Rewind: Mini Video 22 – Ben Vance Does Nashville

Rewind, Skating Videos

Mini Video 22 – Ben Vance Does Nashville (unoffical recreation) from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

A reasonably accurate recreation of Mini Video 22 from February 22, 2001.  Nearly 20 years now.

I have the original web sized .mpg from 2001, and I found the raw footage on a Hi8 tape earlier this year.  I put the old file in the timeline and overlaid the raw footage over it.  The audio is original to the 2001 .mpg.  Making the “cool” animations was more annoying than it should’ve been.  But I persevered.

Comparison of today vs. 2001 web quality.  People used to wait 20 minutes for videos that looked like this to download, and they loved it, damnit.

Anyway, back to the past.  The crew wanted to skate.  It was too snowy and cold in Milwaukee.  I remembered a great plaza in Nashville I had skated once on the way to Florida a year or two before.  Might as well drive the ten hours.

Driving the Dodge Neon very far with no plan, to skate one spot. How did we get there? How did we find a hotel? I was there, before the Internet, and I can’t answer the question. The car blew the head gasket on the way back, and I traded it in the next day. They were none the wiser. Karma got me though, the new car was a piece of shit too.
I had no idea how to shoot a skate photo. Some would say I still don’t. Ben crooked grinds, Mike films. Pictured is the Canon GL1 I still use to this day. Used as recently as last year to make WAZPZ.
I’m not familiar enough with Nashville to say how different it looks now. Let’s say: some.

Nashville – Legislative from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

Here’s some contemporary supplemental content of Greg, Mike, and Ben skating the plaza.

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Skating Videos

The Sky People have sent Max Murphy, Gabe Chan, Sean Hanley, Nick Mistele, Drew Rickaby, David Gackstetter, John Rockafellow, Mikey Al Wathiqui, Pat Forster, Eric Risser, Cory Stubing, Vince Stranc, Taylor Lalk, Spazz, Bradford Bishop, and Jimmy Brickner to observe, research, and collect data from different dimensions through space and time.  This is what they found on their third mission which is believed to be the year 2020.

Production stills below.  All shot by Bradford Bishop.

Gabe, on the set.

Nick Mistele – Switch Frontside Crooked Grind

Max Murphy – Autumn Breeze Frontside Blunt

Sean Hanely – Risky Wallride

Nick Mistele – Backside Ollie

Max Murphy – Boban Assisted Tailslide

Drew Rickaby – Backside 180 Nosegrind

Chase Hopper – Nosegrind

Drew Rickaby – Switch Frontside Noseslide

Sean Hanley – Backside Tailslide

Rewind: Mini Video 38 – Entertain Me

Rewind, Skating Videos

Mini Video 38 – Entertain Me from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

Originally posted May 10, 2007.

This is a biggie!  I think this is when we finally hit our stride, and for lack of a better term, the “classic” wiskate video was born.  I’d rank this one in the top 5.  Kind of silly, kind of serious, great cast of characters, and the song rips!  A recipe for success.

This time we have some photos from the sessions shown in the video! Pat Forster, Smith Grind. I feel like this was a bumper year for tipped over light poles. It seems like you only come across a specimen of nature’s answer to a flatbar one, maybe two times a decade. We had a few to skate that year, and it was lovely.
Pizzy Burnquist backside tails some natural transition. I’m pretty sure this was the first and only time this spot was skated. The building doesn’t exist anymore.
Same session, Gabe Chan post spaghetti switch tailslide. The food was from the diner “Riverbrook” on Capital. I’ve never seen a bigger and more varied menu. Tacos, Gyros, Ham, Turkey, White Russians, Gelato, Pizza didn’t matter, they had it. The menu was like a road atlas and every single thing was meidcore. It was great. RIP Riverbrook.
If we weren’t grilling, we were at a diner. Ben and Neal at the Omega Burger. I’m fairly certain this is the day that Ben uttered the immortal phrase “Pizzy’s Ball Hitch”. We were looking over a fence at some sort of undetermined industrial apparatus and those beautiful words spilled from his mouth without a thought put into them. Poetry in motion, unfiltered, true.
“Grasstoro”! This spot (?) was a long ass handrail jammed into the grass at an abandoned car dealership. I know we’re used to seeing these sort of things nowadays, but it was incredible when TJ pretty easily 5-0d the thing.
We rolled deep. We still do, but we did then too.
I already told you…grilling, or diners.
James at the Murder Barn. This is the same ramp that is now known as The Couch. There was a hot tub at this location that a goat was once in. I feel like that doesn’t happen that often in the world.
NOS Peregrine mags for only $65??? Things were different in 2007.
The artistic evolution of Gabe with MD 20/20 after a night at the Murder Barn.
Danny, slappy 50-50. I pulled this goofy thing off a building in Riverwest.
Russ and James, IN A DINER. Got it?

Rewind: Mini Video 37 – Irresistible

Rewind, Skating Videos


Originally posted March 29, 2007.

My grand idea is already falling apart. I thought it’d be easy to to look through the archives and find a bunch of great photos.  Then the “awesome” anecdotes that go with them would come rolling in like the waves on the sea. Alas, the reality isn’t so nice. Back then we didn’t wield cameras all day long like we do now. Or perhaps not much happened between the last one (end of February), and this one (end of March). I’m coming up dry.

