Video Review Roundup: Beltway Insider Edition

If, as Roctakon once wrote, NYC commodifies cool, and LA sells you the same thing reconstituted as fame, then DC’s most valuable commodity is power. Perhaps that’s what gives DC footage that extra juice, in addition to Pulaski’s status as the coolest-looking skate spot in the country.

The power resides in the marble.

I first sensed this power when my dad used to drive me up there from time to time to go the Natural History and Air and Space Museums. As we headed up Interstate 95, the first indicator that we were entering a qualitatively different power zone were the orange spheres that appeared on the power lines at the Marine Base Quantico exit. Because, like, there were helicopters flying around. The next sign was the Pentagon, which sprawled out on our left after we took the exit onto 395. Later, when I started going there to skate, the office buildings of Crystal City (what kind of a name for a neighborhood is that anyway) loomed on your right. A mythical name for the location (or so we presumed) of those mythical parking garages that Pep and them skated in Skypager.

Astute real estate observers will note that DMV was one of the few areas to escape the 2008-2009 crash. And this year, The Washington Professional Basketball Team sustained #relevance until mid-May.  Furthermore, The region has also been extremely productive in terms of physical and web-based media production. Concurrently, DC’s myriad organizations have functioned as the setting for all kinds of television programming—prestige and otherwise–due to this power locus and the accompanying Machiavellian accoutrements. So, in the following article I will attempt to merge, compare, and contrast– thematically and stylistically–recent DC skate videos with recent DC television.