Skate Kitchen (2018)

Skate Kitchen: Directed by Crystal Moselle. With Rachelle Vinberg, Dede Lovelace, Nina Moran, Kabrina Adams. A teenaged skateboarder makes friends with a bunch of other skateboarding girls in New York City.

“My wife and I watched this movie at home on DVD from our public library. It is somewhere between documentary and drama, all the u0026#39;actorsu0026#39; are girls who are members of the real Skate Kitchen group of skateboarders in New York City. It fairly accurately represents their real lives but the story itself is fictional.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe female filmmaker encountered two of them, with their skateboards, on the G train. Interested, she introduced herself and asked u0026quot;are there more of you?u0026quot; And that was the genesis of this movie. It takes place during one summer.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is really a slice of life focusing more on one character living on Long Island, Camille, who just turned 18 and had some freedom to break away from her single momu0026#39;s restrictions. She looks up a skate meeting event in Lower Manhattan, goes over to see what was happening, and gradually became friends with the others. There are the usual difficulties, including ridicule from the boys, but the girls bond.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI realize the movie contains exactly what the filmmaker intended, but I found myself wanting more. What kind of future do these young girls, and their young boy counterparts , have after high school? Will they be content with working at low-paying jobs to barely make ends meet while they spend most of their spare time skateboarding and watching their videos? What prospects do they have to climb a bit and pursue a more meaningful vocation? Or is skateboarding meaningful enough for them?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI can identify with all this because my own son was one of these skateboarding teens. Then he went on to a job as a bicycle messenger. By the time he got to be 25 he realized he didnu0026#39;t want to do that all his adult life so went to college and converted that into a good career. I will continue to wonder what the girls of Skate Kitchen will go on to.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI have not been able to find an explanation of their name, Skate Kitchen, perhaps it was inspired by the Manhattan area known as Hellu0026#39;s Kitchen.”