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?

Two Wrongs, A Right, And The Gargoyle’s Secret Formula

At a time when so much of what we know seems in flux — meat grown from animal cells, NASA robotically probing risky asteroids for humankind’s own graven purposes, rampant varial flips — there is a reflexive urge to set things in order. Ledge skating’s tenure-track man of letters Mark Suciu made his own offering this month, creating exclusive content with Thrasher that set out a number of aesthetically acceptable ledge combinators and warned impressionable yung booger-sliders away from a few others, including the oft-maligned crooked grind to backside lipslide.

Among the regimented rules of skateboarding, where ‘no rules’ is the ruling rule among many other unofficial rules, the crooked grind to backside lipslide’s longstanding pariah status stands out, maintained even as similarly ill-advised ledge combos ran rampant across copiously waxed blocks following ‘Fully Flared.’ Born of those spastic curb cauldrons in the early 1990s, the crooked grind to backside lipslide lay low for a certain number of Earth years until Bastien Salabanzi donked one down a semi-legit handrail in ‘Sorry,’ drawing immediate reprisals in the shallow backwaters of the early message-board days and inspiring several other related atrocities over the years to come. It was a time of war, girth and widespread musical pirating.

Yet even as aesthetically middling ledge combos (see the 5-0 to switch crooked grind) and clearly ugly ones (see any that begin with a boardslide) remain part of 2018’s conversation, the crooked grind to backside lipslide still is taboo, even after stylistically endowed persons including Silas Baxter-Neal have tiptoed up to it via the crooked grind to backside tailslide and ruffled relatively few internet feathers in the process. Weighed against the lipslide to switch k-grind that arose from the Guy Mariano/‘Fully Flared’ school or the twirly lipslide spinaround to frontside bluntslide, the crooked grind to backside lipslide on paper appears to have just as much to recommend it, if not more — there is no greasily scooting of wheels from one position to another; it involves the backslide lipslide, one of the better-looking tricks on either rail or ledge; and properly executed, it returns to the preferred regular-stance rollaway rather than to fakie.

Unlocking the value of this much-derided trick maybe requires a much-derided skater. It is Chad Fernandez, so belittled by his onetime Baker Boys bros and a prime actor in Osiris’ greatest ‘Storm’-era excesses, who retains the best on-film execution of the crooked grind to backside lipslide. A novice beerbuyer’s age in the past, the future gargoyle wrassler closed out his part in Transworld’s little-recalled ‘Interface’ vid with a ten-second clinic on the necessary ingredients for a successful run at this trick. Filmed long-lens from the side, Chad Fernandez picks an elongated and mostly flat rail that allows for the crucial nuance — a lengthy crooked grind, rather than the brief tap that sets other renditions up for immediate and pathetic failure — before dropping back to a backside lipslide that’s just long enough to make the point before landing back to regular. This skater-trick intersection, counterintuitive to the hilt, reveals the best in each — and also the sadly ingrained prejudices still allowing both to be too-easily dismissed, 20 years on.

Does this clip negate the long-held notion that two wrongs do not make a right? Would this one be harder or easier switch? Could Mark Suciu prove his willingness to accept an intellectual and stylistic challenge by filming one, perhaps up and then across the chunky red kink-ledge at Manhattan’s Columbus Park, which he combo’d in his Adidas shoe video earlier this year?

Street League Profiles Run Through Google Translator Nine or Ten Times

Chris ‘Carl Orff’ Cole
Carl Orff players not only together but also the root of the covenant of the people of any remnant; They do. This is the best in the whole of the population that was the most beautiful skateboard. Nyjah Huston was once quoted as saying: “We can not do the trick Carl ‘can say that can not win the fight to conquer new Tour tweezers .. No Money Cup Berrics battle for Copernicus 10 games to name a few.

Luan Oliveira
2014 referendum was won on the history of Tampa Pro 2015 champion, took second and first victory SLS Los Angeles, but only SLS followed other victories in New Jersey. Probably one of the best advantages of skateboards and Luan, the serious wounds, there is a style that is unmatched seek nine standard complacency club, he often did 17 times SLS career. Nike SB skateboarding, Lu’an have the final 86% when he joined SLS in 2011 and four championships, participated in the 2015, where he finished third.

Kelvin Hoefler
Curabitur Brazilian women after the wedding and Kelvin Hoefler SB World Tour 2015 is put on the face 21 of the third year, the leader of the pro love is not a fight out of the competition SLS. Their promotion of some surprise, but the content is convinced Hoefler and last payo’ana. In 2014, put into two groups, then the second events ice skating can be canceled by a good deal of the load 1, 2, and war. After that, he will appear in 2014 Kimberley Diamonds South Africa World Cup fan base around the world Hoefler and hunger, and you can do with fear, show that even the SLS.

