Midsummer Video Roundup: And Now

“Fuckin, I don’t know”

Okay, can I just tell you my favorite thing about this new Transworld video, even more so than Kenny Hoyle’s opening kickflip, or Richie Jackson’s paisley pirate outfits, or Nick Trapasso: no fucking voiceovers. This closely approximates my personal reaction, except on a couch. I was wearing basically the same amount of body armor.

Pretty much every time a TWS video has come out in the last few years I’m inclined to think “hmm, this is the best TWS video in years” which may or may not actually be the case after a few weeks of viewing. But this time, guys… this time for sure (no Bullwinkle) I think “And Now” really is the best TWS vids in quite some time. There’s been some hoopla in the magazine about how this is like the new “In Bloom,” which I can see, sort of. But that begs the question: who’s gonna plump up and fizzle out Alex Gall style? My money’s on Sean Malto personally. Mostly because he seems like such a volatile, angry drunk.

Transworld videos at this point are basically an institution, like Madonna for instance, and if you took the 20 or so videos they’ve put out over the last 15 years (TWS that is) you’d have a fairly accurate roadmap of trick trends, skateboard fashion, and evolving film/edit techniques that generally represent the best in skate videos at any particular point. A lot of the credit goes to Ty Evans, who presided over the TWS golden age of “Feedback”/”The Reason”/”Modus Operandi,” but the revolving cast of filmer/editors that has passed through those hallowed AOL/Time Warner doors since has taken up his blueprint and soldiered on, with mostly positive results. Filming innovations and high production value aside though, there’s Ty tropes that maintained long past their expiration date, like the intolerable voiceovers (some sounded like they were reading off a fucking teleprompter) and the vaguely hilarious inanity of the titles.

So it’s cool that “And Now,” humorously inane title aside, tones down the starry-eyed “wow, skating, man” aspect and keeps things moving. No overblown intro montage (not too overblown anyhow), no goddamn voiceovers, no skits unless you count Richie Jackson’s whole part. Reckless dumbass David Gravette comes out blasting with his charbroiled rail moves and winds things up with a trick that’s sure to get some novices sacked before the snow flies. Matt Miller I was really looking forward to and he came through with a solid part of fairly straightforward skating, fakie flip body varial noseblunt aside. (That’s what it was right? I had to rewind many times.) But generally he had a minimum of the polejam/wallie/manual combos that TWS videos have showcased heavily the last couple years.

That of course is handled with psychedelic aplomb by Richie Jackson, dark hippie avenger from Oz, who twirls and skids and somehow powerslides down stairs. Some of the tricks are pretty inspired and I was relieved to see him work in some more standard-issue shit, like the b/s 5-0 revert and the switch 360 flip, because sometimes I get the sinking feeling that these guys known for doing nutty/dork/novelty tricks all day long may not be able to actually skate any other way.

Kenny Hoyle is just great. The angle on that switch bigspin heelflip he does over the hump is so good. A prime example of a skater who on paper might not sound that sound exciting but the way he lands tricks does it all. I love watching this kid skate. Nick Trapasso is sort of the same (see the way he rides away from the double-set switch frontside heelflip) but freakishly talented enough to inspire head-scratching and rewinding. There’s some stuff I’m not into at all, like the nollie tuck-knee, but it’s hard to complain much. It’s like he can do anything. Both the song choice and the electric blue socks are kind of untouchable.

Then there’s Sean Malto, who seems to be the living, hardflipping nightmare of every skatepark old guy who narrows his eyes and mutters “damn kids” as some 9th-grader glides down the rail. Switch kickflip frontside k-grinds, cab feebles, et cetera. It goes on for some time. I can imagine people complaining that the marquee tricks have already been in ads, but for me, the full gnarliness of those tricks didn’t quite translate through the 2-D photo format, although that could just be my brain problem at work again. Malto, though: So much command and confidence, and he’s so young. At least he looks young. Trainwreck used to look young too. If my calculations above are correct Malto will soon be sleeved up and bloated from alcohol misuse, so as long as the legions of skatepark old guys can keep their guts in check til then, the last laugh may yet be theirs for the laughing.

In summary, best TWS video in years. I think. No voiceovers!

Two if by sea

Let the boys be boys

Okay, a quick video link update, since I have a bunch more videos I could write about but apparently I have yet to figure out how to make a video post that isn’t 1000 words long.

Slam City lookbook: the new catalog from London’s seminal skateshop, which remains difficult for jeg-lag addled foreigners to locate, even in this age of a stronger British pound. The catalog itself is alright, my favorite part being the two solid pages of nearly identical “Slam City Skates” t-shirts, but the money melon is on the second-to-last page where, if you wait out a couple minutes of high-def slo mo, you’re treated to a lengthy Craig Mack-powered whirlwind that is a who’s who of the 2008 UK skate scene. Chewy Cannon, yes.

