3. Grant Taylor – “Debacle”

Despite turning in one of the more rewatchable parts in Alien’s very rewatchable “Mind Field,” the one nit this blog-site picked was that Grant Taylor’s section could’ve featured more of his coldly controlled transition stuff, and sure enough a few months later the Lite-Brite perpetual motion machine that was Jason Hernandez’s “Debacle” vid for Nike delivered the goods. Much like the lime-green drug rug donned for backyard rain dances, Grant Taylor wrings extra mileage out of the classics (one-footer, stand-up frontside 5-0s in the deep end) without coming off like one of those kids who hurried to learn pivot fakies after all his friends quit frontside flipping the stairs down by the school. The roly-poly launch to quarterpipe transfer thingy is one of my favorites in this and still gives me the willies occasionally, even after watching this video dozens of times on the i-pod.

Sleeping Through the Afternoon

Tick-tock

Ayy, don’t think of it as a lull in posting, but instead rather a meta-type comment on laziness and sloth, or more specifically the type of calculated and semi-responsible laziness apparently practiced by Mark Appleyard over the last half-decade as we continue to parse the new Flip video. Appleyard’s part was good and all – indeed pretty great at points, yah – but kind of like when you first learned about Dr. Dre’s history with Eazy E and Jerry Heller, the thing took on a whole new depth after I checked out Appleyard’s Thrasher interview (Geoff Rowley cover).

I heard a rumor that you finished your part years ago.
Yes I did. The bulk of it I fininshed in 2004, right after the SOTY, when I was really on fire.

You’re like the kid that finishes his homework before class is even over.
Yeah, get ‘er done. Finish it on up.

So this hasn’t been a big push for you these last few months.
Not really. I don’t really work well under pressure. I try, but as far as going out and kickflip boardsliding down El Toro, that’s not really my style. I don’t really want to risk anything or get hurt ’cause I like to skate a lot. I want to be able to skate on a daily basis and not to anything that’s too stressful.
…
What trick are you most pleased with in the video?
Maybe the tre flip noseslide I did down Wilshire — five years ago.

Reading between the lines (on the page and in the vid) you can roughly guess that Appleyard has spent the past five years more or less perpetually smoked out, becoming a devout follower of Jah and occasionally buying expensive Rolex timepieces or filming a trick. There’s no jarring fresh-to-hesh stuff going on but you could kind of place some of the footage by the bagginess of any given pair of pants. Beyond an acknowledged addiction to the nollie backside bigspin he remains super good, a solid case for the frontside noseslide to fakie and other tricks that others sometimes would do better to leave alone, like the switch 180 manual/5-0 (the one down the Standford hubba ledge was pretty bonkers). Notable also: the nollie bigspin b/s tailslide and the kickflip b/s tailslide shove-it on the just-liberated Hubba Hideout, and taken on its own, slipping the nollie backside noseblunt in the first third of the part hints at a far more interesting video that could’ve been, at least editing-wise.

There’s less nuance to former Appleyard roomie Rodrigo TX’s section, but of course way more tech-trick fireworks, with a lot of stuff that looks like it could’ve been shoehorned into his “Menikmati” section (5-0 180 out on the hubba, or anytime he wears shorts). The tall backside tail’s awesome, along with the picnic table Pupecki and the Mariano bench trick, and that one line sort of made me wish more dudes skated in camo pants still. Most of those Barcelona bench moves are totally out of hand and in terms of raw unbridled skills TX probably still ranks alongside your Chris Coles, Marc Johnsons and Eric Kostons, but I’m not sure if the dude has a real classic video part in him.

Rock and Hammer

More are bound to suffer

A few weeks back I loaded up the Rocky Norton “Mag Minute” because I thought he had a funny-sounding name and his clip might be interesting, and it was, but first let’s flash back to 2002, when the wounds of September 11 were still raw, the presidency was just a twinkle in Sen. Barack Obama’s eye and future SOTY Chris Cole was leaping his way down the Love park fountain, into a tighter set of jeans and onto Zero. Late in the summer, on a night much like tonight, I remarked to a bro how I was kind of digging Chris Cole’s part in the TWS vid “In Bloom” but there was something I couldn’t put my finger on about it, and after a certain amount of blackberry brandy, it seemed as though that something was in fact the size of Chris Cole’s forearms, which at times seemed to resemble some type of heshed-out ape.

Flashing forward to 2009, that phrase is not one I would apply to Rocky Norton, mostly because I prefer not to take my pancake breakfasts through a straw and also I hope one day to teach my many, many awestruck grandchildren about the glory days of skateboard blogging in the early part of the century. Let’s try and think of a more noble analog for New Mexico’s Norton – he can have his pick of Popeye or Bluto – and draw a parallel to a 2007 video part, namely Fred Gall in “Inhabitants.” There’s some similar ideas going on in terms of tricks and terrain, yeah, but I’m thinking more about the construction digger machine gnawing into a brick wall, an image that fit Fred Gall, but now appears made for Rocky Norton. Same with Eric Koston’s trick in the Lakai intro, complete with soul scream.

