2009 will live on as the year that Jereme Rogers’s rap career blasted off, Bob Burnquist revealed a stuntastic yet eco-friendly backyard lifestyle, Tony Trujillo signed onto 4-Star and Brewce Martin survived a freak tire explosion accident, all reasons to count the seconds until the sun engulfs planet Earth a little bit more slowly.
There was great fun to be had showing this magazine to people and watching them puzzle over what exactly was going on here, sort of like looking at a picture of someone with no eyebrows or maybe also a picture of Antwuan Dixon. Which also was a pretty great cover.
Fantastic tricks of this fantastic year
Matt Beach’s coffin grind
The beer slam grind in the credits of the Black Label video
Torey Pudwill’s caballerial back lip to b/s tail to backside flip out (er, right?)
Sammy Baca
Chris Cole’s cab f/s blunt to whack-a-bystander-in-the-face
Lizard King’s Wallenberg one-footer
Jereme Rogers’ career ender-ender
A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again
the 00s video countdown
The discerning observer will realize that it’s hard to come up with many knocks against Jake Johnson’s Alien debut in “Mind Field,” what with the strange and free-flowing arm motions, eye-pleasing urban environments and magic carpet wallrides that are sometimes of the switch variety. Beyond the absence of any rumored handrail switch b/s noseblunt, only two possible complaints are even to be comprehended, one being that more clips would be nice and the other that the original section lacked the hollow rasp of one Young Jeezy to really capture the bleak glory and cash profits to be found in ruling over an empire of crack cocaine consumers.
Helpfully the computer scientists employed by Quartersnacks.com dug into the b-roll footage and Jeezy’s triumphant 2008 song about “putting on” to peanut butter up the chocolate that was already among the awesomest video parts of the year. Due to my hapless internet coding capabilities I have failed in posting the actual video above succeeded in convincing the Quartersnacks bros to upload it to Vimeo. The full AWMF Re-edit can be viewed here, where the part in question starts around 3:00, or you can download it in superior quality off the QS site here. Watch it again for the first time, marvel at the majesty of the switch 50-50 on the bench-back and the b/s noseblunt shove it, and ponder whether Young Jay Jenkins maybe has the game locked by default in 2010 with nearly every other worthwhile competitor jailed.
Update: Original edit here, with the AC music that honestly I don’t hate at all and cameos from that springy bug thing.
Hat flipped backward and polo shirt fluttering in the wind, Blueprint’s Chewy Cannon skidded, slid and scootched to a new level this year via a combo of breakneck speed, spastic technicalness and a ’90s eye for trick selection. This dude is one of the chosen few who can make both cranium-endangering crashes and frontside boardslides on ledges look good, and Adidas’ “Diagonal” found him weaving in and out of pedestrians, pets and pests while doing an impressive job of making it look as though he’s got no particular plan in terms of what’s to come next. Half the time, like on the hubba b/s tailslide, it’s like he’s barely hanging on, other times his feet seem glued to the griptape as though it were that magical Paradox griptape that is aligned with your inner chi, and perhaps this is indeed the horrible secret behind Chewy Cannon’s success.
Despite turning in one of the more rewatchable parts in Alien’s very rewatchable “Mind Field,” the one nit this blog-site picked was that Grant Taylor’s section could’ve featured more of his coldly controlled transition stuff, and sure enough a few months later the Lite-Brite perpetual motion machine that was Jason Hernandez’s “Debacle” vid for Nike delivered the goods. Much like the lime-green drug rug donned for backyard rain dances, Grant Taylor wrings extra mileage out of the classics (one-footer, stand-up frontside 5-0s in the deep end) without coming off like one of those kids who hurried to learn pivot fakies after all his friends quit frontside flipping the stairs down by the school. The roly-poly launch to quarterpipe transfer thingy is one of my favorites in this and still gives me the willies occasionally, even after watching this video dozens of times on the i-pod.
Eli Reed switch kickflipped into New York’s courthouse bank in a display of sexual prowess that earned him his choice of mates and long-delayed professional status from the Zoo board of directors late this year. Fate sometimes seems to align against this dude, what with whoever was in charge over there sandbagging his part with BTO’s ode to the union movement, and the faintly snarky way people keep bringing up that amazing Celtics outfit he used to rock. Not to be that guy, but the ollie up the curb at the beginning of the part is sort of beautiful, and you can’t hold down someone who’s intent on nollie nosemanualing into a crazy bank and then switch ollieing into a second bank that also is crazy. One of the great things about this part and Eli Reed in general is that he’s all over the place in more ways than one (switch bigspin flip nose manual, hardflip manual on that banked ledge), and here’s hoping he has some shit in that new Converse/Thrasher vid which I have not yet seen so we’re counting it for next year’s tiresome list-making, FYI.
