This article originally appeared in Hypebeast Magazine #36: The Platinum Issue

I blame CNN. Before it went on the air in 1980, the idea of a never-ending stream of content didn’t exist. Today, the problem is 100-fold, with notable help from social media and “always-on” hustle culture, posting around the clock can feel like an obligation whether you’re in the news media, fashion, music, or even skateboarding. Instagram, in particular, is awash in disposable skate clips. Depending on your algorithm, you could flip through your Stories page for days and see clip after clip of skaters around the world throwing themselves down double sets, grinding impossible handrails, and stringing together an obnoxious number of tricks on perfectly-manicured ledges. Watching it all can give you the feeling of someone shoveling coal into a firebox on a train bound for hell. It’s a weird quirk of our time that the level of skateboarding has never been this high, yet watching it feels so boring.

It was in this landscape that Bobby de Keyzer and Quasi skateboards released BOBCBC, a skate odyssey filmed over the course of two and a half months outside the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s offices in Toronto. Shot and co-directed by Tomas Morrison, the video captures Bobby’s makes but also his misses, frustrations, and the sort of fury understood by anyone who’s spent an afternoon trying to make a skateboard do something it doesn’t want to do. Set to a score by Barrett Avner with soaring highs and dark, moody lows, the video feels like skateboarding itself distilled and packaged into a 24-minute Greek tragedy, available on limited-edition Blu-ray. It’s a welcome pushback to this era of perfectly polished, soulless clips on the grid.

Bobby also happens to be very good at putting on clothes, and until recently had his own small brand, Faces of Another, with pants and shirting he designed with a friend. He also skates for Converse, and has his own signature version of the CONS One Star Academy Pro. We caught up with Bobby on his way home from a camping trip to talk about BOBCBC, fashion, and why skate videos feel so stagnant — as well as how he’s trying to flip the script and inject new life into the form.

HAVE YOU SKATED CBC SINCE YOU FINISHED THE VIDEO?

Bobby de Keyzer: No, I haven’t been there [laughs]. I think it was a good spot to do that video because it’s not a spot that I really like skating, so it kind of felt like that got it out of my system.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO FILM AN ENTIRE VIDEO AT THE CBC PLAZA?

It was late summer and I hadn’t really been skating that much. Tom and I went to CBC one day and skated, and maybe I tried to film something, but I really had no plan. But after that first day I was kind of like, “Oh, we could just come here only and go until the season ends and that’ll be our video.” Traditionally, people spend one to five years on a project, and I’m really not interested in doing that. One year is excruciating. That’s far too long. This just worked out perfectly because it gave me a little less than three months to work until I couldn’t work anymore.

Also, CBC isn’t a spot that I really like to skate, but you don’t get kicked out, so that was a huge factor. There’s also this big Anish Kapoor sculpture in the back called “Mountain” that’s sort of staring at the CN Tower, like mimicking it almost. I thought, “Oh, if we skate there and attach the GoPro, we could give this sculpture the eyes and reflect the point back onto the plaza. Maybe that would be interesting.” Once you lock the location, it’s really just figuring out what else you can do to make a skate video worthwhile.

SPEAKING OF LOCKING IN ON ONE SPOT, HAVING CONSTRAINTS CAN REALLY BE A BIG HELP. IT’S ALMOST LIKE THE FEELING OF BEING ABLE TO DO ANYTHING CAN BE SORT OF PARALYZING. WAS THAT SOMETHING YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT?

Oh, totally. It’s a relief to be like: This is where we’re gonna go, and if it’s not working there that day, that’s it. We’re gonna go home. The plan was to shoot at the same location until it got too cold. It worked out nicely that it ended up being 75 days — a nice, clean number.

THERE HAVE BEEN QUITE A FEW PARTS OVER THE YEARS SHOT AT ONE DISTINCT SPOT, LIKE JACOPO CAROZZI AT STAZIONE CENTRALE, JOSH KALIS AND STEVIE WILLIAMS AT LOVE, ROSS NORMAN AT LEGISLATIVE PLAZA. I THINK PART OF WHAT SETS BOBCBC APART IS THE INCLUSION OF SO MANY BAILS AND VISUALIZING THE FRUSTRATION THAT GOES INTO SKATING. DO YOU THINK YOU GOT MORE FRUSTRATED BECAUSE YOU WERE SKATING THE SAME SPOT EVERY SINGLE DAY?

Yeah, for sure. For those videos you mentioned, the driving force was the location — it’s like “tricks being landed at that one spot.” I didn’t really care about that. CBC does not have cultural value in the same way that Love has cultural value. I think that’s also what people found kind of disorienting about BOBCBC — it’s a pretty empty space. You never see anyone skating it with me and there aren’t any other skaters there.

As for the frustration, I think that just came from giving myself a crazy short deadline, which made every trick feel so important. And I think it was just this really unique situation of going to the same spot and trying the same tricks over and over.

DID YOU KNOW FROM THE OUTSET THAT YOU WERE GOING TO INCLUDE ALL THOSE BAILS AND OUTTAKES, OR WAS THAT SOMETHING THAT CAME LATER?

To me, it just feels irresponsible to make that kind of classically-structured video again. I’ve made myself a name, and I’m at the liberty of doing what I want. I think there’s a responsibility that comes with that. I’m trying to bring some professionalism back to skate videos. I think about how the video will come out. To just be like, “Well, I have three minutes of footage that I filmed at CBC. We could make a classically-structured video of just lands…” That’s not why I do it anymore.

KIND OF RELATED TO THAT, WHAT DO YOU THINK THE RISE OF INSTAGRAM AND SOCIAL MEDIA CLIPS HAS DONE TO SKATE VIDEOS AND SKATING MORE BROADLY? DO YOU THINK IT’S FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED THINGS?

