One of the main heads responsible for keeping the glory days of the late 90’s and early aughts alive is Brian Panebianco, a skateboard filmer living in Philadelphia (who also rips), that has been instrumental in capturing and maintaining the city’s downtown skate scene—not only in the sense of building a scene, but by quite literally fixing ledges and repairing spots at Love Park and the Municipal Services plaza. I sat down with Brian—a co-creator of the Sabotage series and filmer for DC and DGK— on a brick winter morning at Cecil B. Moore Plaza
Phil: Do you remember the first video that really piqued your interest in skating?
Brian: Well, I saw the workshop video, Photosynthesis, and I definitely had seen videos before that, like, the Maple video. I don’t know if you remember that one, Maple skateboards. They all came out around the same time; I only had like 3 videos and would just watch them, and found out exactly what skateboarding was. I was just a kid, 13 or something.
Phil: When was the first time you came downtown to Philadelphia? What were your initial thoughts and what was the impression that it left on you?
Brian: I came down and just looked at love with my Dad when we were going to a Phillies game. I was like, “hey, we should go look at love park, never been there, seen it in the videos.” We just looked at it and that was it. Kalis had that noseblunt photo at city hall, on the cover of Transworld, and I thought it was Love Park. That was super confusing. I didn’t realize that city hall and Love Park were two different spots. But the first real time was probably for the X-Games that happened in Philadelphia
Phil: So the X-Games was the first time you went to Love, but when was the first time you skated it?
Brian: Well, you couldn’t skate it during the X-games because they had mad cops, but I think 2004 or something. I heard people were skating there; then, me and a couple of friends went down. Their parents drove us down one Saturday. There was a bunch of people there, like Chris Cole and shit, but the cops came fast and we had to leave.
Phil: When did you get your first camera?
Brian: I know when I got my first VX. It was when I graduated high school in 2005, but before that I had a shitty, little handycam for years, I don’t even know how long.
Phil: What was the impetus behind you picking up a camera?
Brian: Me and my friends were all skating, and we thought we should start filming shit. Nobody had a camera, so I just got a shitty, little one out of a magazine or something, just picked one out at random.
Phil: Early on, were there any skate filmers that made an impression on you?
Brian: I guess Bill Strobeck’s early stuff. I liked it, but I didn’t know it was him, so I couldn’t put a name on it. I didn’t know who was filming that shit; I just thought it was filmed really good, almost basic with no crazy movements. He just filmed the skating and it looked sick.
Phil: How would you edit footage back in the day?
Brian: I used to just make edits on iMovie and email them to my 5 friends
Phil: Was there YouTube at the time?
Brian: Nah, this was pre-YouTube.
Phil: So you were already making videos, and then you got your VX when you graduated; what did you end up doing with that?
Brian: Well, I started recording with that VX, but I got a fucked up one. I bought it from Japan, and all the footage was really cloudy, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then, I realized the whole inside was all fucked up, so I had to get that cleaned for like 250 bucks, or something, and then it was fine. It lasted a while
Phil: How many VX’s have you had?
Brian: Um, right now, I have three, but they’re all kind of, well…. I had the first one, and then I got another one. The first one actually fully broke; everything was wrong with it. And then, I got another one, and it was kind of fucked up. Then, I came across a deal, got another one; that one has something that’s fucked up. If I could just combine all the ones I have, I would have the best one. But, all the ones I have are kinda weird.
Phil: Who were you filming with when you first got your VX?
Brian: Just the same friends that probably don’t skate anymore… and with Tore (Tore Bevivino) a lot since he lived right next to me.
Phil: How did your involvement with sabotage all come about?
Brian: Ryan Higgins started it; it was kind of like a jackass-type thing, little kid stuff. Then, he made a video called Sabotage The Movie with his and this kid Nick’s footage who was skating downtown a lot, getting a bunch of footage of people. I think he just mixed that in, and that’s how it became sort of like a skate video. I met him and was like, “oh, this video is sick, but maybe if you just changed this and that,” ya’ know? So, he remade it with some of my footage, too; there are like 5 versions of the first one. Sabotage 2 was supposed to be a little downtown-type montage, and then it just turned into a full video.
Phil: Once you guys got into sabotage 2 and 3, there was a really distinct music selection in the videos. Did you guys let the skaters pick the music or was it mostly you and Ryan?
Brian: It was mostly me and Ryan, mostly Ryan actually. We have let people pick their songs before, and if we disagree, then we just won’t use it.
Phil: All your videos seem to have a certain lo-fi, industrial aesthetic to them, how did you guys come up with your particular style?
Brian: Ryan was behind a lot of that stuff, but I don’t know, I guess there would be times where we were filming in the freezing cold, and I would think, “what the fuck are we doing out here?” But, I guess the best way to describe it is that we kind of made it look how we felt when we were filming it.
Phil: How did the graffiti aspect of the videos come into play?