This video does feature my favorite manual trick I ever filmed.  Danny did a great one.  I’ll usually straight up refuse to even try to film a manual.  Not my cup of tea.  Solid ending celebration too.  Russ reused the gorking out for his weirdo video segments he had on Fuel TV.  Remember Fuel TV?  Wow, what a time to be alive.

I hope the next one goes better.  Until then, heres several photos without any skateboarding whatsoever.  Actually, the site used to rarely feature skateboarding, so maybe it is perfect.


I do have these photos of digging out the polejam from the snow. Freeing it from it’s icy prison. Allowing us to express ourselves freely on our skateboards. But no photos of us skating it.

Molly did tear her ACL running to the car. So excited to visit Uncle Will at Cream City. So unsafe. She had to wear the cone for weeks. I had to manually bend her leg daily to cure it with physical training. She came out of it strong, regal.
Danny and the dirt gap. Again, some photos of the spot skated in the video. Again, no photos of the actual skating. The mud does look nice.
Me and “THE DUDE”. I never did catch the Dude’s name. He was at our Friday night dance party every single week. The Dude knew what was what and where to be. He was the man. I do wonder where he is today. Dude, if you’re out there, give me a call.
Who doesn’t love Frosted Mini Spooners?
Big Charles! This was the night where Danny got the nickname “TROY”. An infamous night. Unfortunately Charles is no longer with us. It’s great to remember the times we had together. Charles was definitely a real one.
After a BIG night in the city, Comet. Worst service, worst experience. Lesson never learned.

Rewind: Mini Video 36 – Love

Rewind, Skating Videos


Originally posted February 28, 2007. Get it, Valentines Day, Love?? So clever.

I’m having a hard time even thinking of anything to say about this one. It seems several of the clips came from the same sessions as when we were filming Beez 3, so it has a little bit of a beezy edge to it. I think some of the clips do even appear in Beez. It’s been awhile since I watched. I’m old, I can’t remember anything.

I do believe that this vid, and the following one were kind of just a mish mash of things I had filmed in the previous months.  I had no project in mind to use them for, so I just kind of threw them together with this stupid song.  None of this stuff was intentionally filmed to be used as a so called “mini video”.

Here are some period appropriate images from this moment in time:

Lord Jesus Wonky God Bless
Name a more classic moment at Grand Avenue Mall, I’ll wait.
It seems we had an art show during this period of time. These are all of the classic wiskate members. Maybe our last time together!
Nate Heilberger. Off the hip gap to noseslide.
Mike and Danny hitting the pole jam in the “Unusual Protocol” style. This spot still existed until recently. That’s a long time for a bent pole to exist.

This was indeed the time period of the Beezing. This mini video was made just as we were filming the outro to Beez 3. I have an incredible amount of photos from “behind the scenes” from the infamous Deer Wizard/Johnny 5 scene. Some favorites are below.

Rewind: Mini Video 16 – MPLS

Rewind, Skating Videos

Mini Video 16 from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

For true completionists only!

On the same Hi8 tape that I found “Gone Wild”, I also found this piece of ancient wiskate history, thought lost forever.  This was a weekend trip to Minneapolis in Y2K (we survived) where we skated such illustrious spots as the two stair in front of my girlfriends’ house and the old 3rd Lair.  Surprise guest appearance by Chad Benson doing a nollie hardflip stinkbug fakie.  I’m not sure how he came into play, but I’m glad he did.  Also starring myself, Mark H, and Boban.

This was the first mini video to use music.  Quite an evolutionary step.

Rewind: Mini Video 0 – Gone Wild

Rewind, Skating Videos


This is the first(ish) complete edit I ever made. I thought it was lost forever for a long time. Earlier this year when the ‘rona hit I spent a bunch of time capturing some old Hi-8 tapes, and by miracle(?) this video was on one of the tapes.  This is essentially unseen, because in those olden days there was no way to easily share a video of this length via the internet.  It was functionally impossible.  The reason I thought the video was lost was because it was transferred onto some unlabelled VHS tape, which has since gone missing.

The whole thing is completely embarrassing.  I suppose something you made twenty years ago should be.   I did choose the song as a joke, I remember that much.  It is sort of a compilation of a lot of the footage from the earlier Mini Videos that were posted in the early days of the site.  These actually are lost for good.  Let’s say contains footage from Mini Videos 1-15.  Plus additional content.

This was edited using a program called Ulead Video Studio Pro. It was an unsuccessful competitor to Adobe Premiere. The only reason I used Video Studio was because it came with the video capture card one needed back then to get video clips onto your computer. Yeah, you needed special hardware to get video onto the hard drive. Uphill both ways in the snow, etc etc.

Congrats if you watch the whole thing, it’s pretty painful. Featuring the antics of Ben Vance, Pat Gaynor, Mark Heiderich, Greg Lutzka, Boban, Pat Forster, Jon Bunch, and Nate Heilberger.

Here are some period appropriate photos that exist in the same timeline as the above video:

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