A matter of faith

If you look hard enough, it will appear. What you once saw as, quite literally, a barrier becomes potential. No longer limiting, possibilities unfold. If you happen to live in the interior of British Columbia, whose highways serpentine through a jagged, mountainous topography like asphalt dental floss, that potential can be found on the slender shoulders of those roads and marking the perimeter of rest stops and parking lots. Hip or crotch height, these formed concrete walls are designed as forceful delineations of where you can and cannot go. Here, they keep you from plummeting into a forested abyss. 

However, if you look hard enough, and if you know what to look for, these barriers are more than traffic control. For a pair of young skateboarders from Kelowna in the early ‘80s, they came to resemble the far-away shallow ends of Californian swimming pools. With a splash of extra ‘crete at their base, they’d become brutalist quarterpipes. And if you let your vision blur into a sort of delirium, you might see something else entirely.

If it’s all a gag, they’ve been running the bit for a long time. Over two decades, in fact. The Barrier Kult, or BA. KU., which officially formed in Vancouver, BC, in 2002, is, in its most basal description, a group of anonymous balaclava-wearing, black metal aesthetes who exclusively ride their skateboards on the common concrete barrier. That, however, is inadequate.

Over email, Depth Leviathan Dweller, who is a Barrier Kult co-founder alongside Deer Man of Dark Woods and Vlad Mountain Impaler, explained further (and in all caps) that to their group, the barrier is “A VIRTUAL ALTAR TO TIGHT TRANSITION ‘SKATEBOARDING.’ THE VIOLENCE OF THE TIGHT TRANSITION, DECK NOSE STABBING INTO THE BASE, THE TRUCKS SLITTING THE THROAT OF THE BARRIER. THE BARRIER BECOMES A REPRESENTATIVE ALTAR THAT INFLICTS THE SHOCK VIOLENCE OF COMING DOWN FROM A 50-50 STALL.”

Considering their use of skateboarding as a "violent" ritual act, you could also describe the Barrier Kult as a quasi-satirical religious sect, pseudo-political performance art, or a bunch of friends dressing up and having fun. Whatever it is, whatever they’re doing, it stands out, especially in the world of skateboarding, where, beyond the physical act of riding a skateboard, it’s the individual who’s celebrated. For the professional skateboarder, developing a personal brand is paramount. Conversely, in the Barrier Kult, anonymity is required, hence the masks. 

A Kultist must also shed their given name and take on a new “title,” one of BA. KU.’s creepy-run-on-sentence nom-de-plumes. Current active and titled members include the aforementioned Depth Leviathan Dweller, Deer Man of Dark Woods, and Vlad Mountain Impaler, as well as Muskellunge of Dark Island, Statue of The Black Crow, Gauzed Invisible Terror Reign, Vertical Cliffs of Eastern Shores, Luther Moss-Covered Witchmaker Candlemas, and Permafrost Corpse Eating Hraesvelgr.

This dark pageantry would seem to be an impediment for the career-minded. How does one expect to receive a signature model skateboard or shoe without a face or legal name to screenprint or stitch? Well, they shouldn’t. Depth Leviathan Dweller — who it should be noted “DIRECT[S] ALL WRITINGS, DESIGN, PRODUCT, MEMBER TITLES, MANDATES, [and] CODES” for the Barrier Kult — says that to join BA. KU. one must first “GIVE UP ON YOUR SKATEBOARDING CAREER.” 

That appears to be a bit of marketing bluster since most Barrier Kult members are current or former professional or amateur skateboarders. Many are names you’d recognize. If you are studied in the Canadian skateboarding scene you likely know who they are — it’s tough to hide a silhouette. They’re also not secrets. But in the context of the Kult, they don't show face.

In an episode of the 2018 skateboarding-centric documentary series Post Radical [which, full disclosure, I worked on], Deer Man of Dark Woods explained that BA. KU. members’ anonymity, or “anti-notoriety,” is a rebuke of our culture’s obsession with and worship of celebrity, professional skateboarders included. These are false idols placed on constructed pedestals for the express purpose of marketing. Their hollowness pulls focus from skateboarding’s “purity.” Depending on your angle, that belief could be interpreted as either gatekeeping or anti-capitalist. If we choose the latter, it’s hard not to see theirs as an almost noble, egalitarian cause. In that same episode, Deer Man and Depth Leviathan Dweller also call for the destruction of the modern skateboarding industry and actively cheer it on.

In the years since, according to Depth Leviathan Dweller, that desire is close to reality.

“THE CULTS OF SKATEBOARD PERSONALITIES ARE LOST IN THE SATURATED WORLD OF FAST FASHION / SKATEBOARDS. THEREFORE, IT USED TO MATTER MORE TO US, BUT ONLY .001% OF SKATEBOARDERS ARE MAKING MONEY ANYMORE, SO THE VICIOUS CIRCLE IS ALMOST COMPLETE.”

