8. Cole Wilson – ‘Oddity’

A new crop of handrail jockeys is busily refining what this fall’s podcast braintrust termed a ‘calculated’ approach to locking onto angled bars, producing monstrosities such as Riley Hawk’s Shep Dawgs curvatures and Jamie Foy’s much-discussed 50-50 body varial 50-50. In terms of sheer risk tolerance and poor judgment, few can match Ketucky’s Cole Wilson, who in this year’s Foundation vid — one of those unfortunate and increasingly common cases of a worthy full-length picked up and discarded days later — seemed to purposely pick the hairiest and hoariest rails on offer across the American underbelly. Many of his tricks defy comprehension and good sense, justifying double and sometimes triple angles as he grinds up and through multiple kinks, nosegrinds down some more, and straps in for a maximum-turbulence ride down some particularly poorly maintained iron toward the end. Cole Wilson also pushes forward the handrail 50-50 gap to 50-50, which once eluded Powell Peralta gap-tamer Frankie Hill, boated by Silas Baxter Neal in Transworld’s Perpetual Motion, bringing it to a couple round bars.

Tags: 50-50 grinds, Cole Wilson, Da Ballad Of Mike Sinclair, Foundation Super Co, handrail hell, Kentucky colonels, Oddity, The Kinks