Destination Orcas, Erik Hatch, 2011, USA.

Reviewed by John Starr. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Directed by Erik Hatch, Destination Orcas is a classic skateboard documentary, full of cheap beer smooth pavement and good skating. The film fallows four local skaters from Santa Barbara up the west coast to Orcas, WA, capturing the good times and some great skate spots, along the way.

The four, featured skaters in the film are Mike Pugh, Pablo Favela, Tony Tieu and the man behind the camera, Erik Hatch. Mike Pugh makes his living in the bowl and there was no shortage of them on the trip. Every spot they stopped at had a bowl or quarter pipe for mike to tear up.  Out side the bowl you can look forward to seeing Mike sporting an array of costumes, from dressing like a pirate, to a baggy jean wearing, westsider, with a beer in one hand and some KFC in the other. Pablo Favela can flat out skate and holds it down in the film, from a clean back side flip over a rough gap, to start the trip off, to murdering the Corvallis Park. Tony Tieu has been in the game for a while and it is great to see the guy still tearing it up, in this film. Erick Hatch does most of the filming but when he’s not behind the camera he is carving up the parks with the other guys.

The movie is a great skate documentary that captures the fun of piling in a van with some good friends and just taking off. The down time on the trip was just as entertaining as the skating and gave a little back round into the people and places the guys visited, from checking out Jimi Hendrix grave in Renton, WA, chilling on a horse farm in Corvallis to driving through a Redwood forest in Northern Cali. This was a great film and it really personifies what skateboarding is all about.