Summertime Mixtape Vol. 2 #4 – Willy Santos ‘The End’

Hair-salon proprietor Willy Santos in his hot-shoe am days was regarded as the prototypical new-school tech kid, and his opening part in Birdhouse’s $1 million 16/35MM extravaganza ‘The End’ kept him in good standing as it pertained to the miniature picnic table set, cracking nollie pop-shove its and switch heelflips over that small can with some finesse, plus the rarely seen half-cab noseblunt back to fakie. Looking again at some of the tricks here though like the switch boardslide pop out, which may obligate the ‘could stand up today’ trope, as well as the kinked lipslides and boardslides, conjures flashes of clips to come from card-carrying gnar dogs such as Vincent Alvarez, Geoff Rowley and Dustin Dollin. The gently sun-faded footage here can be weirdly relaxing, probably because like the rest of ‘The End’ it’s backed by those clumsily dubbed-in sound effects that lull in a fashion similar to elevator music or a distant helicopter.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 2 #3 – Brad Staba ‘Nervous Breakdown’

Is Brad Staba’s jaded/sarcastic persona an elaborate mask for a decade’s worth of bottled-up embarrassment and discomfort after perpetrating several high-profile backside salad grinds in the late 1990s and early 2000s? The answer is un-knowed, though allowances must be made within a time period of hotly fermenting excess when Tum Yeto rode high upon the skate hog, selling decks emblazoned with nothing but Tod Swank’s juvenile and colourful scrawls and later embarking upon a plan to build a skateboard so large it would be an affront to God himself. ‘Nervous Breakdown’ was another chapter in Foundation’s by then established strategy of reinventing itself roughly every 18 months or so, introducing Daniel Shimizu and Omar Salazar and copping Ethan Fowler from atop various European contest-circuit podiums. Yet it was floppy-haired vintage tee shopper Brad Staba who closed the video, shuffling down monstrous handrails and cruising through dirt and occasionally flashing a grin that would later launch a thousand Skate Mental graphics of questionable moral standing. Brad Staba possessed one of the skating world’s best nollie frontside 180s around this time as well as a command of the kickflip backside 360, then a rare bird. The line at 1:07 bumps up the bar from the opening run in his Duty Now for the Future debut, where Brad Staba opened for future Latin American real-estate speculator Daniel Haney and horror movie budgeteer Jon West.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 2 #2 – Brandon Biebel and Brian Wenning ‘Subtleties’

This video part showcases the freewheeling lackadaisicality achievable solely through sporting xtra-large t-shirts and pants long of flapping denim leg. It’s a little bit of a challenge to buy into Transworld’s positioning of Biebel and Wenning as a summer buddy-pro duo, given that they skate none of the same spots here and indeed do not even seem to be on screen together, but there is enough common technical ground beneath those frayed cuffs to argue favorably for this part somewhere in the high temple of shared video parts, beneath your Hsu/Barletta, Carroll/Howard, Kirchart/Klein and Way/McKay. The Pier 7 blocks generally are some of the best backdrops for Brandon Biebel’s manualing prowess and he is knowed to have puffed out his big t-shirt at least eight dozen times over the course of recording these tricks. At this point in time Wenning still hovered near the height of his powers, his last line here worthy of bringing up in any conversation about the best lines within the Transworld video catalogue and notable too for featuring among the last colors of the original Lynx, which beyond all expectation or reason has since proven impossible for DC to revive without screwing up some major detail.

Boil A Ocean Summertime Mixtape Vol. 2 #1 – Pat Channita ‘Second Hand Smoke’

Some time back a series of summerish video parts was posted up onto this space while the world bided its time until the new Rick Ross CD arrived. To come are several more in a series curated so as to give appropriate glory to Rick Ross, his Wing Stop franchise poultry restaurants and summertime in general.

As far as second-wave Plan B riders go Pat Channita’s not talked about as much as Jeremy Wray or Rick McCrank or even Ronnie Bertino, but around the time he came out the crispiness of his flip tricks was regarded in certain circles as on a par with fellow World employees Daewon Song and Lavar McBride. Between the capacity for ambidextrous pushing, significant pop beneath the inward heelflips and that one backside heelflip over the bench Pat Channita represents a legitimate before-his-time contender, as well as the fact that he looks to have been 15 or 16 around the time he filmed all this, raising questions as to how or why he otherwise seems to have fallen through the cracks of message-board debates and where-are-they-now retrospecticuses. An obvious question to ponder is whether the fretful black slime from those Genetic shoe ads may have poisoned Pat Channita into a plotting supervillain bent on general chaos as well as ruining Peter Parker’s personal relationships. Irregardless, all the curbs, khaki shorts and presidential campaign tune make this an enjoyably breezy summer video part.