In the ensuing weeks the Mag Minute footage remains on my mind, leading me to dig up some older parts* and consider this dude’s approach. In some ways it’s like Mike Vallely without all the beards and bands and bullshit, but then he’s nollie backside flip reverting and bashing walls and things, primed to tear apart phone books and put on some David Banner CDs. I think I’m pretty into the raw powerness of it all and will give the dude some elbow room; meanwhile I’m considering a belated apology to Chris Cole, before he becomes enraged and targets my face with a contest closer (2:41).

*also Daniel Lutheran, not bad

Mike Vallely Films the First ‘Battle Commander’ Part I Watch More Than Once

File under: skateboard tricks

When the untamed New Jerseyan, slam poet and personal brand that is Mike Vallely parked his black novelty sportscar outside the Berrics’ hallowed walls, we should have known something was up. Inviting the streetplanting hockey blogger to a technical flip-trick contest for which he was ill-suited was silly enough, and while Vallely kept a lid on his famously flaring temper throughout what looked like a pretty lighthearted affair, it stands to reason that he/his people wanted a little sugar to go with the tough flatground medicine that Chris Cole was dishing out. And so it swung onto the interwebs this weekend, the Mike Vallely “Battle Commander” section, crushing preconceived notions of skateboarding and reality itself. Sort of exactly like the iconic monster truck scene from “Road House.”

These little parts have been used by marquee pros to tease “legit” video parts and test-drive new tricks, but for me at least they’re generally snoozers, seeings’ how it is a part filmed entirely in one skatepark (dramatic light notwithstanding). For Vallely though this is kind of the ultimate environment. It’s a park for one, and the dude has filmed entire documentaries and TV miniseries in parks. Their legal nature provides him plenty of tries for the type of big jumps that get the kids on their feet, and the Berrics’ malleable format gives Vallely’s inner elephant plenty of room to swing its tattooed trunk and plant its broad feet here and there, as the whims of Vallely dictate. At one point they even show him drilling down a board that I thought was going to facilitate an even more huger boneless, but in a typical Mike V twist, he uses it for a drop-in (!) and leaves me confounded once more.

There are all types of amazing tricks in this part though, set off with that somersault/cartwheel into the Chris Cole-approved streetplant transfer thing. Vallely shits upon naysayers, breaking out his legendary no-handed 360 flip along with a couple other flip tricks that incorporate grabs and/or walking up a hubba ledge. Proving that he pays more attention to “new school” skating than he likes to let on, he throws in an up-the-stairs move, along with an up-rail trick with a launch-ramp assist, an obvious reference to “Storm”-era T-bone. Also he wears a vest.

Mike Vallely has been many things to many people. For instance he was once a vegetarian, a lifestyle he left behind in order to chew scenery in the Paul Blart movie.* He’s been called more politician than skateboarder, but what I think Mike V is, is a showman. And he figured out a while ago that he tends to perform best in controlled environments, with the possible exception of Warp Tours, where it seems like just about anything goes. Revolution Mutha music included, this really was the most entertaining Berrics segment I’ve watched in a long time. A few tricks over that hot rod and two solid minutes of purposeful pushing and it would’ve been easily the best part Mike V has filmed in the last 20 years I bet.

*oh, we went there

Hey, Leo Romero Also Is Back On His Bullshit

Shoot the gun

So this RVCA* promo: basically it’s what you would expect, a load of longhairs in tight pants and red shoes, banks, jangly guitars, 5-0s and so on. It’s kind of less interesting to me than the company itself, as I’ve seen honest-to-god rappers wearing RVCA hats (I think in the XXL with Rawss on the cover) which made me wonder if RVCA is maybe far deeper in terms of, you know, cultural reach than I ever suspected, or perhaps they’re just the post-Vans revival DC except a clothing company. Which probably makes zero sense at all. Regardless Nestor Judkins has some really great tricks here, if that’s him hopping up on the backside lipslide and jumping the handrail into the bank, but otherwise this is all kind of by-the-numbers.

That is til 3 minutes in when the stage clears for Leo Romero to unleash the great Baker footage firehose, or at least the stuff that’s not worth saving for the Emerica vid, logo boards be damned. The fakie frontside blunt** opener was a good one I thought, back to the “That’s Life” part where he’d occasionally throw in random difficult ledge tricks in between gliding down gaps. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen any footage in a while but in this promo Leo Romero seems like he’s skating faster and angrier and at times (such as the humpty-hump to backside 180 and the tight-spot kickflips), seemingly for the sheer “fuck” of it, which is kind of a tough thing to communicate in an age awash with so much urban creativity. This is a good section, not great unless you look at it in terms of what he’s still sitting on, namely all the uphill handrail battles which are apparently contesting Heath’s white period for “Stay Gold” bragging rights. Not sure how rare this vid is supposed to be, but worth the free admission for the long slides, flashy frontside flip and artfully selected slams — which actually work for once, following the landed tricks toward the end of the part.

*Am I supposed to write it all in serious capital letters?
**And did I get it right this time? If I had things my way this would be a fakie ollie switch backside noseblunt because it’s totally different than a frontside bluntslide and everybody’s stupid anyway.