How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The 10-Minute Cory Kennedy Video Part

How did Cory Kennedy get so good, is the question upon the minds of men and children who witnessed his arrival via the Berrics take on American Idolatry, and subsequent rise to power thanks to the internet’s 86,400-second news cycle and breathless vivisection of several bizarro hip tricks at faceless skateparks. I mean, he comes out of the dreary rainforests of the U.S. pacific northwest. He didn’t toil away his tweenage years on Termite or Twigs or whatever and there is little evidence tying him to a secret 80s-pro father, so Occam’s Razor suggests some ill-fated bargain involving his eternal soul.

At family-values centric Boil the Ocean.com we narrow our eyes and curl our lip at the fallen one, yet there are other reasons to take pause: the Girl camp has had both hits and misses when it comes to developing its parade of uber-ams (see: Rogers) and it can be somewhat off-putting when some kid appears out of thin air able to whip out every trick in the book, etc.

After spending probably more than an hour across multiple viewings of CK2’s opening statement in the heavy-hitting “Beware of Sasquatch” vid we are believers. For one thing, this dude doesn’t really do bad tricks. Even moves possibly suspect under the feet of others (bigspin heelflip) tend to work out for him, and whether it’s restraint or a breezy outlook on life in general, the tension is eased with plenty of little nollie heelflips and wallrides in between his THPS combos (or are we now to call them EA Skate combos). He’s got enough lank to pull off a touch of the Wenning slouch, grasps the value of a straight-ahead switch ollie and does not jump off when the terrain becomes rugged and pebbly.

The length, width and techiness of this big Cory Kennedy debut, alongside the fact that it comes in a bro-powered video as opposed to some Grauman’s Chinese Theatre premiere, invites comparisons to PJ Ladd… for sure some of these moves (switch frontside bigger spin heelflip) fit the mold, and a lot of these spots look like they could be found around the corner from his house, sidewalk gaps and random manual pads, similar to PJ Ladd’s beloved window-ledge. We probably won’t see many more of these overcast industrial parks once southern California gets its hooks into him, but here Cory Kennedy seems not too worked up over things like stair counts and the grins come off genuine and easy.

Also: admiring the way his board sticks to the bench b/s tailslides, the headbanging backside noseblunt on the steps, and the 50-50 at around the 2:30 mark, which ranks among the better-sounding tricks of this young year. Music is region-appropriate and the track runners observing the bench-to-bank session brought on a Memory Screen flashback. Unicron has this vid now for fairly cheap, by the by.

Tags: Anton Newcombe, Berrics, Beware of Sasquatch, born to love volcanoes, button ups, Cory Kennedy, dot coms, Girl, Kevin Warsh, Mt. Rainier, systemic risk, the cobra snake, Washington state, yetis