by Elka Worner
Long before skateboarding videos clogged YouTube or action sports clips racked up millions of views on Instagram, Hermosa Beach resident Gerard Ravel was hustling VHS tapes out of his cramped garage, shipping his skate videos to video rental stores across the country.
Now, those same tapes, once tucked onto the shelves of mom-and-pop video stores, are headed for a much bigger stage, the Smithsonian Institution.
The Smithsonian’s sports history department has requested Ravel’s collection of iconic skateboard videos — titles including “Duel at Diablo,” “Streetstyle in Tempe,” “Ohio Skateout” — to be preserved in the museum’s archives, cementing their place not just in skateboarding history, but in the broader story of American sports and culture.
For Ravel, it’s both humbling and surreal.
“I’ve gotten into more trouble, ran from more cops, and hopped more fences when I was shooting skate videos than I did when I traveled the world in my VW van in the ’60s,” he said. “Now they want them in the Smithsonian? It’s wild.”
The recognition is a long time coming for someone who helped push the skate culture out of the arenas and into living rooms nationwide.
“A lot of kids would not have been introduced to skateboarding had it not been for these videos,” Ravel said.
Ravel got his start promoting surf movies, working with filmmakers to rent out theaters, pass out flyers, and pack theatres in coastal towns up and down the state.
“We’d rent an auditorium for a couple of nights, and then move on to the next town.”
When video rental stores began popping up in the early 1980s, Ravel saw a bigger opportunity.
“They thought I was nuts,” he said of the surf filmmakers. “‘Who would want to see a surf film on video?’ was the typical reaction.”
Ravel pressed on. He founded Native Son International Video, better known as NSI Video, and started distributing surf movies to video stores, believing home entertainment would be the next frontier.
Ravel stopped by the local video store, Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, where a young Quentin Tarantino happened to be working behind the counter. Ravel left his video “Bali High” with Tarantino and the owners.
“They were surprised when the surf videos rented out more than the feature films,” Ravel said.
In 1980, legendary surf filmmaker Hal Jepsen released “Skateboard Madness,” and the buzz caught Ravel’s attention.
“The hair on my arms went up,” he said. “When that happens, I know it’s a good idea.”
Ravel shifted gears, and by 1984, NSI had sold thousands of skate videos to video rental stores nationwide. What started as a surf-focused business out of his garage grew into a booming operation introducing a generation of kids to the rebellious, fast-growing world of skateboarding.
At first, Ravel said he wasn’t sure if the low-budget skate contest footage had much value.
“I have a film background. I didn’t really think it had any merit as a video,” he said. “As a critic, I was looking at the quality of the production, not the content. Boy, was I stupid. That’s when I learned content was far more important than quality.”
Ravel wasn’t just distributing the videos. He often shot and edited them as well.
“See, a lot of people don’t understand shooting skating, and surfing is my passion,” Ravel said. “It gives me a high.”
Through NSI, Gerard produced some of the era’s most iconic skate contest videos: “Duel at Diablo” and “Streetstyle in Tempe” were filmed in Arizona; and “Ohio Skateout;” “Savannah Slamma III,” and “Disco in Frisco.” The videos featured some of the rising stars in the sport including Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, and Mike Smith of Hermosa Beach.
By the late 1980s, NSI had placed skate and surf videos in more than 3,000 video rental stores across the U.S. It was a golden age of skateboarding and Ravel’s garage was ground zero.
“We had huge trucks pull up to the garage and UPS came every day,” he said. “The neighbors were pissed at me, but I had no overhead.”
But like many industries, skate video distribution was upended by the rise of the internet and digital media. The VHS tapes and home video boom that Ravel helped pioneer faded away.
Years later, local skateboard legend Cindy Whitehead saw merit in his videos and thought they should be preserved. She introduced him to her contacts at the Smithsonian, where items from her own skateboard history are on display.
“Gerard had the foresight to film all these contests,” she said. “No one else really had the idea of doing that.”
Jane Rogers, curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Sports History, said Ravel’s videos, DVDs, and posters will reside in the museum’s archive center.
“To see all these great skaters in their element is such an important history to preserve,” Rogers said. “And to be able to share it with the public is phenomenal.” ER