Brian: Ryan was really into graffiti and all that shit, and he knew some people that were into it as well, so they ended up being in Sabotage 2. It was really just an experiment the first time we put it in Sabotage 2, but it just worked out, so we kept going with it into 3, 4 and 5. We just got better and better writers with each video.
Phil: So, after Sabotage 5 came out, you guys put out some edits from your trips to Spain and Lyon, and there’s also the Life After Love edit, where you guys go around to other plaza spots in the US. Traveling all these places, have you experienced anything that compares to the craziness of Philadelphia?
Brian: Nah, not really. Well actually, maybe at MACBA: this one time there was some dude running around naked. I guess he’s a local homeless dude, and everybody just put clothes on him. They didn’t really treat it the same way we would have. If it had happened here, we would have just been going crazy, screaming and recording him.
Phil: How do you go about employing B-Roll footage into your skate videos? I think that it’s extremely well-contained and integrated with the skating.
Brian: Yeah, we almost make it like a video part for whatever crazy character we have going on at the time… We give them, like, two minutes, which is crazy.
Phil: There were so many interesting faces that popped up throughout the Sabotage series, do you have a favorite out of them all, or do you still see any of them?
Brian: My favorite, probably Joe McPeak, the guy who drank mouthwash… He’s dead now though. And, yeah, but they’re fading. I mean, you see Philly Jesus, but I liked him better when he used to come to Love with a megaphone and rap; it was funny.
Phil: Is there a reason why you guys are drawn to recording some of these people?
Brian: It’s kind of crazy; the point is that people take a shit on the ground or stab someone, but yet we get kicked out for skating. You’d think we’d be the least of the city’s worries but were not.
Phil: Have you taken anything from being around the people that, for the most part, society seems to look down on or neglect?
Brian: I mean, you learn small things, where to take a piss, or what time cops get off, stupid stuff that normal people would never have to know. And you kind of learn how to get along with seemingly scary, unapproachable people because if you’re going to skate in the same space as them, then you’ll have to get along with them, which I think is a good trait to have in life.
Phil: What’s a story that has really stuck with you from your time filming and skating in downtown Philadelphia?
Brian: Fuck dude, there are so many stories, I don’t even know if I can pick one. But, in my Sabotage 2 part, there’s this clip where these two ladies are arguing; turns out, the next day, one of them stabbed the other one. So yeah, she got stabbed, then died. They were fighting over some guy or something; honestly, I don’t even know, that’s just what the news said. So yeah, that happened right before we rolled up to skate. There was blood all over the place; they had caution tape everywhere; there were mad cops. They were letting us skate, but once they cleaned it up, they kicked us out. They were power washing blood into the grass. It was super sketchy.
Phil: Were there any profound memories you had looking back on Love Park now that it’s gone?
Brian: A lot of times after I filmed stuff, I wouldn’t really be able to skate because my legs would be fucked up and sore. So sometimes, I would wake up early, go to Love, and it would be a nice day like today. The sun would be perfect and it would just give me a really good feeling. I don’t know; there was just something about being there that would give you this really good feeling. I can’t explain it. And it’s gone now, so I can’t show anyone.
Phil: Do you think you get the same kind of feeling with Muni?
Brian: Not really…
Phil: Well, how do you feel about Muni?
Brian: No, I like it. It’s gonna suck when it’s gone, but it was the worst of the three spots. For me, it went: Love, which was great; City Hall, which was really good; and then, there was Muni. We used to never really bother to skate it because you would get kicked out immediately. But now, it’s all we have.
Phil: Are there any places where you think that the ethos of plaza skating continues to exist?
Brian: I don’t know, you need… you need a scene. I mean, like here [Cecil B. Moore Plaza]. It’s 11 in the morning and there’s 5 people out skating; that’s pretty crazy. But if you go to, like, Grays Ferry [Grays Ferry Skatepark], at 5pm, there’s gonna be nobody there. But, you come to this place at almost any time and there’s people skating. I mean, there really isn’t that much stuff to skate here, but the reason people come is for the atmosphere. So, you need a spot like that, and a scene for something to really happen.
Phil: It seems like there are a lot of places in America (i.e. Chicago) that have big scenes, but are undiscovered and don’t get much video coverage. What do you think will be the next big plaza scene to get recognized?
Brian: Well, there are places popping off; they’re just not in America. Like, that plaza in Milan, with that ledge over the grate and shit (Piazza Duca d’Aosta). They have a whole scene just like our’s; they skate there every day; they have this big crew, and so on. So, stuff is already happening—there just needs to be a big video to put places on the map. Plus, the governments over there are kind of down for people skating, like, way more so than they are over here, so that helps.
Phil: Seeing that Love Park was such a fixture, a core part of the scene here in Philadelphia, how has it affected you and the people you skate with?
Brian: It’s almost like losing a band member and trying to continue… It’s just not the same
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