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Get your worries off your chest

As sweet as the footage is, I’m pretty sure the Enjoi Berrics clip doesn’t quite capture the total idiotic euphoria that seems to have run rampant through this session like some sort of flamboyant ox. Is Louie Barletta the Gallagher of skateboarding? Is Gallagher the Jose Rojo of Nigerian email schemes? Does Jesse Erickson have a unique real estate apprenticeship opportunity available for a limited time?

Sometimes I wonder: Enjoi reality show, yea or nay? Maybe if it was produced by those Takeshi’s Castle guys… or perhaps Longmont Potion Castle…

Addendum: my other favorite trick. Because it’s impossible to choose only one.

JR Returns

Sober mind power

I’m sure there were likelier candidates than Jereme Rogers to become the handrail version of Chris Gentry for the late aughts, but today, having awoken to the skateboard peanut gallery’s equivalent of Paris Hilton’s two-way getting cracked, I can’t imagine who those candidates might have been. It’s like the final piece of an amazing puzzle has fallen into place: former child star, copious amounts of ostentatious jewelry, sudden and fervent conversion to Christianity, neck tattoos, and now–of course!–rap music.

As a musician, “JR” is surprisingly distinct from Terry Kennedy, his partner in luxury goods appreciation and internet business ventures. Where TK’s rough-edged braggadocio centers on money, women and hitting people over the head with gun-butts, JR plays the role of the elder statesman, imparting the hard-learned lessons of street life which he knows so well. A quick overview of the JR songography as currently available:

“This the Type of Shit” f. Roc: JR’s breathy crooning masks disarmingly smooth disses, akin to Mary Poppins’ spoonful of sugar, and the vulgarity of the hook (handled here by JR himself) belies intricate conceptual thinking on the part of the former Transworld rookie of the year (see the “ten letters” bar). Following the trend recently popularized by Jay-Z, JR apparently does not write down his rhymes, but the instrumental harkens back to the easy-riding G-funk era.
Key line: “This is just step one.”
Rating: 5 neck tattoos

“Nobody Wanna Live Without” F. Eddie Rap Life: A more urgent number, driving and a touch bleak, JR gets deep speaking on the struggles of youth today. Growing up in the hood, a topic JR knows well, isn’t easy and he understands that often kids’ only outlet lies in flights of fancy: “Late night dreams of you and a gold rope, UHHH… how fresh you could look in that pea coat” “You could be the next Jay-Hov…” But JR warns against turning to a life of crime to accomplish these ends, imploring youngsters to instead “open up your bibles, put down your rifles.”
Key line: “Shoulda been content with the life you were used to.”
Rating: Four neck tattoos

“Keep the Faith” f. Renee Renee: JR, despite his deep devotion to Christ and providing a positive and sober urban role model for the kids, is no angel. He’s lived the fast life and still slips up now and then, evidenced by the “smoke trees” line. Yet it’s what one does with these mistakes–JR probably would call them opportunities–that determines the measure of a man, and JR is right up front with his humanity: “Make mistakes, shit that’s okay, me I musta made about 10 today/Just made another one, I just said shit, but I won’t say it again unless the track require.” Too Short-esque wordplay with “Heaven-sent flow”–JR’s just getting started. (Judging by Renee Renee’s wavering chorus, JR isn’t alone here.)
Key line: “Go for your dreams, believe in it, me I’m knee deep in it.”
Rating: Three neck tattoos

One Flare to Rule Them All

Mushroom cloud laying motherfucker, motherfucker

So: having forever changed the skateboard video as we know it (well sort of), Lakai, possibly drunk on Mariano footage and its own hubris, will try its hand at redefining the limited edition cash-in DVD with the Final Flare box set, for which they have prepared a new podcast trailer thing. And let me tell you, as much as I’m looking forward to Marc Johnson’s musings on the existential trials of filming a 12-minute video part, I most likely will indeed shuffle off to the skateboard store with a heavy sigh and a twinge of guilt and plonk down my $59 or whatever.

Let’s be serious, I don’t have that kind of folding money in the best of times, and bear in mind we’re dealing with a bona fide recession now, according to at least one USDA official. What I’m saying is, this means something.

