The Hell-Steamer Test
‘1996 was not the turning point that we all like to believe it was, but just a blimp on the radar.’
October 2025
This article started with a simple test to see how far traditional skate videos have come in their inclusion of non-traditional skaters since the mid-90s. Out of this grew a story about why it may be necessary for skateboarding, as a community, to reevaluate how we discuss who is present in the videos we love and who is not.
Welcome to Hell
Overtime, a troublesome fact has appeared that I am determined to disprove. To help show what I mean, let’s start with Cara-Beth Burnside Santa Cruz’s 1990 video, Risk it. Her 1 minute and 26 second part was a monumental step forward as she was the first nontraditional skater to be given a full part in a traditional skate video. Looking at other videos that came out around the same time, we can see too that Burnside’s part is slightly longer than others. Sophia Bourgeois, Lori Rigsbee, and Anita Tennesohn’s shared part in Powell Peralta’s Public Domain is 1 minute and 12 seconds and Lori Rigsbee part in Propaganda is 1 minute and 14 seconds; all representing only a small fraction of the over hour long videos they are a part of.
Something changed in 1996. That year Toy Machine released Welcome to Hell with a full part from Elissa Steamer. What set this apart from what had come before was that it was not a shared part (like Public Domain) or a vert part (like Risk It) but a part for just one skater at street spots similar to what we see in videos today; in fact, her last trick is at the Triangle in Florida. Though Steamer’s part came to 1 minute and 14 seconds, shorter than Burnside’s, these times cannot be looked at in isolation. What should be added is that Welcome to Hell was half the runtime of these older videos at 30 minutes and 28 seconds. This is what further separates Steamer’s part from what came before. Burnside’s part only makes up 1.74% of Risk It’s total length—1.87% for the shared part in Public Domain and 1.55% for Rigsbee’s in Propaganda—but Steamer’s part more than doubled these numbers with 4%.
‘There were 9 team or full- length videos shared on Thrasher’s YouTube page in 2023…only 5 include nontraditional skaters’
This is where the trouble got started. At this rate, one could easily assume a steady rise of representation in the nearly 30 years since Welcome to Hell, especially given how much progress we have seen in skateboarding as a whole. I want to believe I am wrong. Before moving on, a quick word about numbers: calculating percentages is easier than you may think. A trick I keep in my back pocket is to first check the runtime in the corner. If it is around 15 minutes and by the end of the video I have only seen about 30 seconds of nontraditional skaters, then I know that the percentage will be less than 4%.
Now that we are all prepared, let us begin. Taking a handful of videos from last year, we find the following:
HUF Forever (runtime: 42 minutes) has 1 minute and 25 seconds of nontraditional skaters, or 3.32%.
Santa Cruz “F#?! Em” (19 minutes) has 23 seconds, or 2%.
Ace “Re(play)ce” (16 minutes) has 15 seconds, or 1.54%.
Magenta Just Cruise 2 (47 minutes) has 8 seconds, or 0.28%.
To avoid fears of cherry-picking, let’s take a wider survey now. In total, there were 9 team or full-length videos shared on Thrasher’s YouTube page in 2023 (not including tour videos, which would only tip the scales less in their favor). Of these 9, only 5 include non-traditional skaters at all, and of those 5 only 2 clear the 4% benchmark.
‘For every video I find that has at least one nontraditional skater, I have to sit through ten that didn’t even bother. All I see is what isn’t there.’
Keep Working
The news is not all bad. Back in the early days of this obsession, I shared the numbers I had found on social media and I always tried to include one from a video that stood out far above the rest. The response was somehow even less than the clips I usually shared of skating with friends, whose view count never seemed to go much beyond those present, which made it all the more surprising when one of the brands I tagged reached out.
Though two years ago, I still think about what they said. Theirs was the video included as an example of what was possible and they said that they would keep “working to reach 50%.” This has stuck with me because I cannot help but wonder if a clean 50/50 split between men and women—or even the same divide between traditional and nontraditional skaters—is really what we are after. Further, while I can’t stress enough how much I admire the work this particular brand has done, my concern is how far off 50% may be when we do not have yet even a baseline that surpasses 4%.
