For Posterity Purposes Boil Ocean Weblog Has Herein Transcribed Fred Gall’s Hail-Mary Call To Tony Hawk

Tony Hawk. Fred Gall. Two skate industry survivors, still in the game, against all odds. Surging gap-tamer Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki. Multicontinental crooner Burl Ives. The year: 2010. One fateful night at the U.S.-Canadian border, three of these would see their paths cross after border-manning authorities pinched yung Jaws, leaving his future in the hands of Fred Gall, his cell phone, and maybe, the international influence of Birdman ‘Tony’ Hawk. This week, nollie nosebluntsliding NGO-pro Ryan Lay resurfaced the legendary episode, which Boil A Ocean.Net transcribes here for historical reference purposes.

Tony Hawk: Yes.
Fred Gall: Yo, it’s Fred Gall, man.
Tony Hawk: Hey.
Fred Gall: Dude, I’m up here in Canada, man.
Tony Hawk: Yeah, I got your message, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Fred Gall: Well, alright. Jaws got denied, man. I don’t know why I wasn’t with him. You know me, I like to do my own thing. But I think you’re probably the only man that could help him get in this country.
Tony Hawk: OK, I have no idea how to approach that. What, do I just call the Canadian border? I don’t know.
Fred Gall: Man, T-Hawk man, it’s Fred Gall man. Remember I skated your ramp? Brian Ridgeway!
Tony Hawk: Yeah man, I know, yeah, I hear you, of course.
Fred Gall: You’re the only one that can help us. We need Jaws…
Tony Hawk: I would be happy to help if you could give me a directive. I can’t just help without knowing something specific, or someone to call.
Fred Gall: You know what Tony?
Tony Hawk: Yeah.
Fred Gall: I appreciate you even calling back, man.
Tony Hawk: OK, well, like I said, I totally would be happy to help Jaws, if he gets in a situation, where he can call me…
Fred Gall: No, he’s in a situation, Tony!
Tony Hawk: If someone…
Fred Gall: You’re the only one! Listen dude, alright. I’ll set it up.
(crosstalk)
Fred Gall: Dude, where you at right now, man?
Tony Hawk: I’m in Los Angeles.
Fred Gall: You partying?
…
Fred Gall: Dude, they denied him at the border, man!
Tony Hawk: Yeah, I understand…
Fred Gall: He does fucking McTwists, dude.
Tony Hawk: I understand what happened. But I can’t just call the Canadian border, you’ve got to give me something specific, OK…
Fred Gall: No, it’s not over yet. Please…
Tony Hawk: OK, it’s not over yet, tell Jaws to call me.
Fred Gall: Tony, Tony, can I just tell you one thing? I love you, brother. I jumped off your trampoline into your pool. Back with Brian Ridgeway.
Tony Hawk: Yeah, I remember.
Fred Gall: This is Fred Gall, man.
Tony Hawk: Yep, OK. Thanks, Fred.
Fred Gall: Get him in the country!
Tony Hawk: I’ll try.
Fred Gall: Alright. Take care, Tony.

Lucas Puig Is Skater Of The Quarantine

Where to turn, as walls reach up, close in and hold us? The global plague hems in the living, and each day claims more dead. Shades of apocalypse waft from emptied supermarket shelves and block-deep lines for firearms. Covid-19 sank feverish hooks into Josh Stewart; authorities spread sand and mulch over skateparks and at others, in a truly bizarre twist, threaten to arrest kids. Bill Withers passed, another piece of the music died. Gone last week is Jeff Grosso, irascible and deadly earnest skate dad to us all, who wore his love for the life on his sleeve and tried to rub some onto yours, too. It is frustrating and unfair. Feels like losing a general in the middle of a war.

Mired in gloom, to whom to look to for hope? A swaggering, bearded and sometimes-shirtless Frenchman beckons, modeling responsible social distancing behaviours from within a picturesque seaside flat. Lucas Puig is the Covid-19 therapeutic the world needs to see through these dark, blurring-together days. Sequestered with his family and a seemingly fully equipped toolbox, the Helas chairman sees Instagram’s skate-at-home campaigns and raises bets to heady, often ridiculous levels. When pros and assorted bros were doing their best living room Kevin Bilyeu, Lucas Puig stepped out and kickflipped a damn shoe, pleasing fans and earning packs of high-profile imitators. He melds that credits-section standby, the laying-down flip trick, with Max Geronzi’s 2019 shaped-board beatdown into a 360 flip novelty act with better form than many traditional line-filler variants. Ocean breezes wafting in, he switch lazer flips it, and moves on to yet stranger realms, 360 flipping a brush-on-wheels and catching it a foot high, or unlocking the Kelly Hart three-times 360 flip achievement on a 2×4 — gripped, you neanderthals, of course.

Lucas Puig also provides street footage, crucially in the drought. In this week’s Jacky Biarritz video, a breezy seaside bro-cam affair, he is switch kickflip backside noseblunting and switch heel mute grabbing, backside tailsliding tall blocks and channeling countryman Bastien Salabanzi in both backside flip and post-make exhortation. He howls and cheers his friends as they careen into downhill stair sets and energetically pat their bellies, presumably fat with freshly-boated fish. Fellow shoreman Vincent Milou blasts a street gap kickflip suitable for any of the world’s major urban centers, Sammy Mould scoots a block-to-block noseblunt slide, Rafa Cort Lorente threads a hairy bench-gap ollie by the beach (all their spots seem to be by the beach). By the time Jeremie Plisson scrapes his way backside down a ‘Sorry’-scale hubba, Lucas Puig is beside himself, lifting the viewer’s spirits — and maybe, the whole world’s.

Even in the midst of this worldwide virus crisis, do we ‘deserve Lucas Puig’? With the potential for months more sheltering-in-place ahead, must Thrasher’s brain-trust now consider the prospect of suspending this year’s asterisk-burdened SOTY chase and instead name a Skater Of The Quarantine? How many viewers subsequently opened their Milton Martinez SOTY Thrasher issues to read Lucas Puig’s last and hopefully prescient ‘Firing Line’ quote — “cela aussi passera” — this too shall pass? Have you, dear reader, opened your wallet to support shops through this unnerving and horrendous time?