Allegedly the box set will include three discs, a photo booklet, photo gallery (!), blah blah. More to the point: alternate edits (read: less ramped slow-mo and “lifestyle” clips between each line), the making-of documentary (which will be interesting in an On Video sort of way [read: watch once]), and the goddamn bonus footage that everybody’s been waiting on since the premiere. Because I had this sneaking suspicion that some of the bazillion tricks that didn’t make it into the video were in fact landed. (Jesus’s trick in the preview is bananas.) Also I’m assuming they’re going to hold on to all the original music. If Mannie Fresh gets pulled, I’m demanding my $59 back.

Of course the ultimate reason why it’s tough to hold the limited edition cash-in against Lakai is that videos don’t sell for shit nowadays*, so how are you gonna blame them for trying to recoup on all that airfare to China. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of skateboarders now live an unthinkable distance from major urban areas where one can even buy skateboard videos, at least according to the “Ride the Sky” topic on Slap. Hey, they’d buy it if they could. It’s tough all over, people.

*with the exception of “Fully Flared”

Is Real the smartest skateboard company?

No Boondoggle, but what is: Real put on Davis Torgerson.

Last of a dirty breed

Hit your burglar alarms

I got Joe Perrin’s heater of a video “Last of the Mohicans” a while back and after a couple weeks of watching it I’m basically left with a bunch of questions: Is Fred Gall the grindingest dude over 25 in the skateboard realm? Is he the grindingest dude period? Did Steve Durante skate to a Blues Traveler instrumental? How did Josh Dowd roll away from the last switch wallride in his part? How come so many of these Florida dudes wear beards?

There’s East Coast grime and then there’s Florida grime… sweaty, mossy, crushed glass and dead brown rat grime. And haze. I used to think it was just fogged up cameras but after watching “The Good Life” a billion times along with the older Statics I have come to understand that the air in Florida literally sweats, creating a sort of light fog. This is known to meteorologists as the Gershon effect.

In spite of my usual “too long” complaint, which in this instance I will amend to “just a little bit too long,” the “Mohicans” video knocks on pretty much all levels. The lineup has familiar dirts (Danny Renaud, Jon Newport, Jimmy Lannon, Joel Meinholz), lesser-known dirts (Dowd, 80s Joe, Ross Norman who skates sort of like Andy Honen) and a generous sprinkling of random others such as Durante, Jack Sabback and Todd Jordan, as well as Cincinnatianites Al Davis and Dave Caddo.

Skating-wise it’s along the same lines as Josh Stewart’s “Static” stuff, with maybe less cellar doors and more manuals. Also less reverence for mouldering brick structures. Highlights: Fred Gall’s meaty switch wallie in his opening line…Al Davis’ b/s 180 switch frontside crooked grind revert…Durante’s seen-it-before-but-bigger-this-time switch backside tailslide switch heelflip…Caddo’s frontside 180 switch crooked grind…Ed Selego’s towering nosegrind…80s’ masterful switch heelflip over the gap…Renaud’s entire section as usual but most especially the backside noseblunt revert. Man.

It builds to a sweaty, bearded crescendo, Josh Dowd’s closer part, which is pretty much one shocking switch move after the other. Switch backside lipslide to switch backside 5-0, that kind of shit. The switch frontside crooked grind up above. A big switch 360 flip at the end of a line. Hopefully somebody puts him on.

So right, this is one of the best videos of the year. Besides Josh Dowd it also features a lot of beer drinking, night skating and occasional gunfire. Buy it from Killa Tapes so Perrin can film Dango’s antics in HD next time.

Take me out

Add an organic taco, some Oakley Blades and a parachute and you’d never even guess

Try as I may, I haven’t been able to find any video of X-Game Mega Ramper Bob Burnquist delivering his xtremely Brazilian take on the national anthem of our national pasttime last night at Wrigley Field. However, according to the early reviews, it didn’t go over so well…

Holy crap. PLEASE end the 7th inning stretch experiment. Whothehell is this guy??

You clearly never played Tony Hawk

Holy crap, that was brutal.