David Gonzalez
David Gonzalez usually the first day was good, but even after a crash a few fights during that time. It has lost some space in 2013 in all respects with an ankle injury in 2014 with a broken leg. Health Now in 2015, we are expecting to see him get a championship, he grew up in Colombia in 2012, Gonzalez Slasher in his skate skating to gymnastics. When he left the gym, skateboarding, skating friends sent to him and happy to see him fly down Gonzalez put him in the lineup Flip Video. The other line is a fan favorite, and another 8.1 bonus tricks because you can get a demo if high-flying in 2015.

Torey Pudwill
Torey Pudwill humor or the interpretation lipslide combos league fan favorites. Each time, the valley to help. In 2012, approximately 5.7 years of the 18 stops at the end of the game 7.0. In 2013, this 6-products, collecting approximately 7.2, but the magic of the pitfalls, it is raised to 8.7. Until the end of the cage to collect his best season in 2014 3 8.0 and 9.2 in the song of the net. As the league in 2015, playing a married couple.

Kevin Bradley
Kevin Brad leak Wren show in Los Angeles, was born and raised in California, his tricks and video of the unhealthy part 2014 video “Cherry” from last year and the waves, Nike SB will drop “3 Chronicle”. His style is a fluid, and just Kevin SLS Nike SB skate in the bag of tricks, it is frustrating to see the 2,016th of World Tour.

Bastien Salabanzi
France Bastien Salabanzi was a child prodigy discovered in Europe Skateboards flip at the end of 1990. He turned professional in 2000 and had amazing video parts in Flip “Sorry” and “very sorry.” He is also a prolific skater competition. His victories are too numerous to mention, but many of them are remarkable. Tampa Pro won in 2004 and the second in 2005. The same year he won the contest WSR05 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 2006 he won the Mystic Skate Cup in Prague, Austria. In 2007, he won the Pro Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2008 he won the Globe Metz Master. In 2010, the fourth of the Maloof Money Cup in New York. Two years later, he was received in the Street League after winning the European team. He and 12 other European professionals were given 12 hours to become a party in a park in Barcelona, ​​where fans, judges and Via Lega Pro voted for him. In his first appearance in Street League Kansas City, MO, who finished second, which is his best result to date. In his three years away league career, which has the biggest rounds scored 9.2 in 2012 and 9.3 in 2014. 2015 will be another year for fans to eradicate this energy flashes quickly, the French victory.

Chris Joslin
Chris Joslin garden, about his Chris that was brought up by his grandmother shot is true of rat ridge, great party is every day in order to put it on Instagram which is scheduled to last fall break that she must not have take, his sponsor, to drop the patina of the video clip, but is please do not forget that B, it is Send. He most of November, is a professional in 2016 with our wanted a fan Chris, I want to make sure that you are all a combination of Nike SB SLS World Tour.

Pride Parade

It’s 2015 and despite some generational turnover-style moulting, skateboarding has a lot to feel good about. Tony Hawk’s a millionaire several times over. Rodney Mullen is a snaggle-toothed guru of non-linear thought to Silicon Valley. We got Andy Roy gainfully employed and Fred Gall hitched. Even in the beleaguered independent board-and-shoe biz, growth prospects are good enough for capital formation to have graduated from loan sharks to the gaudily moneyed arena of private equity, placing the Flare and OG logo in good company with assorted interior design firms and taco retailers. The fat tail distribution of the skate-doc curve suggests that within several years’ time everyone who was pro in the 1980s will have had a movie made about them, prioritized somewhat by property-damage totals and conspiracy theorizing. There is a new Bronze vid.

Like a satisfied father, hoarse of voice after lustily screaming through the chain-link fence, watching his sponsorship-bound progeny trudge back up the park steps for another try at the kickflip frontside boardslide, skating seems to be feeling its oats and raring to tell the world — in press release form, as has become the industry’s customary form of communication besides Instagram. Graphical sock firm Stance and their shoe collaborators Vans seemed barely able to contain themselves recently, declaring themselves ‘honored’ to begin selling a group of socks colored to look like famous skateboards. “[A]s much as these legends have redefined skating, they have also reminded us to be true to ourselves,” Vans and Stance socks counseled shoppers.

Medieval theologian Pat Pasquale has been quoted warning that ‘inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin,’ but leave it to the skating biz to thumb nose and/or tail at even the highest of authorities, never mind those Mother Mary sleeves. With the Plan B video looming, Etnies last autumn proudly welcomed Chris Joslin, not long after those Sole Tech tourmates to be at Lakai proudly introduced Jon Sciano and the Fura shoe. Lakai also proudly launched the Spring 2014 Echelon collection, having earlier proudly announced Daniel Espinoza to the team and proudly introduced Vincent Alvarez’s shoe.

Just last month Paul Rodriguez’s Primitive skateboards proudly welcomed double Flip king Bastien Salabanzi, the same month Transworld was proud to grant a posthumous ‘legend’ award to Jay Adams, while Vox shoes proudly hired Victor Garibay and RVCA was proud to offer clothes designed by Elementeer Juian Davidson.