Now you may be wondering why I choose to harp on all of this when, by my own admission, some progress has been made. There are also loads of crew videos being produced every day, many of which highlight nontraditional skaters. One of the two Thrasher videos I mentioned that cleared the 4% benchmark—Worble and Cobra Man’s “Worble World”—may fall into this category.
Unfortunately, to tell you why I choose to focus on larger “legacy” brands I will also have to tell you a secret. There is a question I will never have an answer to. As someone who has had at least two jobs for large portions of her adult life, I watch these people on screen—people who have had to sacrifice other hopes, other commitments, who practice every day for one insane and impossible dream—and I wonder how small a percentage are those for whom skating isn’t just one of two or three or four others jobs they have to do? I know that I will never know, but I can begin to understand how much value a company that has the means to support their riders places on a nontraditional skater based on whether their footage is given a full part or buried in the montage.
‘The more I look, the more this becomes not about how far we’ve come, but how much we’ve lost.’
All I See is What Isn’t There
Maybe I’m being cruel. Outside of skate videos, we can point to markers of progress like how contests have equal prize purses for both men and women, or how I can’t open Instagram without seeing a woman in dunks that Nike sent them, or how every skate podcast I listen to that invites a nontraditional skater on I am bombarded with comments like “look how far women’s skateboarding has come,” “women’s skating has just blown up in the last few years,” “yes, just look how far they’ve come.”
They are probably right—they have a podcast, after all—and maybe I am alone in feeling this way. I know that I am prone to obsessing over little things that don’t seem to matter to anyone else, but I don’t care about social media, I don’t care who wins Street League. I grew up sitting on the couch in my friends’ living room watching their copy of Fully Flared over and over again. I care about skate videos. To this day they are what still get me excited to get off my own couch, put on my shoes, fill up every water bottle in my apartment, and go skate.
Since Fully Flared, since Welcome to Hell, since Public Domain, there have been an uncountable number of videos. Despite how I’ve tried, I cannot watch them all and frankly I don’t want to anymore. The more I look, the more this becomes not about how far we’ve come, but how much we’ve lost. For every video I find that has at least one nontraditional skater, I have to sit through ten that didn’t even bother. All I see is what isn’t there.
This is why I hope I am wrong, because if I am right then 1996 was not the turning point that we have all like to believe it was, but just a blimp on the radar.
The Only Sound You Hear
The very next year saw the release of Real’s Non Fiction. Almost halfway through the 42- minute long video we see a young Jaime Reyes appear on screen. She is there for 40 seconds, before disappearing again. I’ll let you do the math this time, I’m too tired.
Fast forward twenty six years, I meet a grown woman with a house, a wife, and an entire life I know nothing about. On that day she is not Skateboarding Legend Jaime Reyes, but a friend of a friend who is watching me slowly lose my mind while trying a switch front board for the billionth time. She gives me some advice from when she was learning the same trick and tells me to stop slowing myself down. Soon, however, my nausea kicks in and I am furious but I have to stop before I’m sick in front of a bunch of strangers. Jaime tries making me feel better by telling me about a pro she knows who always gets sick after demos and the one who always is during.
Mercifully the conversation shifts to lighter topics, like skate parks, and she tells me about one not far from my home. Since then the park has become a favorite of mine. It is not on any maps, so few people come, and the only sound you hear are cars going on by on the other side of the treeline. Skating there alone weeks later, her advice starts to sink in and I start to land my silly trick.
It is only in writing all of this now that I can see that though on the outside she carries this tough guy appearance, underneath it all she can be quite caring and gentle. I would love to talk to her about this but there never seems to be the right time, and maybe I already know the answer. In my life I have known so many women who have built a wall between something inside themselves and the world outside. An old friend once said to me that every day she tried to take down the bricks faster than I could put them up. I haven’t spoken to her in years.
I can’t get the opening shot of Jaime’s Non Fiction part out of my head. It is of a young girl pointing to the lightning flashes inside an approaching storm. I do not know this girl, but when she turns toward the camera it is only by her smile that I begin to recognize the woman I know. Jaime and I have only gotten to skate together a few times since that first day and though we have tried to meet up more, inevitably one of us will say, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got work.”