How X Games Found Its Perfect Match in New Orleans
How X Games Found Its Perfect Match in New Orleans
The MoonPay X Games New Orleans event wrapped on Sunday, July 28th at the Caesars Superdome. While this event certainly showcased many big names such as Nyjah Huston, a 15 time gold medalist by the way, Ryan Williams, Brady Baker, Sky Brown, etc., the real calling for me was the experience of going back to a part of myself that I thought had died long ago.
This event embodied the spirit of New Orleans and its deep, unyielding obsession with street and soul. We all see the bike groups riding through (1up bikes has become a movement of its own), the skate parks popping up around town, and a community wide passion for such a gritty art.
While the crowd’s energy ebbed and flowed, it did so in a beautifully slow paced way that kept the vibes completely untouched. There was no overwhelming, frantic rush. Instead, the stadium shared the same laid back, hyper focused tempo as the athletes themselves. The beauty of this event is that you can come and go as you please, experiencing whatever raw essence you came to find at your own speed.
The atmosphere inside the dome felt less like a high stakes corporate tournament and more like a massive, elevated art exhibition. There was a unique rhythm to it, the low hum of anticipation, the sharp clack of a skateboard landing clean, the sudden roar of a crowd that knew exactly how difficult a trick was, and then that quick return of the easygoing, respectful calm. It was a space where subculture wasn’t being turned into a commodity, it was just being lived.
As I walked through and experienced this event, from the amateurs on the vert pipe outside of the dome, the vendors and classic cars in champions square, and walking through the floor of the dome itself, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia I didn’t see coming. My mind was taken back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the hours I spent glued to an old box television playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, watching the X Games from years ago (I’ll never forget the first time I thought I watched someone die on Live TV during the big air event), and while not directly connected, who could forget Disney’s
Brink!. Back then, this culture felt like a beautiful, isolated secret kept by “outsiders”. Seeing it now, scaled up to the size of the Caesars Superdome, embraced by a city as soulful as New Orleans, yet still holding onto its gritty authenticity, was nothing short of beauty. This thing has grown far beyond anything I could have imagined as a child, proving that the counter culture we loved didn’t go anywhere, even if my hairline has.
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