Loaded For Bear

Whereas some of the “name” gaps particularly on the west coast have become sites for caged-bird shoots in recent years, decked out with roll-ins and banner ads and a cast of thousands, the city of brotherly love has kept JFK Plaza off-limits, to the point of throwing DC’s briefcase full of c-notes out the window a few years back. The jam-format contest trappings don’t make a Carlsbad or a Wallenberg or that one handrail Moose 360’ed any less gnarly of course, and the danger of friendly fire in a shooting gallery environment adds a kind of delirious unpredictability to the proceedings, but there’s a certain type of man-versus-beast purity to Tom Asta’s recent switch trip down the famed Love Park fountain as he kicks his heels into the Mystery reboot. I mean there’s still cops patrolling this spot, and bloodthirsty rogues and autograph seekers and Brian Wenning legacy defenders* around right? Regardless, awesome “form” on this and it’s made more forbidding by the way it looks like he’s got some backside drift going on.

*not like I’m not

Universal Language

AWS graphics have had their ups and downs over the past decade as the reins passed from the hand of Don Pendelton back to Hill* and a cast of occasional others, but this Dyrdek board is one of the best in a while to me. It works in an elephontine character with a quasi-“Photosynthesis” font throwback, backed with the current CMYK/OG logo focus that’s been going on for a little while prior to the current 20-year (which itself is kind of a trip). Background almost looks like one of those “Magic Eye” deals, did anybody ever stick one of those on a deck? Regardless it was also nice to see the exalted “Exalt” board back with a pretty appropriate bare-bones/90s presentation.

*A transition I think really was in the best interests of everyone, jarring though it was at the time

Boy From The Block

As Vincent Alvarez’s facial hair deepens, so too do his gangster-ish ways upon the board. Alongside some impressive bank-to-barring in this recent Lakai amateur video are three of the bossier switch tricks of this month or so offered up by VA, including but not limited to: the bank-to-ledge switch backside tail, the rail switch lipslide and the switch thunder-gap bomb over the rail, each one a crusher. This dude is getting more exciting/powerful and has left behind the more questionable ledge combos from the earlier days – worth revisiting is last month’s Lakai ad that has a crazy lipslide and invites the viewer to consider a world in which Federico Vitetta takes the cinematic reigns at the Crailtap camp.

Zip Zinger

On a hunt for a clip of Ishod Wair’s first place-winning runs from Phoenix Am over the weekend, ran across this TWS video that includes one of the nicer tricks seen recently in a contest or otherwise – a pretty ferocious f/s bigspin lipslide from 5Boro-backed Floridian CJ Dixon. Which raises the question as to whether we’ll see a push among pros to move this to bigger and sturdier rails, like Reynolds and Billy Marks did with the f/s flip lipslide a few years back. Either way there’s a sequence here in photo form and still on the hunt for the Wair run in case anybody can dig it up…

Gorilla Grip

Besides a flair for danger, eye for drama and a noble mane of hair, one of the things that made Jamie Thomas super exciting to watch in those early Toy Machine days was the uncanny way he had of sticking his trucks onto rails, be they round, skinny or otherwise. We are reminded of this fact as video maker and Fox Mulder kindred spirit Josh Stewart posts up a batch of vintage Jamie Thomas video, some of which wound up in “Welcome To Hell” and thereby helped it become revered as among the top ten greatest videos ever probably. The clip I’m thinking about here is the wallie grind on the white bar at night, but an equally boss example could be found in the finished product at about 2:56 wherein Jamie Thomas transfers his way across a different rail. (Also the one-footer/50-25 or also the credits clip.) There is more promised from the Atlantis vaults, but in the meantime make sure you watch all the Hopps commercials including this Police Squad-tinged entry.

Off The Dome

Greg Myers’ hairline/eyebrow combo in this photo, along with the gnar factor of the trick at hand, had me double-taking on the first flip-through and checking the caption to see if it was Jeremy Wray. This is the second in a series of postings on or around the new Transworld.

And On The Eighth Day, God Made This New TWS Vid

Ridley Scott once said the difference between a film and a movie is that “a movie, I think, is ephemeral, a film is more serious,” so it was maybe fitting that after opening an email the other day announcing a new “skate film” from Mssrs. Holland and Ray, the attached preview clip swaggers with the bluster and bombast of a God-fearing gladiator who maybe also rides loose trucks. Big ideas are not new territory for TWS vids of course, having introduced us to the concept of packing your skateboard on trips to Hawaii as opposed to your girlfriend, and being an original Coors. But since foregoing the long-stale voiceover intro format it seems as though the TWS productions have been on the hunt for gravitas, leading to last summer’s sumptuous celebration of the goofy-footer lifestyle.

TWS seems to intimate that this “Hallelujah” video will be a swing for the fences affair with the handrail hitters of Decenzo and Bingaman, ledge pyrotechnics supplied by Tyler Bledsoe and the increasingly uninominal T-Puds, and thundering switch stuff via Pete Eldridge whose switch b/s noseblunt in the preview gets the tympanis booming. Maybe they should stick with this idea, it’s been a while since somebody took a stab at skating to classical music right? When they bust out the second angle of that face-melting Tyler Bledsoe backside tailslide kickflip there sort of needs to be a gong, I think.

On an unrelated but very related note, this