympics would maybe help it out but it kind of just came and went is sick the Olympics would maybe help it kind of just came and went I personally think skateboarding is ingrained too heavily in our culture that it will ever fully die but exactly what I said at the start it's ingrained way too heavily in the hearts and minds of the people that do it and it's preached way too much by the people that love it in my opinion obviously there's some gatekeeping in skateboarding is good for some reasons but I think that it's deserved in my opinion skateboarding ain't going nowhere I do feel like we are going through some kind of skate recession right now I want to play some of my favorite clips of me skating the barracks and the shred quarters but first I want to say skateboarding will always be a big part of my life regardless whether or not I'm making a living from it or despite what the industry is doing but I do want to give my condolences to these big companies that have YouTube channels in their own private indoor skate parks if I was a part of a skate company YouTube channel that had a big indoor skate park I might be a little worried cut to the Montage right anyway I think we'll leave it there guys this has been a great video go subscribe to Rick if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next one