When I was in sixth grade, my friend and I were sitting bored in his garage when we found two old skateboards. I stepped on one, found my balance, and gave it a push—and from that moment, I was hooked.
Skateboarding wasn’t just a sport; it was a lifestyle, a community, and an escape. Virgin Blacktop: A New York Skate Odyssey perfectly captures that love of skateboarding in a funny, heartwarming package.
The documentary film follows a group of friends, the self-named Wizards, who bond over skateboarding in 1970s New York. Told through interviews accented by grainy home video footage, the film draws viewers into their world. From competitions to jail time and loss, we witness the highs and lows of a tight-knit crew navigating life together.
The film starts off as a love letter to the sport, through the eyes of the Wizards. The film documents the music of skating, the competitions, and other skateboarding rights of passage. It is set during the earliest stages of skateboarding, and throughout the film we watch as not only the characters change and mature, but also how skateboarding evolves, from the death of freestyle and slalom, to the rise of street skating and ollie variant tricks.
The film pivots to how the Wizards matured throughout the years, with its members going their own respective ways, later reuniting. It is fascinating to watch these people grow from ages as young as 10 or 11 to adults in ways that remind me of such films as Boyhood or Forrest Gump. What sets this film apart from those films, however, is how it stars real people, and we get to watch in real time as they mature. We experience going through life alongside them—through prison, loss, reunion and more—together.
As I entered high school, life got busy so I didn’t have time to skate. This forced me to slowly grow apart from skateboarding, and I haven’t skated in a few years. I haven’t even thought of the sport in just as long, but the found family and brotherhood that the Wizards shared and experienced through skateboarding made me nostalgic for that period of my life.
Virgin Blacktop is a feelgood slice-of-life documentary that I highly recommend for skaters and non-skaters alike.
My rating: A.
Editor’s Note: See Virgin Blacktop: A New York Skate Odyssey on Sunday, August 10, 2025 at a Family Movie Night+BBQ presented by the Cambria Film Festival and Skate Cambria to help bring a skate park to Cambria.