7. Elijah Odom – ‘You Deserve It’

The record indicates that particular tricks, carried off in proper form and in the utmost time, can be enough all by themselfs to register placement on a year-end wrap list published on a web ‘blog’, and in this year, such an individual is Alltimers sponsored Elijah Odom, and specifically his fakie shove-it nosegrind across the step ledge in the company’s full-length vid from November. With enough time and thoughtful character placement, its praises could properly be sung (typed), though one may run the risk of short-shrifting a ton of the other material packed into this part, like the length he gets out of the backside 180 nosegrind on the big white Pulaski wall or the boosted fakie ollie over the rail. This dude is an East Coast bruiser with a silky backside flip and the muscle to plow through serious crust, like the backside 50-50 on the traffic barrier or the Philly step frontside nosegrind. He’s got a great fakie backside tailslide in the recent ‘Rascal’ video also.

5. Alexis Sablone — ‘Seize The Seconds’

Presented with a multiple choice questionnaire 18 years ago, would you have been able to accurately predict which ‘Wonderful, Horrible Life’ alum would embrace the Sikh religion, which would abandon the pro ranks for a rap career, and which would be in the SOTY running two decades hence? Alexis Sablone’s been around for a minute but her impassioned, cathartic, context-free board smashing at the start of her ‘Seize the Seconds’ section captures much of the 2020 moment. The ever-crisp flips and confident charges that follow are the release, and for sure among the most polished and best-captured stuff from her singular skating career. Ben Chadbourne and company catch all the angles, the toe poise on the smith grind dismount and barrier backside 180, the street-gap power heelflip. The left and right-footed kickflips in Florida speak for themselves, the subtext is gravy.