Skateboarding legend? Hmm… Looked like he was having trouble reading the words off that piece of paper they gave him.

As if that wasn’t enough, the dude or dudes who won the autographed Burnquist board giveaway are hot to unload it. (Complete with accessories)

Search the horizon

Mystery rider

Busy lately, so absent any kind of substantial update I’ll take this opportunity to post some amusing search terms this site has collected over the last few months. These phrases and more brought noble internet pilgrims to these shores, though how long they stayed is anybody’s guess…

“henry sanchez” asshole
neil urwin new deal
terry kennedy lyrics
bong mask for sale
danny way philanthropy
“sean sheffey” taxes
mr slate
beagle beating up corey duffel at the maloof money cup
pink and green pharrell ice creams
dylan rieder’s roommate
burberry shorts
corey duffel braks leg in 07
what does bfff mean
skateboarder fights all comers
“sean sheffey” “jake brown” +snake
nick trapasso smoking
sean sheffey pet snake

In the mood

Like they did with their Pink Motel trip a while back, Fourstar put up a video of their New York catalog shoot the other day, which suspiciously resembles your usual workaday skate photo hunt, except, you know, with Guy Mariano and Mike Carroll and whatnot. And check it out: an HD video without a trace of slow-mo, no symphonic music, not even one shot of somebody wiping sweaty hair from their face and ice-grilling the camera like “one more try, man.” Just saying.

Anthony P’s Greatest Hits

TKO

Aside from a blockbusting line from Guru Khalsa, the simple pleasures of a Kenny Anderson backside 180 on flat, and assorted rippage from the likes of Vincent Alvarez, Silas Baxter-Neal and Dan Drehobl, what jumped out at me most about the new Elwood promo was Anthony Pappalardo’s continued devolution in terms of trick selection: three clips, five tricks, all ollies. Disregarding the more technical stuff in his Fully Flared section, up to and including what was probably the scorchingest backside tailslide I’ve seen in many a moon, let’s go ahead and wantonly extrapolate from this new APO footage what future direction his skating might take.

Comparisons to a Puleo-esque career arc have been made for some time now but I see another influence at work: none other than New Jersey’s warrior poet, Mike V. Morose loners both, raised in flannel and East Coast winters, disgruntled with the skate industry–might we see a part’s worth of eyes-to-the-ground pacing, purposeful pushing through urban climes and silhouetted rolling in the upcoming Chocolate feature? This is just one vision of Pappalardo’s future. I can think of more, involving slam poetry, backyard wrestling and bearded punk-metal, or a wild and shirtless combination of such elements. If he starts farming his hair, bulking up and whaling on security guards, you all owe me $10.

Emmanuel Guzman: King Cobra

Just one Pepsi

There’s certain skateboarders who definitely are of the moment and sort of a product of everything happening in skating right this minute, like, I don’t know, Torey Pudwill for instance, Jim Greco around the time of Baker2G, maybe Donny Barley in the mid-90s. Then you have other skateboarders who seem like they would have been great skaters at any point over the last 35 or so years–Alex Olson would be a good example I think, and Emmanuel Guzman. He’s got his kickflip backside smith grinds on rails, yeah, but especially with his transition stuff he strikes me as deeply steeped in skateboard lore. Born in Santa Cruz, skates for Santa Cruz; rides Independent trucks and boards with hand-drawn skeleton graphics; knows who Suicidal Tendencies are, etc.

Despite a career-making curtains part in TWS’s unfortunately named “Let’s Do This!”, I have this hunch that, like Rick McCrank, it’s tough to put together a video part that really does justice to the way Emmanuel Guzman skates. He hasn’t stopped trying though, God bless him, and has a sweet new part in the new installment of Vox shoes’ “Black and Blue”, which seems intent on challenging NHS’s “Strange Notes” series for the title of pumping out imminently disposable DVDs. Hey, when you’re cribbing out of the Vans playbook for shoe designs, you can afford niceties like a video production department. (Jokes, people.)

Here’s the part–the mega backside 180 into the ditch, the kickflip to fakie off the wall and the final backside tailslide are all mind bogglers.