Palace Skateboards "Powers Surge" Video featuring Shawn Powers

While Shawn Powers was featured in earlier video offering with a similar feel, Palace Skateboards ushers the Queens native into a role on their growing roster with the aptly titled “Power Surge.” Clocking in around six minutes, the video has a necessarily low-def phantom motif about it – “trippy” if you will – and features mostly New York footage of Shawn’s raw skate style.

While fitting into Palace’s specific aesthetic, it would be shallow to feature this without mention of Peter Sidlauskas’ 2010 video Caviar (then, Bronze 56k). It was leagues ahead of its time in regards to contemporary skate media, and even more complimented the heavily improvisational style Powers is known for. Caviar was released at a time when many aesthetic purists rejected the prominence of high-definition filmmaking, which was arguably propelled into mass popularity by Lakai’s Fully Flared. Fast forward some three years, and the landscape has grown into the culmination of this rejection: the YouTube consensus is necessarily lo-definition, interjected with pop culture references and purposefully antiqued editing.

Palace’s latest offering builds on its own artistic image as a brand, though perhaps the audience wonders just how far the skate community will take this aesthetic preference.