If you’ve ever ordered a fingerboard obstacle from Blackriver, it’s likely you’ve received the Pornstorm sticker. Perhaps you’ve seen the signature Pornstorm plaza. You may have seen the old Pornstorm graphic Berlinwood Fingerboard from the 2010s.
Most likely you’ve wondered what is Pornstorm?
Check out the Pornstorm VHS here: • PORNSTORM
Well today, I’ll share a little about the history of Pornstorm. Back in the early days of fingerboarding, fingerboard crews were relatively common. In fact, the earliest “companies” in the online scene didn’t really sell products, rather, it was almost an excuse for fingerboarders to create their own crew.
Over in the German fingerboard scene, contests were happening right and left. Fingerboarding was spreading like wildfire, and people were meeting a ton in person. During this time, some examples famous fingerboard crews include Kassel Krew (Tobias Phieler), FingerStylez (Nic Herzog), FINGASPEAK (Elias) and ASI Berlin (TKY, Ramon, Harald Schon among others).
Well, perhaps none was more famous than Pornstorm. It was also one of the earliest. Founded by Matth ias Junker in 1999, and featured Rene Rennett, Lukas Weyers, and Germany’s 2003 Fingerboard Tour Champion Chris Heck, they had a massive impact on fingerboarding that carries on until today. Pornstorm was not limited to just fingerboarding. It extended beyond, and featured skateboarders, graphic artists, skateboard photographers, and even hiphop/rap.
When visiting the main German fingerboard hubs such as Fingerskating.de, skateboarding.ch, Fingerboard.de and fingerboarden.de, the professionally filmed footage from the Pornstorm crew always stood out. While the rest of us in the online fingerboard scene were using our parents camcorders or webcams with extremely poor quality, the Pornstorm crew was uploading footy filmed on a VX2000 with deathlens and used proper lighting. Additionally, they were using advanced codecs (divx) to compress the files without losing much quality. This meant that their footy was miles ahead of the quality scene typically online.
Back in 2003, the crew released a legendary fingerboard video on VHS under Matthias’ Junkfood Productions. You can watch the entire video on FingerboardTV’s KZfaq channel. I’ve posted the links in the description. It is truly a treat to watch! The skill of the fingerboarding was ahead of it’s time, but so was the filming.
There’s a clip where Matthis Junker does a kickflip b/s tail bigspin out on this curved ledge. The trick was so clean, and the filming of that trick astounding. It’s a clip that has stuck out to me since I first saw it nearly 20 years ago.
This video revolutionized the fingerboard scene. Pornstorm inspired fingerboarders all over the globe to improve the filming of fingerboarding, both in a technical sense and by making fingerboarding look fun (be sure to checkout both the outro and the Fast Fingers 6 Bonus)!
When I’m scrolling through Instagram I see a ton of fingerboarders who are looking to get the retro feel of the early 2000’s. IF you are a fingerboarder who wants to see the real aesthetic, then there’s no better video to watch than a Pornstorm video.
During this time, Pornstorm along with Blackriver and Berlinwood were the face of pro fingerboarding.
Shortly after the video was released, Matthias Junker passed away in an automobile accident.
Matthias Junker made a massive impact on those around him. Not just within our fingerboard community, but far beyond. Almost 20 years after his passing, there’s still tributes being posted onto KZfaq ranging from from skateboarding tributes to rock music video tributes.