Is there any sport more closely associated with Generation X than skateboarding? Skate parks are popping up throughout the country at a growing rate, while throngs of boarders can be found in any city, square or location that has curbs, railings, hills. Today, the X Games are bigger than ever and X Game athletes are signing million dollar sponsorship deals with big name vendors. Dogtown and Z-boys is a radical documentary that details the rebirth of skateboarding and follows its rise to a level that changed the world forever, and contributed the word "extreme" to the sports culture.

Is there any sport more closely associated with Generation X than skateboarding? Skate parks are popping up throughout the country at a growing rate, while throngs of boarders can be found in any city, square or location that has curbs, railings, hills. Today, the X Games are bigger than ever and X Game athletes are signing million dollar sponsorship deals with big name vendors. However, all of the gala and glam were not always part of this unique sporting world. Skateboarding was born in California in the 1950's when surfers were seeking a land-based means for expressing their wave riding poetics. It came in the form of a surfboard style piece of wood and wheels. When the waves were bad, land surfing was always an option. But skateboarding in its basic form faded away for a brief time in the 1960's, only to experience a major rebirth in the 1970's. Dogtown and Z-boys is a radical documentary that details the rebirth of skateboarding and follows its rise to a level that changed the world forever, and contributed the word "extreme" to the sports culture.

There is no bigger gift that Generation X has given to the modern world than skateboarding and extreme sports. That said, I've found it necessary to take a look at former pro skater and Indie film maker, Stacy Peralta's Dogtown and Z-boys . Conceptualized and developed from photographer and journalist Craig Stecyk's still photographs and the primitive film footage that Peralta captured in the late 70's in and around Venice Beach, California, the film follows the rebirth of skateboarding as a sport and its rise to unprecedented success. Narrated by Sean Penn, who played the quintessential 80's surfer, Jeff Spicoli, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the documentary drops the viewer deep into California surf culture.

Before Tony Hawk, who is undeniably the most recognizable figure in skateboard history, there were skaters with names like Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo, Nathan Pratt, Allen Sarlo, Jim Muir, Chris Cahill, Wentzle Ruml, Peggy Oki, Paul Constantineau, and Stacy Peralta himself. These are the skaters that formed the famed Zephyr Skating Team that burst onto the scene, bringing with it the Bonzai style that was formerly only associated with surfing.

While the film was only released in 2001, the content and footage are circa 1976 making this a full-fledged retrospective feature. Dogtown and Z-boys is highly acclaimed, having won the Audience and Best Director Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Audience Award at the AFI (American Film Institute) Film Festival.

Peralta's knack for infusing graphics, still photographs, interviews, and early film footage is unequaled in independent film. The exceptional arrangement of historical and current facts coupled with a primo soundtrack, form the point of an arrow that shoots straight through the one hour and thirty minutes of a pure pavement surfing extravaganza. But the film also takes a look inside the lives of the members of the legendary Zephyrs, by providing the rich character history and personal traits that allow the viewer to understand what life was like for skaters in Southern California in the mid to late 70's.

The Zephyr Skating Team crashed the content scene and introduced the skateboard world to the concept of style. Taken from their experiences surfing in Southern California and their desire to mimic the movements of their favorite pro surfers, the Zephyrs created movements on a skateboard that had never before been seen. In the process, they erased years of dominance by previous skateboard champions that relied on elemental pirouette movements. What the world now was seeing was a group of ruffian skaters carving up contest surfaces with surfer style motions, and in the process sweeping awards up, down, and across the coast.

Since I have always had a fascination with skateboarding, surfing, and the culture that envelops that genre of lifestyle, I naturally became engrossed in the Zephyr story. These skaters already held mythic status by the time I was roaming city playgrounds on a board or a bike. However, the film is so well constructed and engaging that even the most temperate of skateboarding fans should be able to learn something new and become appreciative of the sport that has become the unofficial property of Generation X. The film takes volumes of surfing, skateboarding, and Venice Beach history and condenses it into a capsule so tight that you can hang with the Zephyrs in Dogtown, raid neighborhood swimming pools, defend your local territory from hodads and kooks, and just maybe catch some big air.

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