Bill Strobeck earlier this decade helped to save skate video by rejecting the prevailing model of yearslong filming campaigns, budget bloat and too-long productions prone to crumplling beneath impossibly hyped expectations. Instead he went straight to YouTube, dug up archival clips and let the VX roll liberally on lurkers for three-minute snapshots that got more burn than some clothing and shoe money-backed full lengths. A few years down the line and steering his own big video, Bill Strobeck’s ‘Blessed’ got caught up in a lot of the same excesses, from ponderous slow-mo to a near-90 minute runtime that its creator requests be consumed in full. He’s still among the best since Baker at fusing the traditional video part with the recent ‘raw files’ fixation, panning around a few seconds before and after to let atmospherics elevate the trick — an approach that in ‘Blessed’ functioned best for Tyshawn Jones, situating him taking his lumps in the gutters while ascending to the tip-toppiest of pro skating’s tiers, with perfect, incredible hard tricks at the gnarliest New York spots in pricey, limited-edition pants. Like a gold brick smashing an abandoned storefront window, Tyshawn Jones’s skating feels imperial and commanding, brazen and loud — he’s cracking tricks thigh-high in traffic, hopping handrails with a backpack on, skipping pushes between tables in California, looking for ways to make the fearsome NY courthouse drop harder to skate. There is the street gap fakie flip, the switch backside lipslide over top of the Columbus Park rail, the silky nollie backside flip over the black hubba in Garrett Hill pants, the shifty incorporation. But the switch backside heelflip interlude encapsulates the dude’s late-2018 moment, chopping a lock, tangling with security and stacking multiple times on the way to an immaculate catch and euphoric push-away, packing into the van for the escape, everybody screaming their heads off.
Add to the list, under skipping over the top step and triple-tapping walls — self-consciously counting eye blinks, after Dick Rizzo’s hard-wrestled and finally successful backside nosegrind backside 180 into the Grant’s Tomb chute, captured in minute detail for Quasi’s compulsively rewatchable full-length debut last summer. The thumping, dusty East Coast that Dick Rizzo rips top to bottom and day to night in ‘Mother’ threatens with drill-bit flatbars, blood red cellar door clangers and irate, self-appointed Arguses of the Mason-Dixon region who foolishly try and hate on Dick Rizzo and his switch 180s. Whether or not he compulsively blinks twice before his other tricks, like the look-out-below nollie wallride, or while switch powersliding between his back-to-back handrail 180s, remains a matter between Dick Rizzo and his priest. However, some type of uncommon grace infuses this dude straight through his tiptoe ride-aways, like on the ollie out to 5-0 or the bluntslide cab out in ‘Mother’s intro. All dieties are hereby urged to direct healing properties toward Dick Rizzo’s ankle following Bam Margera’s recent blow-out, and deliver unto him an overdue professional board for 2019.
It has been a good year for 90-degree catches, from Tyshawn Jones’ vicious backside drifts to Josh Wilson’s expertly turned varial flip in ‘Mother,’ placing him among the trick’s few acceptable practitioners. Striped-pants rippler Diego Najera makes the list with one of the finer switch inward heelflips since John Igei flew a black flag over the Pier 7 block, piloted with the gentle giant grace that this dude has settled into over the past coupla years. From his opening performance of the dope dance in its classic form, you know the vid is gonna be good: Diego Najera’s upper-body trajectory on the switch kickflip up New York’s three up-three down is so perfect as to fool the watcher into thinking there maybe weren’t any stairs there at all; a nollie frontside 180 nosegrind 180 out is managed with no tic-tac, a feat; he spreads a Kalis wingspan on the beautifully filmed 360 flip and later on cab flips into a crowdful of Macba bustle, no pit stains. This dude has the typical Primitive flip-trick command but also a taste for some lesser-dones, like the nollie flip backside nosegrind on the little rail or the backside noseblunt to fakie on the bench, and heavily skating Primitive’s attractive Don Pendleton series hurts none at all.
Girl’s quarter century-heavy legacy doesn’t rest squarely on Niels Bennett’s scrawny, concrete-reclining-on shoulders, but after years in the murky wilderness of what’s cool with the kids, the Torrance boys could do far worse than the fakie-popping ‘No Hotels’ alum who sparked the ‘Doll’ October surprise before the opening skit. Niels Bennett’s form looks as good on Polar-pleasers like the barrier Gonz-comply and switch wallride as it does on the moves more overtly out of the Girl am playbook, like the long-haul, million-mph frontside blunt and the hubba SSBSTS. Two Niels Bennetts could probably fit in Brandon Biebel’s red XXXL, but his pipes-heavy line at 3rd and Army and run through the sand gaps could convincingly place this part in ‘Yeah Right.’