Things are indeed different now. The sallow budgets that skateboarding companies struggle to set aside for team riders have only become more sickly. Every other month, there’s news of a major shoe company culling riders or a board brand calling it a day. It’s a cruel irony that the industry struggles while skateboarding is as popular as it has ever been. It’s an Olympic sport, professional skateboarders walk runways at major fashion shows, HBO airs series around the life and times of skateboarding youth. Yet, no one is safe from inflation, shrinking margins, increased overhead, and ever-skyrocketing rent. 

“Upward mobility” and a “career in skateboarding” have likely never been seen together in the same sentence. The cohort of financially stable professional skateboarders is small and exists mainly in another time, somewhere in the halcyon days before the 2008 financial crisis. That’s truer now as what a skateboarding career looks like continually mutates in the digital age, where a skater’s professional responsibilities, more often than not, revolve around a robust online presence. On suites of social platforms, gaining followers, going viral, and teasing out trends is the game. Despite this, we’ve yet to see posting, virality, or a trend wave elevate a skateboarder beyond temporary social media prominence into economic security. It’s unlikely that the extra pockets on Stephen Lawyer’s colourful cargo pants are filled with cash.

Most professional skateboarders require jobs, or full-on careers, outside their chosen vocation. Quasi Skateboards pro Tyler Bledsoe is a tattoo artist. Ethan Loy delivers packages for Amazon. Aidan Campbell became the team manager for Etnies Footwear, a team he was actively a part of, to make ends meet. Baker Skateboards PRO and the son of skateboarding’s greatest success, Riley Hawk, runs a coffee shop. Every now and then, the SLAP Messageboards will light up with rumours of so-and-so PRO being a poster’s Uber driver. 

Paul Rodriguez and Mikey Taylor, names from the last generation of serious money-generating professionals, lamented this reality on a far-too-long podcast titled “Pro Skaters Aren’t Making Money.” Rodriguez is one of the most affluent PROs of his time and Taylor has transitioned from a career in skateboarding to an insufferable and heartless capitalist boil on the inner asscheek of society. 

That leads one to wonder: if a “professional skateboarder” can’t make a living skateboarding, are they a professional? Is a name on a board enough? Are most PROs actually AMs? Notable hobbyists? Whatever the case, the Barrier Kult foresaw this — awaited it. While this could be seen as the slow collapse of an industry, BA. KU. has called it the killing of the ego. The separation of self from skating, the skating being all that remains.

Conceptually, the loss of ego is found in various strands of belief, from mysticism to Jungian psychology to whatever else lies further down the “Ego Death” Wikipedia page. It’s a fascinating line that the Barrier Kult straddles. Being faceless eschews attention for the individual under the mask, but isn’t that moniker just a transference of identity, a new place for the attention to absorb?

South African country music star Orville Peck, the stage name of Daniel Pitout — a skateboarder who lived for a time in BA. KU.’s home of Vancouver — first rose to fame as a mystery. The musician in the mask. A persona with some catchy tunes. It was a gimmick that undeniably helped him stand out from the fray. That attention was desired and would land him in the absolute throes of celebrity, cavorting with Beyoncés and Kardashians while wearing custom Dior masks. For a while, his anonymous self, separate from himself, was the celebrity. Eventually, the wider public pieced it together, but in those early days of his ascension, the mask was what drew people in — the opposite intent of his former, also masked, neighbours.

Sort of. Haven’t Kultists gained a level of celebrity? Deer Man of Dark Woods, the most public-facing of the group, has had something like a shadow career as a professional skateboarder, hitting all of the major hallmarks — multiple video parts, pro model boards, shoes, a character in a video game (Depth Leviathan Dweller would refer to DMODW’s appearance in EA Skate 3 as a “MASS PLAGUE SPREADING” event) — but in protest or jest, whatever their intent may be.  

Their influence, or “plague spreading,” has been effective. You can find Kultists across Canada and the United States, along with a smattering of untitled members and tribute BA. KU. groups in Spain, Hungary, Italy, and Germany. I spent my high school career in the interior of British Columbia. Castlegar is a community with few viable skate spots, especially those that could be considered “transition.” Those concrete barriers, similar or the same as ones the Barrier Kult started carving in the ‘80s around Kelowna, some 300 kilometres away, were the closest we had. 

I was keenly aware of BA. KU. at the time, their efforts had inspired me to seek out gravelly rest stops and lookouts on the outskirts of town, where barriers kept inept and inebriated drivers from rolling into ravines. I spent a good chunk of my youth doing what Depth Leviathan Dweller has described as “SCRAPING, STABBING,” and “SLITTING.” In their vision, my board is a knife, its implementation part of a violent ritual, a form of sacrifice. To whom or for what is not entirely clear.