Ohhh… on the UK tip, here’s something else: an all-too-brief line from none other than Carl Shipman including one of the more vicious transition moves I’ve seen this summer. I read an interview somewhere recently (48 blocks?) where he didn’t sound too eager to skate for a living again, but wouldn’t it be nice to see him astride a Stereo deck again? By the way both these links I stole off the lovely Tweaker blog.

Next: Twist your moustache and furrow your brow at this Gou Miyagi part from the “Overground Broadcasting” video:

One of the things that I thought kind of detracted from Richie Jackson’s otherwise pretty amazing part in “And Now” was the fact that a lot of those tricks couldn’t have been done without some lengthy set-up time as far as building or otherwise massaging spots to facilitate a powerslide chain-dangle wallride or whatever. (Let me tell you just how excited I am to see kids inevitably waxing up the ground at spots.) Gou Miyagi has a similarly twice-baked view of skateboarding but I like how he uses spots and objects the way they are to perform his bizarre and wonderful maneuvers; case in point, the bike rack. I don’t mind the editing at all either.

Finally, the always-current AWS Filmworks site put up a Dylan Rieder clip today that’s short but almost painfully good. The b/s nosegrind f/s revert took me back to Guy Mariano in Mouse. I basically watched this a dozen times today. As far as I remember the “Mind Field” video was supposed to premiere around, like, right now, but the dudes with the inside poop are supposedly saying it might be more like… early 09. I know, I know. Look at it this way, they’re definitely keeping it skate over there.

A different world

sigh

Now this here is retarded, fucked up and just plain goddamn silly on multiple levels. First off, let’s bear in mind our fedora hierarchy: Dick Tracy, Eddie Valiant, Dune, rail-thin douchebags who also own Chuck Taylors, everybody else. If they’re giving Greg Lutzka, who by all accounts is dumb as a sack of publicly educated doorknobs, a pro model fedora, they may as well give Fred Gall a damn space helmet.

Second, this corporate car-crash of a ménage à trois collabo is pretty presumptuous. I mean would this type of shit fly in GQ? (I ask because I don’t read GQ because when I’ve attempted to purchase an issue myself the gentleman at the newstand just looks at my threadbare garments and shakes his head in a depressed and weary manner.) One would have to assume that Daewon & co. are counting the days til Plan B takes the Lutz off their hands. Also: “frogskin” hat? Somebody get Mr. Burns on the line.

Now, I haven’t seen the board and sunglasses that presumably accompany this hat, but do you really need to? If you saw somebody with the whole kit at the local modular hockey-rink skatepark, it’s probably a safe bet that the person cannot 1. kickflip, 2. ollie, 3. drive (well), and 4. properly manage his/her finances, so keep your eyes peeled and remember those sales pitches for Brooklyn-located bridges, people.

Midsummer Video Roundup: Moving in Traffic

To a deluxe apartment in the sky

A lot of people will talk about the whole rap-rock era and condemn the Limp Bizkit/Korn/Linkin Park movement as a load of horseshit, and you know I’d have to agree. But some of those people will be quick to add “except for the Pharcyde” or “except for Rage Against the Machine,” a couple groups who I guess could be considered the originators of the genre, if you want to call it that. The point is that the creators shouldn’t be blamed for whatever watering-down and bastardization followed, which I guess is fair, but rap-rock can stay dead and buried as far as I’m concerned.

Except maybe for those scary clown guys who named their album “Iowa,” cuz they seemed like they were onto something.

Anyway, the same general concept can apply to this new phase of urban/weird spot/”creative”/cellar door skating we’re in right now, and bearded munchkin Bobby Puleo, who set the stage in La Luz way back in 2002. Even those who’ve had it up to here with the pivot fakie craze will tip their hats to Puleo, being as he’s the one who came up with a lot of these moves.

It makes a certain kind of sense that Puleo ended up with the Traffic/Static set, and his BDP-powered opening part in the new “Moving in Traffic” promo is to me his best skating since La Luz or maybe even the Infamous promo, possibly because it came as a surprise to me that he put aside his internet conspiracy theories and aggressive indifference to skating in general to, you know, make a serious effort. He’s fleet-footed as ever and his style, to invoke probably the most overused word on this blog, is looking smoother than it has in years as he noseblunts and nosegrinds and manuals all over the place. The spots of course are like the Rust Belt’s greatest hits, and Rich Adler’s rapid-fire editing is right on time. If he wants Puleo can go back into hiding for a couple years off this part, it’s seriously that great.

