Try to guess the film through the opening scene below:
A garage door creaks open. A young man stands in the doorway, wearing a t-shirt under an open flannel. You can’t see his face, and his legs are barely visible in the shadows.
He slips a key under the doormat. The camera moves down, and suddenly, something fills the frame that most boys had never seen up close: a brightly decorated plank of wood with shiny wheels underneath. A skateboard.
Figure it out?
I’ll give you a hint.
Now do you know the film?
Michael J. Fox became a superstar. He had made it big.
Time travel took over sci-fi films.
What used to be an outsider’s obsession quickly became mainstream. Suddenly, every schoolyard and teenage boy in America wanted a skateboard. The sport, once seen as almost criminal because kids would sneak into neighbors’ yards to ride in empty pools, suddenly became popular with 65 million Gen X kids. Almost overnight, skateboarding became a little more accepted.
For many of us, MJF riding around his small town on his board while holding onto car bumpers was our first introduction to boarding.
For others, it was seeing Tony Alva carve up a pool.
Or it was a friend, the left side of their head newly shaved, bangs hanging in their eyes, a Vision Psycho stick under their feet.
No matter how we first discovered the sport, everything changed when movies focused on this new symbol of teenage rebellion and gave it a starring role from the very beginning.
It’s funny that a world full of outlaws, adventurers, innovators, daredevils, and wild boys—some might even say lost boys—was opened up to us by the straight-laced, quick-witted, and big-hearted Marty McFly.
Instantly, our clothes changed—brands like Vision became a must-have in our closets. Our hairstyles changed—long bangs and shaved regions of the head shocked our middle-America parents. Our language changed—ollie, gnarly, shred, and a few choice swear words took over our conversations.
Those of us who could push the board down the road and popping the tail were in a new club, a new tribe, a new life. We found new friends and different souls focused on new kinds of art—thank you, Jim Phillips and VC Johnson.
And it was raw and gutsy and so damn cool.
