Zaturdays: The Nebulous World of ABDs

Social Media went a little crazy recently in the age-old Already Been Done debate. Inside the industry beltway it’s always been considered an unforgivable party foul to willfully do an ABD*. But the conventional view of the ABD was shaken up when footage of Collin Provost doing a tow in frontside kickflip over a fence was recently posted to Instagram, the rub being that it was the same fence over which Jordan Hoffart was shown doing a tow in frontside flip in his Berrics part just weeks prior. I should point out that any feuding I saw over it was not between Jordan and Collin, but rather people on various sides of the fence…the proverbial fence, not the one they were hucking themselves over. Some people thought it was a big deal, some didn’t, and I could try to dig down into the facts to determine who did it first, but I really don’t care about that. Instead, it raises a larger point which is this: In our era of 24/7 on-demand coverage of skateboarding from all over the world, do ABDs still matter? And is there a difference between Already Been Done and Already Been Seen? To the first question: Do ABDs still matter? The answer is like an old lady’s underwear: Depends. If there’s a famous spot where a high caliber pro or am has done a pretty legendary maneuver that appeared in some sort of video or magazine, and then you come it later doing the same thing, it kind of matters. I’m not going to lose sleep over it, but the immediate reaction to anyone going and re-doing one of those types of tricks is going to be “Yeah but so-and-so already did it.” Like let’s say you went and did a switch double tre down the Santa Monica triple set, a la Shane O’Neill. Well good for you for making it and I’m impressed by how good you probably are, but you should have probably gone and done it somewhere else if you wanted more credit. If you did it down Santa Monica for fun and didn’t film it or tell anyone about it, then that might be different but I really doubt that would happen. It’s generally been the case that no self-respecting skateboarder would try to replicate any ABD for a part or photos. Willfully performing ABDs has always placed the perpetrators squarely in kook territory. Skateboarding doesn’t have a rulebook, but if it did there could be a whole chapter on ABDs. I guess there have been those occasional lone wolves too though who don’t care who did what, famous or not, but even they probably aren’t going to go backside 360 the Sports Arena double set or switch flip into the fountain at Love. What about this scenario though: if a pro comes to the hot spot in any town USA and hears that Home Town Hero Jimmy Butternuts did whatever trick he’s about to try, don’t think for a second that it’ll stop him from going ahead with it. All it ever comes down to really is a matter of perception. “Was there footage of it anywhere? Did people see it? No? Well then I’m going to do it too.” Which brings me to my second question, whether the real issue is more of an Already Been Seen thing. It’s the same as the tree that falls in the forest with no one around to hear it. For all intents and purposes it doesn’t make any noise. So the tricks everyone is out there doing for the cameras? They’re being done for the footage, for the photos, for all of us to SEE them. And whether you did it first or did it second or 157th, if we see you doing it before we see anyone else doing it, well then you just earned yourself an NBD son. Congratulations! *I feel compelled to say that yes, I know, pretty much every trick most of us have ever done are ABDs, if we were only “allowed” to do tricks we invented most of us would be forced to quit skating, but in the ABD debate, I think we’re talking about very spot-specific tricks (Like a front blunt down the Oceanside Hubba) that are being done for the sake of the video / photo coverage. - Paul Zitzer