Later on Oyola grinds some steps, Pat Steiner breezes some lines and Damien Smith wipes down an SUV with his black tee. Oh, and Dan Plunkett (I think it’s him) sails a big ollie out to nosestall to pop back in fakie on a bank-ledge, which is wild. Rich Adler rips and chooses good tricks to do but I have a hard time dealing with his midget style, sorry. He does hook up some pretty inspired music choices for the parts though.

The other anchor of the video is Jack Sabback who cranks his backside nollies and low-rides long nosegrinds and always seems to rotate into or out of tricks in the most eye-pleasing direction available. You know? He’s looking like a young Egon Spengler and skids the sickest nollie frontside noseslide pop-over to fakie. This is the part that myself and, I can only assume, billions of others have been awaiting since the Ipath promo a few years ago, and it satisfies through the final fucked-up switch frontside pop-shove it.

On a side note I don’t know why more companies aren’t going the Tim & Henry route in this age of the 24-hour filming cycle. Jamie Thomas was talking about putting out a Zero video every fall that would basically be edited around whoever had the most/best footage at the time, which is an interesting idea. Either way, the Traffic promo comes out to the perfect length for a pre-skate viewing and hopefully more companies try this approach. It seems to be translating into board and softgood sales, since Oyola can now apparently afford to put titles for different skaters’ parts and pay street cops to wear Traffic merchandise.

They had this video up at the Traffic website for a while, but now I can’t find it. The site is however home to quite possibly the gulliest news update in some time, check it out.

Midsummer Video Roundup: Seasons 4

Living proof

Full disclosure: I am relatively poor, possess minimal computer skills and currently am not hooked on either patchouli or crack cocaine. For these reasons and more I’ve never lived in the Bay Area, and like most people, my impressions of the region have been formed more by occasional visits, Rice-A-Roni commercials and the E-40 backcatalog. With that unfortunate ignorance in mind, from an outsider’s perspective, Trevor Prescott’s Seasons videos more than any others capture the “vibe”* of the Bay skateboarding scene in these, the mid-aughts–technical tricks and hill bombs, tall tees and blond dreadlocks, jazz/funk soundtrack, super 8 footage, Pat Washington, etc.

The newish Seasons 4 looks to be the too-soon final entry into Prescott’s self-released oeuvre, and it’s probably as good as any in the series, mixing short parts from knowns and unknowns alike, fading into and out of montages and slices of SF life, be they angry homosexual homeowners or Be-All-You-Can-Be helicopter money shots. In a way it’s about as relaxing as skate videos get, and refreshing like an autumn breeze or some such bullshit.

The skating: new City resident Josh Matthews, with the first part, has the recipe for nosebonking fire hydrants, a precision move if there ever was one. Carlos Young executes spin wizardry. Julian Quevado and his impeccable frontside crooked grinds are welcome in pretty much any video barring those featuring Iga (do these exist yet?). Ben Stewart chomps Clipper with a frontside flip and Hubba with a kickflip backside smith grind and I could have done with more Keith Cole and Errol Langdon footage. Veteran appearances include Danny Fuenzalida, Gershon Mosely and noted headcase Lennie Kirk, who does a switch f/s 5-0 bigspin out up a loading dock ledge… praises be.

I’m not especially into Brian Delatorre but his closing nollie b/s 5-0 was the shit; I’m not into Richard Jefferson period. Jason Wussler makes the choice to mar a line with a supremely ugly nollie 360 shove-it, or maybe a nollie front foot impossible, it was hard to tell as my eyes instinctively contorted to form the gasface. Jackson Curtain contributes some beautiful tricks, like a line with a super-stabbed switch b/s smith grind, and Ryan Nix is in there too somewhere. That guy needs to get back on it.

Later top-billed Silas Baxter Neal shows up for his nth part in the last couple of years. He skids a noseslide whip-around to switch frontside boardslide transfer on that fountain spot, and frontside kickflips a double-set to hill bomb before turning the stage over to Prescott, whose low-impact flip combos close the show. Backside tailslide shove-it to nosemanual; someone great is gone indeed. RIP.

Verdict: Boil the Ocean grants this video four out of five hubba rocks, plus a dime bag. Check for it. Also shoutout to the surviving members of Pantera. Photo above via The Larkey Experiments.

*It’s a surfer word!

Midsummer Video Roundup: What the Fuck is a Bachinsky

At least he wasn’t demoted to “Dave Bach”

Image can be a sticky zone for pro skaters, who do well to tread lightly lest they stand accused of orchestrating trend-conscious makeovers, get labeled a lifestyle pro, or run the risk of generally faking the funk. Dave Bachinsky is hardly a blank slate, seeing as he busted onto the scene two or three years ago as the kid who kickflipped El Toro, and has devoted much of his subsequent coverage to living down that dubious honor.