Heath Hirchart mustered all the forces of darkness to close out Alien’s “Mind Field” with the requisite sparks a-flying and some bonus bigspins for the ADD-addled YouTube generation. Every Heath Kirchart video appearance is a kind of event on its own, to the point that his appearance on O’Dell’s “Skate Talk” set viewership records only topped by the recent appearance of the self-awareness challenged JR. While JR’s message is about believing in yourself and balling out at the club, contempt for his fellow man festers in Kirchart’s heart, but much like the Incredible Hulk he seeks to channel it in useful ways such as backside lipsliding long rails and breaking the noses of mere mortals. With this part women trembled, the ground shook and minor miracles occurred in nearby counties, as anticipation grew for the Emerica whiteout.
Even without the Thrasher crown, whadda year for Dennis Busenitz – hitting three stripes’ worth of pro shoe paydirt, contest runs that won the Dew Tour of internet buzz, and a sizzler of a video part that ensured career elevation beyond a message board reign inherited from the likes of Bob Puleo and Gino Iannucci. The secret Busenitz sauce seems to lie in a frothy mixture of speed, unholy control and a supreme confidence that whatever those magic feet do next will work out for the best, and he pours it lavishly across this section the Adidas Europe vid, which he maybe got into by virtue of sharing a motherland with the Herzogenaurach-based outfit. Beyond the big-bounce ender the highlights I guess are the neck-high kickflip on the Ft. Miley hip, the no-push switch smith grind, that lengthy b/s nosegrind and his 180 switch k-grind that seems to stick right to the ledge. Not sure if this is the peak of what Dennis Busenitz can bring in terms of video-section heat but even if not it’s a pretty awesome placeholder ahead of the Real video.
Sometimes lost in the humorous digs toward Bobby “Big Government” Worrest’s comical tattoo art and internet movie adventures is the fact that the lil beardo does some of the hardest tricks dreamable by those who do their deepest thinkings within the confines of a dive bar, as opposed to EAS2. The 360 flip noseslide pop-over is one of these, the up/down opening run on the block at DC’s Pulaski Park is another, and so is the backside tailslide kickflip out on a fairly legit handrailing. Bobby Worrest remains a BTO favorite because he is still pretty East Coast after all these years, stays awesome while not taking himself or his skating especially serious, kickflips humongous street gaps and continues to go by the name of “Bobby” well into his mid-20s, which is something. Thoughtless web uploaders have failed to make this section accessible via YouTube but the whole video’s up here, and the part in question starts around 11:10.
Depending on where you fell in the grade-school spectrum, the character projected in Pat Burke’s gleefully unhinged Slave part is either the carefree, truant bro you aspired to ape or the greasy-haired underachiever you wasted your time being, unless you were busy doing k-grinds along big curly handrails and kickflipping upon the heads of unwary cyclists. It was not all that long ago that we pored over the way this dude lands his frontside-flipping tricks just off-kilter enough and his eye for scouting embankment landings, so maybe it’s more helpful to point out how Pat Burke won the great Slave raffle of between-trick stock footage with the National Geographic clips in this section. The moody eyes of a feasting lion and the frenzied chewing of hungry hyenas help to drive home the point when Brotha Lynch Hung mentions his list of power-up items including “ounces of OE and a sack of that Indonesian shit and a 9 millimeter clip for you to dump.”
Flameboy to the Wet Willy that was Lance Mountain’s Flip video section, Chet Childress’ hard-luck tale of broken teeth and soggy pinatas teaches us that there’s little love to be found even in a state home to aging hippies and free skateparks built by harmonious units of best friends. Here we find Childress zipping switch-stance through Burnside’s humps and bumps and crunching coping, but the part also functions as a comment on video production at the height of the Great Recession, keeping the filming trips to a cross-town minimum and saving pennies that wealthier companies might have spent on a color picture. All’s we’re saying is if you’re likely to do most of your business in concrete parks anyway there’s less photogenic locales you could select, and the bent-arm bro’s coping-pop remains at an all-time high.
boil the ocean 