The Beak Is Back, Maybe

Can’t be stopped

As you can imagine, even in the freshly minted year of our Lord 2010, the Muska is never far from our minds around here. Whether it was his days pioneering the cargo pant as the Shorty’s team captain, the clear sunglasses-and-headscarf combo of Circa’s heyday or his resurrection as a white-denimed Hollywood nightcrawler, Chad Muska’s legacy looms large. So large in fact that I was gobsmacked no less than twice yesterday during my usual You-Toob clip perusal by the way Muska fulfilled the dream with one of his token moves, the backside noseslide.

I’ve been hard-pressed to keep up with the various “You/U/Eu” video contests and controversies that seem to be constantly churning over at the berrics, but was prompted to click this one because it had an odd name that I incorrectly thought belonged to a single person, and also because it came from Mexico, a land I imagine to be overrun with bloodthirsty druglords toting AR-15s, but actually is home to some bros that do a lot of body varial tricks. The Muska moment arrives at 2:33 with a healthy noseslide through some sizable kinks and taken back to regular which is always a good look with this move.

Elsewhere on the planet, globetrotting Yankees fan Kenny Reed stretches his backside 5-0s to worldly proportions and revisits a few obscure spots en route to a (spoiler alert) truly massive noseslide down something like 50 steps. The sheer length is one thing but what makes this noseslide really classic is how low the ledge is and the never-say-die way that Reed skids it out to the bitter end. Kind of comical but it’s interesting to see a resurgence of these more basic tricks these days. People like Davids Gravette and Gonzales are promoting 5050s again when there’s a gnarly handrail involved, although for years it seemed like that trick had been discarded as too basic* to even consider. If noseslides creep back into the rotation, perhaps there will one day be no need to twist boardslides into feeble grinds.

*disregarding Anthony Pappalardo, in which case that seems like the whole point

Sisyphean Task Force

The power of positive thinking and possibly also ankle-weight training

If doing ollies straight onto rails is the new nosegrind pop-out early, as some wags have proclaimed in recent weeks, does that mean that doing shit up other shit now counts as the new pole jam? I ask partly because noted fan Kyle Leeper recently voiced his over-ness of pole jams in the text-heavy interview issue of Skateboarder*, but also because sweet Jesus, there’s been some crazy ascending tricks going around lately. If anybody else has made it up the pyramid ledges in New York, I haven’t seen it. This is a photo of alleged Commandment-breaker and known Tosh Townend associate Pat Pasquale, lifted from a rather entertaining interview with photog Bart Jones, TSM’s answer to Seth Rogan, at TypicalCulture.com.

Time will tell of course if we’re setting ourselves up for a video let-down of three-inch scratchers and dead-stop landings, but the uphill battles recently fought by Leo and others have made for some pretty entertaining photos. I could see Andrew Brophy going Jr Mint up the South Bank stairs with some kind of kickflip or pop-shove variation. And recent reports have the down-up stair component of Philadelphia City Hall still fully skatable, so pro dudes and bite-your-arm-off ams, let’s get some new stuff popping up that thing.

*Two dumps’ worth, easy