While those practices and much of the language the Kult uses would appear to be rooted in or riffs on organized religion, in Post Radical, Depth Leviathan Dweller describes the Kult’s practices as more of a “code.” However, in his book Skateboarding and Religion, sociologist and skateboarder Paul O’Connor argues that all of the scraping, stabbing, and slitting is, in fact, religious in nature. 

O’Connor looks to the work of Carole Cusack, a historian of religion who’s “explored a variety of iterations of invented religions” that have “typically emerged from popular culture, been influenced by films, and found in literature.” That description could accurately apply to BA. KU., whose rituals and media, including their videos Horde, Horde 2, and, it’s safe to assume, the upcoming Horde 3, are littered with references to occult iconography, films, books, and so on. And like the Barrier Kult's lust for the downfall of the skateboarding industry, a thing it is tangentially a part of, Cusack describes the acts of similar movements as "exercises of the imagination that have developed in a creative (though sometimes oppositional) partnership with the influential popular cultural narratives.”

O’Connor compares BA. KU.’s efforts to those of “invented religions” like “Discordianism, Jediism, Matrixism, and The Church of the Flying Spaghetti [Monster]” who are “united in presenting a critique of religion conforming to the fundamental tenets of a host of academic definitions of religion. By being reflexively self-aware of their own fictitious nature, these movements challenge us to consider what is really important about religion.”

Using a “scaled-down version of Cusack's invented religion,” O’Connor writes that the Barrier Kult and similar groups are “both parodying religion and fostering a space of community and spirituality in invoking religious language and symbolism.” He also argues that these are a “part of a negotiation of rights and recognition. As skateboarding has become a legitimised sport, a fashion, and a referent in popular culture, it has also fragmented. The various cultural worlds of skateboarding all serve to disrupt not just the practices and organisation of skateboarding, but also the identities of its veterans. Thus, DIY skateboard religion can also be seen as a way to preserve and sanctify parts of the culture held to be meaningful to some individuals.” 

That has always been one of BA. KU.’s driving narratives: the rejection of the commercialization of skateboarding and the idol worship that has defined its media and marketing from its inception, which they see as what will ultimately — and perhaps already has — led to its demise. Depth Leviathan Dweller would tell O’Connor “that skateboarding is at an 'apocalyptical moment' where 'brand hype' and 'pro worship' has become destructive. The goal of BA. KU. is to strip ‘skateboarding back to its purity' in pursuing physical manoeuvres that invoke the essence of the sport.” In an interesting, almost paradoxical observation given the Satanic overtones of the BA. KU.'s media output, O’Connor notes that “this mirrors the principles of some Christian skateboarders who skate not for their own triumphs but for the glory of Christ.”

It fits. What is this extreme dedication to the barrier if not a chastened interpretation of skateboarding? The Barrier Kult has put meaning in limitation. This, to them, is “purity.” It’s why, in our conversation, Depth Leviathan Dweller expressed admiration for DGK, the skateboard company helmed by street skateboarding icon Stevie Williams. The skateboarders who represent DGK, on the whole, haven’t strayed from a strict regiment of technical ledge and manual skateboarding. The company and its riders haven’t bent to trends or even more lasting shifts in popular skateboarding’s focus. It’s a lane they’ve occupied and haven’t strayed from since the company’s founding in 2002, around the same time the Barrier Kult was formed.

For both groups to stay committed to their founding visions for over two decades is admirable, especially for BA. KU., who, while outwardly rejecting notoriety of any sort, clearly wants people to watch them skate. That is the vector for spreading their plague — a message and mission seeking the breakdown of modern skateboarding, or at least the elimination of its hero worship. However, this could also be seen as contradictory given that Kultists themselves are “worshipped.” When I interviewed Depth Leviathan Dweller, it was for Thrasher, the first time the Barrier Kult had been featured in the magazine. The response online to their inclusion was, in the aggregate, about time.

PD, the owner of Skull Skates and a longtime supporter and sponsor of BA. KU., was quoted in a Skull Skates Instagram post as saying the Kult appearing in Thrasher was like “RUSH finally getting in Rolling Stone.” In a sense, that would position BA. KU. as idols, the concept they don’t just want to deconstruct but remove from skateboarding entirely. Can they be both hero and harbinger? 

Another question looming over all of this: does any of it matter? Are these codes and mandates and rituals any more than the complicated backstory a group of friends use as their reason to dress up and have fun?

“BA. KU….” is “engaged in serious parody, which clearly has an ideological and political edge.” O’Connor writes in Skateboarding and Religion. “The satirical power of invented religions should not be dismissed as it is instructive not only on the passions of popular culture but also on the boundaries of our spiritual lives.”

For the Barrier Kult to last as long as it has, to spread as far as they’ve gone, and achieve all that they have means something. For the people under the masks and those who watch them. Whether it’s getting a kick out of the gimmick or being inspired to find yourself a ritual barrier, BA. KU. has established itself in the culture and moved many to action. That requires being convinced what is on offer is worth the time and that giving yourself to it will provide back in service of something more — or, in other words, faith.