Downhill Skateboarding: Dag! This is ILL!!!

As you can see, I’ve been learning some skate slang, inspired by this insane video you’re about to see. Its now starting to make its way across the web, after a couple of weeks on skateboarding websites. Before it goes totally viral, we wanted you to see a clip on the news tonight, then bring you here to watch the entire video.

Photo credit: Colin Blackshear

By way of introduction, I’ll only say this is Claremont Canyon near Berkeley, California. It was shot completely with a handheld HD video camera, with no special effects, as far as I can tell. Skip the first 2:20 if you want to get right to the action. Then watch one of the most intense and thrilling extreme sports videos you’ll ever see. And, yes, the dudes are actually passing the camera back and forth as they travel downhill at speeds near 60 MPH. Check it out, after the jump.

Believe it or not, the video is actually an advertisement, of sorts, for New York-based men’s fashion designer Adam Kimmel. Hence, the powder blue suits worn by the boarders; they’re Kimmel's designs from his Spring ’09 collection (unveiled earlier this month during Fashion Week in New York). California artist Ari Marcopoulos directed it. The skateboarders are Noah Sakamoto and Patrick Rizzo, hardly household names, but big stars in the subculture of downhill skateboarding, and, I can only assume, both completely insane.

So if this is the future of fashion advertising, bring it on! As one web commentator writes: “..this ten minute movie is less about the threads and more about the mind-boggling joy of watching a bearded guy in a suit doing 60 down a highway on a skateboard with more grace than any model wobbling down a runway in a pair of six-inch heels.”

Yeah. What he said. Tomorrow I’ll share some of the hysterical web comments from other skateboarders who watched the video, but you might need a translator; apparently these dudes have a language all their own.

In the meantime, use the comments space down below to let me know what you thought of this awesomely rad stunt.