Little loved, often for cause, the switchstance frontside 180 nevertheless remains one of the more exacting barometers for skill, form and trick deployment available across nearly the entire spectrum of pros, ams and bros of any persuasion. Whereas it’s a daily affair to observe and commentate upon a particularly commanding 360 flip, and a rainbow of flavours and fillings of backside tailslides has long been available, a well executed, strategically positioned and pleasurable-to-observe switch frontside 180 remains a rarity indeed, even in this jiggling and footage-drenched age.
Apex specimens can be cracked high and spun late, or floated and slowly turned; like a melonchollie or certain other moves it is a trick that often must be grabbed by the face and ripped to pieces in a primal, commanding display. Those not hip to the teachings risk offering up lazy-scraping crop dusters that have come, sometimes rightly, to render the switch frontside 180 unto the realm of skatepark QP deck jumpers, and aging tween crooner Justin Bieber. Most these days opt to dispense with the whole thing and incorporate a switch heelflip, or kickflip, or make it into a bigspin, and can they be blamed? Even brawny editions such as yung TJ Rogers’ El Toro fling can come off like settling after better ‘basic’ tricks already have been chiseled into the stone tablets of the landmark gaps.
In a heady and histrionic time, there is a whiff of renaissance around the switch frontside 180, and rumours of things yet to pass. Quartersnacks recently observed in its year-end video part rodeo how Kyle Wilson’s booming version, which holds a firm position in his regular rotation, looks like he could take it over a house. His ‘Portions’ and ‘Beyond Tha 3rd Wave’ switch frontside 180s, paired with Kyle Wilson’s globally and correctly recognized ‘boss status,’ have in turn helped elevate the trick to a ‘cultural relevancy’ reminiscent of the late 1990s, when Tim O’Connor flexed a serrated, tweaked-out take in the Element World Tour video that solidified his status as the best to ever spin it.
The excitements continued this week with an abruptly uploaded Baker video, wherein after an inspiring and invigorating part from fortysomething Andrew Reynolds (who his own self once sailed a slow-mo-ish switch frontside 180 over a handrail whilst wearing a bucket hat in Birdhouse’s ‘The End’, released on the cusp of the Lewinsky affair), many astute switch frontside 180 watchers likely slumped back into the couch cushions, drowsy and sated by Kader Sylla’s textbook entry during the line that made up the bulk of his footage — the type that cemented this trick as a reliable line-linker in the mid-90s SoCal schoolyards wave.
This turned out tho to be a warm-up for Rowan Zorilla’s spin on the trick halfway through his blazing and ramshackle closer, flying one over a rail and into a bank that synthesized most of the premium versions available for this trick — high and lofty, a little bit of tweak and late rotation, over a handrail — to push up the switch frontside 180’s power rankings on the west side. The jazzy intonations and kink count make it an easy mirrorable of Danny Renaud’s CA sweep in ‘Mosaic’, and given Rowan Zorilla’s assortment of lesser-seen switchstance tricks and loose-fitting executions it is not surprising he’d have a good one, generating tingles as to what may come next in the still-building 2020s switch frontside 180 wave.
Did Rowan Zorilla opt not to bother to tighten his trucks on that rocky hubba ride or did his fuzzy, vaguely animalistic Supreme sweater bestow some poorly understood, primal powers? Do Supreme dudes really need to go that hard on the handrails? With Kader Sylla now of an age to lease luxury autos, does onetime Shep Dawg hot shoe Rowan Zorilla register as a Baker old head? What does that make Andrew Reynolds, here with footage that suggests no measurable decline since ‘Made 2’? Who is gonna be the next one on the switch frontside 180 Summer Jam screen?
boil the ocean 