Nevertheless the new City video (following a campaign that set a new hype cycle standard for a purported promo), from the title on down, devotes itself to establishing the finer points of the Bachinsky persona–namely cigarettes, massive flip tricks, burgers, and the unique love between a young man and a supremely soiled camouflage hat. Seriously every time I watch this video I try to think of some camcorder-era skate video that featured a dude rocking the same damn hat through his entire part, and I came up with nothing… anybody? There’s gotta be at least one guy.

Anyway, with a good eight or nine months of ads and various verbal butcherings of the noble Bachinsky name, the kickflippinest kickflipper’s moment is here, and after his teammates and various Norcal commentators mine chuckles from the nuances of Big Bachinsky’s personal foibles, he skates. And it’s good. Tons of flawless flip maneuvers piloted down gaps, assorted ledge techquery, noseblunts and switch backside tailslides on beefy hubbas, that greasy hat. He carries the PJ Ladd influence in his 360 flips and his beat-to-shit Adidas but personally I think he needs to leave those half-cab flip noseslides alone.

So: Good shit but no huge surprises, except when he occasionally gets Daewon with it and throws something like a hardflip nose-stall pop-over to fakie on this natural spine thing. I mean, I’m as tired as everybody else of seeing street pros pull limp blunt fakies on Jersey barriers, but Bachinsky has some wild, bizarre moves in mind. Much more than the El Toro kickflipper indeed, and as long as he doesn’t blow his knee on one of these lofty frontside flips, he could be a dude who’s pushes things in the future.

Elsewise, Jimmy Cao kicks it off with a two-song part featuring the “guess it’s not messed up if he’s cool with it” Carl Douglas song selection. He’s so light-footed the way he catches his flip tricks and alights on his board, it seems like he’s not skating that fast, but he probably is. I’m a fan for sure. Jeremy Reeves smashes gaps and rails with slow-motion style. The fakie 360 shove-it was a mind-boggler; Trapasso’s running it too now and Tony Montgomery takes it nollie over a table in his part, so maybe this is trick of the year 09 or something.

City made a good move nabbing Eduardo Craig. I wasn’t really into his skating in last year’s City vid, but he’s coming along with a real smooth, loose-limbed way of landing tricks that’s super pleasing to the eye, like his big fakie kickflip for instance. Russ Milligan stays destroying in the lowest-key way possible for a guy who can land the type of shit he can do, and while I don’t think it’s quite as amazing as his “Crime in the City” section he’s not slowing up.

The forward-thinking honchos at City once again are encouraging the wholesale bootlegging and Youtubing of this video, which of course makes certain that most everyone will hear about and/or watch it. Lumbering dinosaurs with pea-sized brains such as myself still will want a DVD copy to put on while we fall asleep on the couch, but as skateboarding companies stumble half-sober into the digital age it’ll be interesting to see if web-friendly videos maintain the longevity of those that follow the old DVD route. And with City as an early adopter, I also sort of wonder if they’ll stick around long enough to see everyone else eventually follow their lead. Hopefully.

Slap throws in the paper towel

In Dolby Digital

On the off chance you pulled up the Slap magazine homepage today instead of linking straight to the messageboard, you may have seen confirmation of that which has been rumored for a while now: Slap’s going to an all-digital format. The obvious read on this is that Slap wasn’t pulling in the ad dollars necessary to keep a full-on print operation afloat, which unfortunately is all too likely in the current climate. Skateboarder subscribers would do well to think long and hard before the re-up, in this uninformed wag’s opinion.

While Slap’s the first to dive in, other skateboard publications are busy testing these waters–see also the allegedly all-digital consolation round for Big Brother, for instance. And those who went out and bought “And Now” guiltily hoping for another year of free TWS inside (yeah, me) found instead a generous offer for a free “digital subscription,” promising such intriguing features as “store trick tips” and “access from any computer!” It’s all Web 2.0 over there.

Shit. Even Thrasher has a website now, and Jake Phelps is a widely known caveman who was born in a cave and currently lives in a cave that was gut-rehabbed a few years ago in a rapidly gentrifying portion of SF. So this internet thing may have legs after all.