Atmospherics fog and drip through the efforts of Jacob Harris, probably the UK’s leading videomaker now working — his long lens is less claustrophobic than Bill Strobeck’s, letting the spots, places, squishy ocean creatures and, importantly, his Isle-aligned subjects room to shape the part or clip or whatever it may be. It was Chris Jones earlier this year living and surviving abroad and at home, conveying gray skies, memory, apprehension, comfy sweaters, switch backside ledge tricks and sometimes gathering one’s self inward to fit through tight spaces. All the brick and muted tones and plinking piano easily carve a place for this alongside the best of Britain’s output over the past 20 years.
A sitar-spiced, yoga-flavoured ollie-grabber may well be an incongruous look for DC Shoe Co USA amid its current Y2K nostalgia flex, but bear ye in mind: DC’s arguable glory days fused AVE’s sweaty hesh-ledging with Stevie Williams’ graphical denims and Colin McKay in late-career parrothead mode. Meanwhile Ipath may be another year or two from its next private equity-backed relaunch, and John Gardner seems to sport the requisite level of yellow. Accompanying the steadily sprawling DC team to various heavily trafficked East Coast spots didn’t seem to diminish John Gardner’s cockeyed and off-center approach, as he found lesser-trod lines through Pulaski and a couple of New York’s regular summer tourist destinations. And his thirst for risk remains in place, as per the round-the-corner coping ride and a rare flip trick into a glass bank, or skating an air conditioner.
A grace refreshing as swallowing cool water on a hot day, easier on the eyes than a finely tuned, Swiss-built eyeball massager — it is Ishod Wair, emerging from injury and setback to stand again, slyly grinning, upon a heap of immaculately filmed, gloriously soundtracked bullshit. Try not to smile at the shoulder-lean sign dodge; suppress if you can the gasface reflex at the frontside feeble hopped up to smith grind; see whether you can keep your eyes in a non-bugged position as he tailblocks to revert in the deep end; acquire a fire extinguisher for after you set your house and garage aflame following the various and unbelievable flip tricks over the bump to bar.
As is customary, Bronze 56K and Gucci Mane functioned on similar wavelengths in 2018 — both renowned for prolific output, facial tats and holding down East Atlanta, this year both chose to take time crafting their latest projects. This sweaty labor shows in Bronze’s ‘Its Time,’ an internet YouTube file uploaded in tribute to C1RCA’s 2007 movie ‘It’s Time,’ only without the apostrophe, because street life doesn’t allow much room for punctuation and the seconds needed to tap ‘123’ and differentiate the apostrophe from the suspiciously similar comma could cost your life. Like the ribs at a strip club lunch buffet, Buggy Talls has been slowly marinating in Wyoming-based Bronze’s thick and lustrous sauce for several years, and now appears solidly ‘in the window’ — see him gnaw his way up a wall switch to k-grind, backside flip out from a frontside bluntslide with the power of an emotional Transworld video, back-to-back bigspinning light-footedly down Parisian stone, the way the Californians do. The jacket game on the switch 180 manual impossible out is accurately judged to be among the year’s coldest.
The vert division of Lakai Limited Footwears had a big 2018, between Tyler Pachecho’s waking-dream Tony Hawk commercial, the Birdman’s premium-priced pro model and the continually more crucial existence of Jimmy Wilkins, yung Creature pro, prowling for danger in and around giant ramps. The unit-shifting power of all this remains that mystery odor wafting from some metaphorical pad pile’s nether zone, but Jimmy Wilkin’s blood pumping pro turn for Creature provided empiricals for new above-deck backside sugarcane speed capabilities, to shove-it out even, and stabs at a lateral-distance record on the massive 360, no hands. His blistering backside noseblunts challenge for position in the trick’s galactic power rankings, even if skating for a ‘legacy skate shoe brand’ and being chosen by the vert discipline otherwise places Jimmy Wilkins into a pretty lonely Venn diagram slice.
The great flattener of the skate-boarding discipline — crucially differentiating from those requiring planetary gravity to best friction (snowboarding) or churn up liquified transitions (surfing) or plummet to the Earth’s surface (sky boarding) — is that practitioners require little more than a board and some flat surface to get busy, unlock leveled rewards, collect money sacks, and other wish fulfillments. Village Psychic patron James Sayres is exhibit 946,788 in his daylong loops around Brooklyn Borough Hall, drawing sparks from little besides some curbs, grates and outdoor furnitures. Set against energetic beep-bloops and an intensely vibing androgyne, James Sayres cracks fat jumps and swerves on pedestrians over what looks like one of the most satisfying afternoons at the spot with all the bros of all time. Witness the over-grate ghetto bird and switch 360 flip, and his fakie flip form, all the way on point.
boil the ocean 
