Tiago Lemos Responds To ‘Verso’ With 17-Minute Canadian Part

In a time of ceaseless flux, resourcefulness and ingenuity are the watchwords that launch names onto marquees and plump cartoon moneybags. Similar to Beyonce’s smash hit revenge album ‘Lemonade’ but with visa problems instead of Jay-Z cheating on you, Brazilian pop sensation Tiago Lemos found Montreal’s spots and poutineries wide open to his throwback DCs after an alcohol-infused airline excursion got his US papers yanked. In what has become a hallowed annual event, the Tiago Lemos footage dump, Canada’s premiere Canadians ‘Dime’ blessed various masses this week with their latest ‘Knowing’ mixtape release, compensating for a shortfall in bowling ball hammers with generous helpings of international nomad Tiago Lemos, his bionic ledgework and multicoloured DC sweaters gracing the ‘City of Saints.’

‘Knowing Mixtape Vol. 1’ was rightly regarded as one of the most shocking and introspective vids of the time. Still, it is used to calm jittery racehorses and inspire young businesspersons clicking shut their briefcases before heading out to close their first big deal. Lacking the same level of bowling ender-enders, Dime unites now with Tiago Lemos as the world’s preeminent switch backside tailslider faces a career crossroads. With a Primitive video release looming — presumably to unload his DC-clad footage prior to taking his talents to a major international sportswear conglomerate — and after that, putting all of Brazil on his back for the 2020 Olympic gold hunt, Tiago Lemos in the coming years may well have less time to toss ‘white rappers’ over picnic tables among friends on Quebecios hillsides, or engage in lengthy dap sessions in container-shipping yards.

Draped in XL cotton, here Tiago Lemos unloads an all-time switch shove-it rewind over a bench, a switch heelflip tailslide on a gap to ledge, a switch heelflip nosegrind during some only-in-Montreal session for the ages that also featured Jake Johnson jumping on a switch Pupecki grind. Elsewhere skateboarding’s collective kid brother Etienne Gagne twirls a nollie backside bigspin noseblunt, Leon Chapdelaine hops from a backside smith grind out and down some stairs, and Tristan Funkhouser bluntslides out to a base jump. There is Alexis Lacroix’s weirdly impressive duckfooted backside tailslide and the always worthwhile Antoine Asselin, cultivating a Jimmy Carlin look.

Does ‘Knowing Mixtape Vol 2’ represent one last carefree nollie frontside crooked-grinding summer vacation for Tiago Lemos before having to ‘get serious’ for career and country in the 2K2oh? Did the Dime people get the boot from that one bowling alley or merely shut it down eternally? Is the cat riding Alexis Lacroix’s shoulders through the China Banks part of a new generation of ‘skate pets’ including recent pro Murdy The Dog, ready to carry the sub-subculture forward from famous and moneyed skate pets of yesteryear including Meaty, Liam and the well-traveled Girl goldfish?

Are You People Paying Attention To The Things Jackson Curtin Is Doing Right Now?

This photo should be enough. Great skater, super hard trick, exactly the right angle, tweaked to the maximum, pants right. Time was, you’d painstakingly tear out a page like this one in the Milton Martinez Thrasher and tape it onto the wall. That still happens, but the time for wall-staring slowly is passing into shadow. Soon enough, our walls will stare at themselves.

The photo’s primal waves lead to another, more fundamental question, which is whether the swipe-happy, dead-eyed and flesh-consuming populace is giving Jack Curtin his proper due. In a world that criminally overlooked Ryan Gallant’s late-period surge, only now seems to be appreciating the treasure that is Javier Sarmiento, and failed to elevate Steve Durante to household name status, it is not an idle question.

A seminal technician with international flair and an allergy to basic-ass T-shirts, Jackson Curtin approaches the 2020s a seasoned veteran, but from ‘Pack a Lunch’ onward he seems never to have blown up relative to the skill and stylistic levels implied. Last year, he switch kickflip wallrode and switch backside noseblunted a chunky hubba for the ever-inscrutable Skate Mental label. This year he slid through New York for the Gridlock series, ripped Pier 7 and the SF Library amid the broader SF reinvigoration GX1000 set off in the hills and Supreme carried to EMB, and last week he slapped up trickblockers and put a noseblunt onto the Carroll/Chico block-to-block list for his most recent New Balance shoe design, centered on the increasingly on-burn black and clear colour scheme.

Is everybody properly savouring the current Jackson Curtin moment? Can the collective powers of Jack Curtin, Tyler Surrey, Tom Knox and recent DC Shoe Co USA defector Tiago Lemos unite to somehow make it cool to wear grandpa shoes with with a big letter N on the side? What are the odds Jack Curtin could get back to Pulaski for a joint part with Bobby Worrest? Should Paul Rodriguez, dealing with Primitive’s steadily expanding roster, spend some of his Naruto duckets on the apparently still existing Deca and put on Jack Curtain, JB Gillet, Daewon Song and fuck it, Carlos Iqui?