Staff Picks: A history of a skate spot and a show for the end of the world

This February, A.V. Club staffers Matt Schimkowitz and Emma Keates recommend a smooth ride of a docuseries and a competition show that pairs nicely with a democracy in disarray.

This Old Ledge (YouTube)

Skateboarding thrives on skaters' creativity to see their world as skateparks, one shaped as much by the whims of fate as cultural, political, and economic forces that lead to a freshly installed marble ledge. The long-ignored dialogue between skaters and cities is a worthy eavesdrop. Thrasher magazine’s addictive YouTube series, This Old Ledge, explores where the wheels meet the asphalt, with art historian and skateboarding critic Ted Barrow recontextualizing the world’s most legendary skate spots from the intersection of city planning and skater ingenuity.

This Old Ledge covers much ground in a short time frame. In 10-minute installments, Barrow explains how a skate spot came to be and why it persisted, finding connections simply by looking at the ground. Premiering a month before January’s devastating wildfires, This Old Ledge’s second season focused on Los Angeles is especially poignant. The season premiere elaborates on the city’s baffling existence from its wellspring: The Department of Water and Power (DWP). LA’s artificial Mediterranean climate thrives because the DWP brings water from the Owens Valley to the LA basin. So the DWP hired architecture firm A.C. Martin and Associates to build a “consolidation of that power” in the form of the DWP building, the subject of the season two premiere. Everything about the building symbolizes that power, down to precisely carved marble benches. “Order, clarity, balance, simplicity, elegance, engineering, it’s all on these benches,” Barrow says. “The most perfect, ideal bench for skateboarding in the whole world.”

Unearthing moments of symmetry and invention, Barrow transitions between architectural and skateboarding history. In “Los Angeles Mall,” he analyzes how awkward design and rough masonry have “weird potential” for skateboarding. The Mall’s '70s architecture (“an era where you’re building expecting to be bombed”), with subterranean bunkers and ugly concrete, required softening the space’s brutalist features with curved brick planters that resemble quarter pipes perfect for skating, but not so great for shopping or eating, as the city intended. Skaters used the space no one wanted. “They don't make bricks like this,” he says. “This thing was battered by almost 40 years of people doing backside disasters and front-side pivots. Jason Lee's little no-handed nose pick that he does here in Video Days is gnarly. Daewon's ollie from the four stairs into the quarter pipe is psycho, and I absolutely love what Jim Greco is doing now by paying tribute to these historic LA spots. Nobody unlocked this spot like Jim Greco.”

This Old Ledge also recognizes the push-pull relationship between skaters and the state. However, attempts to stop skateboarding, like the freshly installed gaps described in “USC Bay Blocks,” don’t work as intended either. They become another obstacle, a new chance at innovation. At a time when public spaces are vanishing or are literally hostile toward communities, skateboarding’s refusal to let anyone dictate how these spaces can and should be used is inspiring. This is their city, and they’ll use it as they see fit. Barrow’s enthusiasm is infectious as he marvels at how skateboarders roll with these changes. Set to soft jazz and filled with, frankly, quiet gnarly tricks, This Old Ledge is a smooth ride that always sticks the landing.

The Traitors (Peacock)

I owe season three of The Traitors a pretty big chunk of my sanity right now. Is it the most elegiac thing I could be watching to usher in the end of the world? Probably not. But it is the perfect amount of dumb. If what's left of the FDA could bottle up the feeling of watching grown adults weep over a game of mafia, it might actually heal this country. There's a little something for everyone this season; you just, for the first time in recorded history, have to make like Tom Sandoval (and his silly Scottish highland drag) and buy the fuck in. 

For me, it's partly the Boston Rob of it all. I'm a huge Survivor fan, and it's always exhilarating to watch the master at work. (Guys, he still has the juice.) RuPaul's Drag Race alum Bob The Drag Queen is also a master of his craft, albeit a different one, and the rivalry that bubbles up between the two is something I couldn't have dreamed up even in my most pandemic isolation-assisted fantasies. It's also endlessly entertaining that the chaos of the Housewives, that one requisite British royal, and Zac Efron's lesser-known brother Dylan seem to vex the Survivor vets more than they ever did playing against each other.

Maybe you're more like Chanel Ayan, and didn't even know Survivor was a show in the first place. (The Real Housewife of Dubai thought her fellow players had literally survived things like ebola and drought.) There's still the joys of watching The Bachelor franchise's greatest-ever export Gabby Windey launch a crusade against the men, Britney Spears' ex-husband bumble himself into multiple awkward moments regarding his much-more-famous spouse, and Sandoval stalk around the outskirts like Hercule Poirot on uppers. (He's really good at this game because he's read Dan Brown and…Harry Potter? The mind of Tom Sandoval works in mysterious ways.) And then sometimes the clouds clear and the contestants stumble onto something genuinely profound. In the most recent episode, a Summer House cast member asks a former WWE star whether she's "even laughed with [her] gut" as a tactic to paint her as a liar and throw her to the wolves. No other show is operating even close to this level right now.

While all this is happening, this year's batch of traitors seem committed to turning in one of the most incompetent performances of all time. Shockingly, it can actually be fun to watch a bumbling administration riddled with infighting be handed unbridled power over their compatriots' lives; it just has to be gussied up in approximately 17 layers of camp and a really good Alan Cumming outfit. That's the reality I'm choosing to live in right now, at least.