I feel like people just aren’t really trying anything new. And so releasing a highlight reel on Instagram and making it vertical out of HD wide-angle footage… I’m just like, “Yeah, you feel OK bastardizing this because no one cares anyway.” No one’s really pushing it, so I don’t really care about the current state of skate videos or how people are putting them out or how Instagram affects it. If you’re not trying to do something new, then it’s OK to just put it on Instagram.

DO YOU THINK SKATE VIDEOS HAVE BECOME LESS ARTISTIC, GENERALLY SPEAKING? AND DO YOU THINK THAT’S MAYBE TIED TO INSTAGRAM?

Yeah, I think so. When I watch a skate video it’s just like, who can do the bigger dick 50-50 scored by the more esoteric rock song? And that’s just not good enough. I’m not 17 anymore. I don’t care about the trick — to me the trick is like 10 percent of it. I want to think bigger picture about the vibe I’m trying to create in this video. It feels like the focus of most skate videos is still very driven to make the watcher want to go skate, which is so absurd to me. I haven’t watched a skate video that’s made me want to go skate since I was a boy [laughs]. I think that’s almost kind of childish and it doesn’t interest me anymore.

IT SEEMS LIKE CAPTURING THE VIBE AND TONE OF THE ENVIRONMENT WAS A DRIVING FORCE BEHIND BOBCBC. IS THAT RIGHT?

Yeah, and all of the stress and anxiety that went into it. And just showing the process in general I think is more interesting. So yeah, I’m trying to show a more accurate representation of what it’s like. When you watch a video that’s three minutes long and it’s only makes, it’s not really an accurate representation.

But when you see me try the same line and the same trick hundreds of times, you realize that the wins really are fleeting. They’re short and they pass and the next day you’re back and it doesn’t matter that you landed the trick yesterday. I’m trying to put more value on how hard it is to make the video, rather than just the tricks themselves, because tricks are just a small part of what makes a video good.

YOU MENTIONED IN AN INTERVIEW WITH BLACKBIRD SPYPLANE THAT YOU THINK EVEN PEOPLE WHO DON’T SKATE CAN APPRECIATE THIS VIDEO AND THE STRUGGLE THAT WENT INTO IT. I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN, BUT IT ALSO FEELS VERY MUCH LIKE A VIDEO FOR TRUE SKATE FREAKS. WHAT SORT OF REACTION HAVE YOU HEARD FROM PEOPLE WHO DON’T SKATE?

I think a lot of people like the score and think the video is more calculated than it is. And a lot of people were kind of like, “Are you really getting that angry? Is there that much emotion in what you do?” I think people can appreciate the idea of trying to do something, but not doing it good enough and wanting it to be better. Chasing this kind of perfection.

That was of some interest for viewers outside of skating, but a lot of skaters connected to it too because you don’t have to be a really good skater to relate to the frustration of wanting to do your own trick well, which is a cooler point of view that I didn’t realize until after it came out. People would come up to me or leave YouTube comments like, “Oh, this is a video about skating.” It’s not just purely this guy doing these really difficult tricks — it’s a skate video about making skate videos.

SWITCHING GEARS A BIT HERE. DO YOU SEE SKATING AND FASHION AS CONNECTED? DO YOU THINK SKATING AFFECTS YOUR FASHION/STYLE, OR VICE VERSA?

Well, skating definitely affects my personal fashion because it destroys clothes, so I have to choose the clothes that I’m willing to destroy. I like clothes and I’m into fashion, but I don’t read into it too much. I feel like people get really defensive about skateboarding being this driving force of culture, and fashion stealing from skateboarding, which… I don’t know. I don’t care if it’s true or not. It doesn’t matter to me. I feel like I take from fashion more than fashion takes from me [laughs]. I don’t look at skaters for fashion inspiration.

IT’S AN AGE-OLD STEREOTYPE OF SKATERS THAT WE’RE ALL OBSESSED WITH PANTS. IS THAT TRUE FOR YOU, TOO?

Yeah, it’s definitely true. There’s for sure an obsession with pants, but I think that’s just because of movement. Skateboarding relies so heavily on your legs, so feeling uncomfortable in pants is what causes crises. I used to stress on it more. I feel like now I’ve dialed it in.

WHEN DID YOU START GETTING INTO FASHION? WHAT WAS THE ENTRY POINT FOR YOU?

I think it was just growing up in Toronto and being in a city that was pretty small, where a lot of the subcultures melded together. I had friends who skated, but that wasn’t all they were trying to do. They were interested in art, photography, painting, architecture — so I think it was just being friends with people who had so many other interests and working in fields outside of skateboarding.

YOU HAD YOUR OWN CLOTHING BRAND FOR A BIT THERE TOO. HOW DID FACES OF ANOTHER COME ABOUT?

My friend Evan Hay and I were collecting similar clothes from a certain era of designers and both really liked Yohji Yamamoto. We just wanted to try making our own clothes, since we were already buying and altering clothing anyway. It was fun to experiment, learn, and get a little bit further into that industry with sourcing fabric and manufacturers, building relationships with the people we worked with. I think we were naively interested in making clothes specifically for us. Evan and I designed and sourced everything together. We made some early drawings on Illustrator that were really bad and worked with friends who were way more talented and could help us bring the ideas to life.

DO YOU HAVE PLANS FOR THE BRAND GOING FORWARD?

I don’t know. We made some stuff recently and then didn’t really feel right about doing another public release. We sold a lot of it to friends by word of mouth. But I think we’ve kind of taken a step back now. If I want to make something now, I think I’m just gonna make it for myself.