The downside for Slap of course is that you generally have to sell several web ads to make the money of one print ad, despite the fact that, you know, you can tell exactly how many people see the web ad and link it directly to the advertiser’s online emporium. However, advertisers like having their shit in a tangible form, which can be taped on junior highschoolers’ bedroom walls and passed around at trade shows. Another possible downside is Slap’s e-track record. If you add up the number of times Slap’s messageboard has crashed in the past eight years, divide it by the cast of webmasters, square that figure by their average tenure and round down for these people’s demonstrated proficiency… let’s just say Mark Whitely’s squad has its work cut out for it on the web front.

But if there’s any magazine to restructure itself around an online community, it would have to be Slap, who for reasons that still elude me managed to attract enough comprehensible posters that some level of intelligent discourse was fostered, and despite the best efforts of dearly departed anger-mongers such as Wheelbite.net, it’s managed to continue. All due shoutouts to Vov Vurnquist and the pontoon boat.

Slap’s recent efforts to incorporate the messageboard into the print publication have seemed sort of labored–too many inside jokes for outsiders, too little context for those who already know what’s up–and giving posters mini-profiles was the sort of purely bizarre idea that you have to respect in the way that you respect, say, for instance, Snuffleupagus. But I think they were doing the right thing by trying. God knows other websites would kill for the profile and weight the Slap messageboard carries, and Whitely & Co would be idiots if they didn’t try and harness it in some form or another.

So here’s hoping they Google it up and find a way to get ridiculously rich while making everything free and open to all comers. It’ll be a shame not to see Slap at the shop anymore–it’s still pretty much the only magazine consistently taking chances and making an effort to push the envelope in terms of accepted content, and Whitely’s spot in skateboard’s history books is certainly secure at this point. Fingers crossed that this transition is, to labor a metaphor, the first keystrokes of a new story, rather than the final touches on a brick-and-mortar gravestone.

“Fuckin’ monster”

photo via teamjaded.com

If it hasn’t already been posted a billion times elsewhere, last week Ted Barrow put up a really cool interview about the Brooklyn Banks with Rodney Torres, Rob Campbell, Louie-Louie, Ray Wong, and German Nieves.

RODNEY: Oh yeah, the banks contest. When was that, 93? When Kyle got a skate key to his head by Mario. Alright, Mario is still around today, and so is Kyle but, Mario is still around in skateboarding. He’s helping Vinnie Raffa put together skate videos now. Back in the day, I don’t know, they had some beef or something. There was a big contest, like all the top pros at that time were at that event, it might have been in a 411, but anyway. Mario and Kyle just didn’t like eachother, for whatever reason, and they saw eachother at the banks contest…from the story I remember is Kyle tried to rob Mario, tried to steal his chain, and they started fistfighting. Mario hit him with a skate key. The fork of the skate key, in the back of his head.
ROB: he hit him a few times
RODNEY: in the back of his head!
ROB: Busted his shit open…
RODNEY: Busted his shit open.

Not going gently

See, this is why the scans and shit are better left to the police informers and carbonites and chrome balls of the world. I scan some shit and you get big creases and generous portions of the picture torn away from the tape that once upon a time pasted this to my bedroom wall. This is the sad state of my little tribute to Ray Underhill, the late-period Bones Brigadier, often forgotten and a pro I sometimes think of as a precursor to the current era’s Erik Ellington, for some reason. The photo’s from his TWS pro spotlight in 1990 or maybe 1991, around the time Propaganda came out. I always thought his necklace graphics were kind of badass. Anyway, there’s a decidedly less half-assed tribute up at www.RayUnderhill.com that’s worth visiting, if like me you need a reminder now and then about this whole skateboarding-as-a-community idea. RIP.

What else, shit, I don’t know. It’s summertime. SBN seems to have jumped to Adidas. Flip reportedly is doing everything in its power to persuade Appleyard that there is no better wood company to skate for, despite what he may think. How about Louie Lopez in the new Transworld looking like a mini David Gonzales? Would that make him three feet tall instead of four? Remember that Big Brother quotables column where they quoted a couple older Mexican gentlemen whistling and hollering “ay chica!” at a young Brandon Turner? I bet DG and LL get that all the time.

Also, Stefan Janoski has invented the first Nike boat shoe. Nick Trapasso and Torey Pudwill both cashed in their dues for well-deserved pro boards… Terrel Robinson and Angel Ramirez, possibly less so, but then again I’m no type of authority on whose name will sell a Darkstar board. Come to think of it I don’t even know where one might acquire a Darkstar board without clicking past a bunch of Sheckler popups. But these are just a few of my several personal problems. How about I post another photo of Ray Underhill and shut up for the day:

This reminds me, is anybody else as excited as I am about Es bringing back the lacesaver in its next lineup?

This is skateboarding 2008

And to think if you would have asked me 10 years ago what the highlight of the X Games 2008 would be, I never would have guessed. Funny how things work out eh?