Congratulations and welcome to 2013. We imagine that there are a few of you who aren’t firing on all your cylinders yet today, so we will ease you into a new year of motorcycle news with a nice little video, which was made by the folks at Skateboarder Magazine. No, your hangover is not making you see things, we are in fact talking about skateboarding on a motorcycle site.

You see, there is an interesting intersection between the skateboarding and motorcycle subcultures — something about the desire to go one’s own way, to engage in some activity of questionable safety, and to enjoy life in the present, much to the chagrin of everyone else. The crossover may no be as obvious in practice, but it’s there.

For instance, when Harley-Davidson finally figured out that it needed to start appealing to consumers under the age of 40, the first demographic it targeted (with some success) was the skateboarding crowd. Take a look at some of the earlier Harley-Davidson Forty-Eight ads, and see if you can’t pick up on the LBC living, Airwalk wearing, grinder vibe that’s going on there.

So as we already said, for your viewing pleasure today we have a nicely done video by the folks at Skateboarder Magazine, which covers their motley crew riding and skating through Vietnam. The whole piece is a great example of what it is like to travel in Southeast Asia, and puts a lot in perspective as to just how massive the market is there. The traffic is a bit insane as well, especially for these novice riders.

We’ve gotten more than a few emails from readers between the ages of 18-30 saying they’ve been approached at motorcycling events by market research company representatives working for Harley-Davidson. In conjunction with beefing up its Sportster line-up (the goto motorcycle at Harley-Davidson for catering to Gen-Y/X riders) with more youth-oriented motorcycles, Harley-Davidson is clearly trying to latch onto a new generation of rider.

Looking for the next generation of rebels, Harley’s focus lately has been on the skateboarding inclined, hoping perhaps that the demographic’s lifestyle of “skateboarding is not a crime” is a value that transfers over easily to two-wheeled transportation. Of course this marketing effort wouldn’t be complete without a new ad campaign, and Harley is clearly making ads for the customer it wants, not the customer it has.

Giving credit where credit is due, this is one of the better ads to come out of the Milwaukee brand. Check the video out after the jump, and note how many times you see a woman behind the handlebars.