As the nineties drew to a close, if you were a skateboarder, odds are, you were listening to Hip Hop and skating street. This was a period when Zoo York was a small skater owned company, evolving out of the legendary Shut Skates. When Mixtape dropped in 1998, it hit a rich vein, combining grimey east coast street skating, with dope freestyles from some of the freshest MC’s of the decade and containing rare video footage from the Stretch and Bobbito Show.
Managing to keep on the right side of underground, and never, ever feeling like an MTV music video, on watching the blazing Roc Raida (RIP) intro, you knew you were in for a treat. Apart from power house Robbie Gangemi, the video contained an innovative switch skating Danny Supa, the pop and speed of now restaurateur Vinny Ponte, a casual Jefferson Pang and of course, NYC icon, Harold Hunter (RIP).
Maybe it was the long extinct idea that you could try a new trick in a line (Harold Hunter 1.08), the combination of music and live studio footage, or the nature of the spots and skating that made this video so addictive to watch. Alongside the Eastern Exposure series, Sub-Zero and Statics, Mixtape epitomises raw, legitimate street skating.
So rather than going down the park again this weekend, have a roll in the opposite direction, take your bike, or the train, and go out and hunt down some new spots, be creative and most important - have fun!
