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kateboarding — a mixture of improvisational dance moves and gymnastics atop a moving, wheeled object — doesn’t get nearly the recognition it deserves as a performance art. It gets a bad rep because skateboarding can require an outright lack of respect for rules. There are few skate parks in which to practice, so public spaces are often illicitly taken over by groups of like-minded (typically young and male) daredevils, brave enough to risk the monetary fine and harassment by security guards, not to mention the risks taken to life and limb in such a sport.
But the street skateboarder who performs with both athletic skill and artful style can be the equivalent of watching Gene Kelly leaping off of a light post with his umbrella prop in Singin’ in the Rain — graceful, elegant and capable of impressive feats of physicality.
Alexander Davis, a 30-year-old from Northern Kentucky who’s been puttering around on a board since he was in single digits, is just such a skateboarder — one who appeals to both those who like skateboarding as a sport as well as an art form. And despite going pro at an age when he’s now considered fairly old by industry standards, his professional sponsorship by Ohio-based Habitat Skateboards has been a long time coming.
Davis (often called Al or “Al Butters” by his friends and fans due to his smooth skating style) started at such an early age because his older brother did, and his family supported their sons’ endeavors from the get-go, likely because their father was also a talented performer.
A musician who played the trumpet for Boone County High School, Al’s father was the first student from his alma mater to get a band scholarship to the University of Kentucky. So he took his sons’ budding interest seriously and started ordering them skateboards directly from suppliers because the closest skate shop was almost an hour away in Dayton, Ohio. In turn, this led to him supplying so many of the kids in their Covington neighborhood with boards that he started his own skate shop in Florence, Ky., in the mid-’90s called Triple A — named after the three Davis children, whose names all begin with the letter A.
Triple A closed in 2007 when the economy began to sour but Davis was just getting started on his road to professional sponsorship. He was the first skater to be signed to locally owned Instrument Skateboards in 2005, and by 2008 he was announced as one of Habitat’s sponsored amateurs. As a result, Davis began traveling more and receiving short-term reciprocal compensation for his efforts. But an ankle injury he sustained in Texas seriously threatened his sponsor’s commitment, as well as his self-confidence — something not to be underappreciated when performing life-risking tricks.
After allowing himself to heal for almost a year, it would take four days of rest after a day of skating before the swelling in his ankle would go down again. But when Davis speaks of that professionally challenging time, he does so in a very pragmatic way.
“Basically I chipped a bone in my ankle and I didn’t get it fixed,” he says. “There were bone fragments floating around in my ankle and they would inflame after I put a lot of pressure on it.”
After living with the pain for almost two years, he finally relented to arthroscopic surgery, which rectified the situation. And although being injured was a dark time for him, Davis is a charismatic optimist whose megawatt smile is part of the allure that lends to his style of street skating.
He skates hard, bombing the hills of Cincinnati with graceful aplomb. There is a casual panache to not only the technical acts he performs, but also the effortless cool of someone who, according to Habitat co-founder and Creative Director Joe Castrucci, “doesn’t look too Cali or too New York.”
Castrucci explains that being from Greater Cincinnati makes Davis more visually compelling to his fan base because when they see the video clips or photographs filmed in his hometown, he says, “People are like, ‘Where the hell is that?’”
“To people in the industry, visually this place is insane,” he continues.
And as a kind of performance art, it only makes sense that the visual documentation of the ephemeral endeavor via skate videos or photographs is inherent to its success. But what really kicked Davis’ career into the realm of professional sponsorship these past few years was his moving out to San Francisco to work with the filmmaker Ryan Garshell, known as GX1000.
Garshell’s moniker comes from his use of a Sony DCR-VX1000, an older camera considered by many to be the quintessential action sports camera. Filming for Thrasher Magazine (the skating industry’s most iconic longstanding print outlet) in a terrain that is similar to what Davis has been skating his whole life makes for a natural pairing, and the two have an unequivocally organic approach compared to many of their peers who plan out their tricks ahead of time.
Davis makes perfect sense to be finally going professional with a company like Habitat. The skateboarding company has Midwestern roots, born from the world-renowned Ohio-based Alien Workshop Skateboarding company in 1999. One of the hallmarks of Alien Workshop videos is a collage-like mix of skating and aesthetically compelling visuals throughout — a decidedly artistic approach to the documentation of what was in its early days considered little more than a trendy sport performed by young punks.
Davis himself is a street photographer who carries disposable cameras around with him in an effort to capture the fleeting moments he often sees in the obscure places he finds while skating.
“I’m more on a fast photography type of moment,” he says, explaining his candid approach. And when I ask him if that’s related to skateboarding — something that’s likewise spontaneous, organic and improvisational in nature — he enthusiastically agrees. “Oh my gosh. It is,” he says with a huge smile, as if just realizing it. “You just have to go with the flow,” he says, sounding like a true performer. ©
For more information on ALEX DAVIS and Habitat Skateboards, go to
habitatskateboards.com
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This article appears in Dec 31, 2014 – Jan 6, 2015.