Top 10 Skate Videos of the 2000s — The Ranking That Will Spark Debate

Fully Flared - 2007. Menikmati - 2000. DC Video - 2003. If you grew up with a VHS tape collecting dust in your room and a spot fifteen minutes away by bike, these aren't just video titles — they're an emotional timeline. And this ranking isn't going to please everyone. That's the whole point.

The "best skate videos of the 2000s" is exactly the kind of topic that gets guys who haven't spoken in five years locked into a heated, constructive argument. The kind of conversation where you look up and realise it's 11pm and you haven't eaten since noon. We built the list from the bottom up. We stand by every choice. The N°1 sits at the very end, and it's going to wind a few people up — we also give the answer for anyone who refuses our sidestep. And if you disagree — perfect.

Top 10 — bottom to top, because suspense needs to be earned

N°10 — Menikmati - 2000 (éS)

Could have been higher. Easily. Arto Saari rolls into this film like physics is optional — his handrails are statements, not tricks. Eric Koston lands a nollie heelflip switch crook on a spot that half the skaters of that era wouldn't have even looked at. All of this in 2000, when digital barely existed in skate cameras.

It lands at N°10 because everything above it is inhuman. Not because it's weak. Watch Arto Saari's part all the way through, then come back to me.

N°9 — The DC Video - 2003

DC Video - 2003 is the budget overflowing and flooding everything in sight. Every part is hyper-produced, the spots are enormous, the tricks match the resources. Rob Dyrdek skates Pulaski Park like it's his backyard. Danny Way jumps off a helicopter onto a ramp. Literally. Off a helicopter.

What keeps it at N°9 instead of the top 5: sometimes too much budget kills the raw energy. Watch a DC Video clip right after an Emerica clip and you feel it — the difference between a video made with money and a video made with urgency. Both have their place. But we rank the second one higher.

Too much budget sometimes kills the raw energy. The best skate videos have an urgency that money can't buy. — What DC Video taught us despite itself

N°8 — Photosynthesis - 2000 (Alien Workshop)

Alien Workshop always had something off-centre about them. Photosynthesis - 2000 confirms it was deliberate, not accidental. The soundtrack is strange, the editing is organic at a time when everyone wanted punch cuts, and the skaters — Josh Kalis, Jason Dill, Anthony Van Engelen — skate like the camera doesn't exist.

Josh Kalis' Love Park part is the moment Philadelphia becomes a world capital of skateboarding. A granite plaza, a crew, and a way of rolling nobody has copied without it showing. Rodney Mullen's lab technique comes from another planet; here, everything happens on the ground, in the city, with no safety net.

N°7 — Sorry - 2002 (Flip)

British skate didn't exist in the global conversation before Sorry - 2002. Geoff Rowley already had a name — but Arto Saari riding for Flip, Tom Penny reappearing on the radar, and Bastien Salabanzi arriving like a collective slap in the face... this video shifted the geographic balance of skate culture.

Rowley's part remains one of the most intense things ever filmed. Not "intense" as in aggressive — intense as in: this guy is willing to destroy his knees for the shot. That kind of energy can't be manufactured. It can only be captured.

N°6 — Emerica "This is Skateboarding" - 2003

The title is a provocation. "This is Skateboarding" — meaning: not the rest of it. Andrew Reynolds, Heath Kirchart, and the full Emerica team. City ledges, rails that make you nervous, and a production tone that makes clear the budget isn't the point. The point is the terrain and what you do with it.

Heath Kirchart skates with a cold precision that has never been reproduced since. No "feel-good" style, no smile after the landing. He lands the trick and walks away. That might be the most honest definition of pure street skating there is.

N°5 — Mind Field - 2009 (Alien Workshop)

Technically outside the decade, yes. Don't care — Mind Field - 2009 belongs culturally to the 2000s. It's the culmination of everything Alien Workshop had been building since Photosynthesis. Dylan Rieder skates through this film like the ground is optional. Anthony Van Engelen brings the same raw energy he had in 2000, nine years later, with zero calculation. And the soundtrack — The Smiths, Bauhaus, Neurosis — proves a skate video can be a work of composition as much as a collection of tricks.

N°4 — Yeah Right! - 2003 (Girl)

Spike Jonze behind the camera, a Girl team at the top of their game — Eric Koston, Mike Carroll, Guy Mariano — and enough budget to try things no skate video had attempted before. The invisible boards sequence. The fake documentary. Editing that actually breathes.

Yeah Right - 2003 is the video that proved the skate video format could be a genuine cinematic object without betraying street skating. And Guy Mariano's part — everyone knew he'd come back from a long way down — is maybe the most emotionally loaded comeback part in skate history.

Yeah Right proved a skate video could be cinema. Without sacrificing a single second of real street skating. — What Spike Jonze understood before everyone else

N°3 — Baker 2G - 2000 (Baker)

Baker 2G - 2000 had no budget. The camera was handheld in positions that made no sense. The spots were whatever the guys found while rolling around. And that — exactly that — is what earns it this spot.

Andrew Reynolds skates with a determination that looks like anger. Elissa Steamer is there, in this list of guys hitting rails, and she belongs entirely, effortlessly, without anyone needing to point it out. Jim Greco is filmed like the camera could barely keep up — because it could barely keep up. This video has no cinematic intro. It starts, it skates, it ends. That's it.

N°2 — Fully Flared - 2007 (Lakai)

Ty Evans behind the camera, Mike Carroll and Eric Koston leading the roster, and a Marc Johnson delivering the performance of his career. Fully Flared - 2007 is probably the most technically ambitious skate video ever made at that point. The explosions intro stuck in people's heads — even people who thought it was too much watched it twice.

Marc Johnson's part is a lesson in pure street skating: switches, nollie lines, ledge work in real conditions. No kicker hidden off-camera, no fake setup. Real spots, real tricks, and a precision that makes you want to put your board down out of respect. And above all: Guy Mariano. His part took both "Best Street" and "Best Video Part" at the 2007 Transworld Awards — the comeback of a guy skateboarding had written off, filmed without a single second of pathos.

N°1 — Mouse - 1996 (Girl): yes, a 1996 video on top of a 2000s list

No. N°1 is Mouse - 1996 (Girl). And we stand by it.

Mouse - 1996 isn't technically a 2000s video. But it's the video without which none of this list exists. Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Gino Iannucci, Keenan Milton — on real spots, in real cities, with a camera that framed tricks like conversations, not performances. No formatted rap soundtrack, no explosions, no editing that shouts.

Mouse - 1996 is the one people rewound the most. Not because of the craziest tricks — because of the way it felt. And if a 1996 video still holds up as an absolute reference in a 2000s ranking, it's because it set a standard nobody has cleared since.

You'll say it's off-topic. I'd say it's exactly the topic: every video on this list was shot with the same tool, in the same spirit, by guys who had all watched Mouse - 1996 before they ever picked up a camera.

And if you refuse the sidestep — fair enough, it's the healthy reaction — here's the straight answer, no wriggling: the strictly-2000s N°1 is Fully Flared - 2007. Four years of filming, Guy Mariano's part double-awarded at the 2007 Transworld Awards, and an intro even the people who hate glossy editing watched twice. No other video of the decade brought that level of skating, production and emotional weight together at once.

Which video should have been N°1 — and why are we wrong to put Mouse over Fully Flared? Tell us in the comments ↓