Things slowed down somewhat this month with Street League and SPOT contest supervisors proudly joining forces, and the water company Fred Water proud to sponsor Jamie Thomas and Tony Hawk, among others.

Who retains humility in these heady times? As ever it requires an injection of that fabled 1990s rawness, in this instance, taking the form of JNCO denim pants, those heavily stitched movables with the reliably ballooning seats. Emboldened by its own capital infusion, JNCO pants have reannounced themselves to the world while communicating its investors’ zest for selling unconstrained denim garments without using the word ‘proudly,’ setting an example of understated modesty and grace that other action sport concerns might well emulate.

“JNCO defined a way of life that pushed the limits, encouraged creativity and championed individuality creating the original lifestyle brand that became the foundation of the 90’s youth generation. Presently, the Journey of the Chosen Ones (JNCO) is guided by its main principle: “Challenge conventionalism. Explore the unfamiliar. Honor individuality.” Through this platform, JNCO aspires to bring together the chosen ones – a multitude of like-minded individuals with a shared passion for culture, sports and the arts, on a collective journey that will strengthen their position as the leaders of today’s society.”

Stardate 91361.54: When Shit Got Real In Foz Do Iguacu And Several Other International Locales

In a true parable of our times, ESPN and the X-Games determined earlier today to slice four international stops from the great vert ramp routine that is the expanded X-Games contest season. After nobly floating ramps in overseas locales to the ticklement of foreign-born action sportsters, the X-Games chickens shall come home to roost in the U.S., just as the world’s largest economy writhes in the throes of a national budgetary impasse and considers chicken-counting of a different sort altogether.

“[T]he overall economics of these events do not provide a sustainable future path,” ESPN said in a statement.

X-Games’ 18-month sojourn abroad, cut short by those unyielding mistresses Dollar and Cents, is a cautionary tale that saw certain ESPN officials subtly ringing alarm bells months ago. Internet website Dead Spin.com last April disclosed an ESPN memo regarding the Brazilian event that characterized the international push’s path to financial success as “extremely” difficult, employing language designed to resonate with network rank-and-file who brought the world the first ever YOLO flip on a snowboard, Gymkhana GRID and a previous 50-Cent concert.

As per the DeadSpin-obtained memo:
Hourly folks – don’t push the OT. If it’s 9:10, take the 9:00 out – don’t push for 9:30. Heck, maybe you’d like to actually contribute an hour or two of your OT to the cause and take a 7:00 out. Trust me – no one’s going to the bank on this one. If this idea appeals to anyone, we can start an honorary wall of contributors in the office.

Were the international X-Games pressured by the freewheeling ways of folks unable to look beyond the next hour of OT? Will a failure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and subsequent dents to the American sovereign credit rating further challenge the remaining domestic X-Games? Would Bastien Salabanzi have “shut it down” at the French stop and potentially replicated the YOLO flip for a skateboard audience?

Ishod Wair, Roaming Wide Open Spaces Of Brick And Leaf

Next to Luy-Pa Sin, JB Gillett, Bastien Salabanzi and Henning Braaten, the hot shoes of Lordz Wheels’ 2004 production “They Don’t Give A Fuck About Us” shared billing with this pretty dizzying array of amazing spots that a lot of us in the US had yet to see at the time, when the domestic pro wave had at that point fully crashed into Barcelona and France but had yet to wash over the rest of the continent. Situated amongst the rickety handrails and cluttered run-ups that you’d come to associate with old-world skating was a whole smorgasbord of expansive, new-looking plazas drenched with marble and strewn about with all manner of ledges and steps and banks and wedges. At various times it was almost like it didn’t matter which dude was pushing through or what he was up to exactly, you could sit back and let your imagination go.

Into the annals of spot pr0n now comes Ishod Wair, human American, pictured above tooling through this carnival of brick that reportedly can be found in Hamburg, Germany. Some time back we linked up an old Tom Penny section that amounted to a couple one-off tricks in a skatepark and then one long, meandering line down a street on a sunny afternoon, with some commentary stapled onto it to the effect that such a line summed up certain shit about the appeal of this beloved action sport. The spot in the Ishod Wair clip gets to some of those ideas in the same way as the great ‘plazas’ of yesteryear, like the Santa Monica Courthouse, EMB, Pier 7, Love Park, Sants station and so on — these big blank canvasses where a dude, possibly feeling his oats, could pull trick after trick until his batteries give out like Mike Carroll in “Goldfish” or he runs out of space like Josh Kalis. No need to X off rail or gap tricks from a finite list and enough room on the benches over to the side for bro spillover; extra bonus points awarded to Ishod Wair here for inserting a flatground kickflip into the mix, no sweat.

Bastien Salabanzi Does Not See Eye To Eye With Elderly Lotto Winners But As Far As We Can Tell Has Not Yet Taken Any Wild Animals Captive For Celebration Purposes

On the evening of March 30, Merle and Pat Butler of Red Bud, IL embarked upon the dropping of a certain brand of lifestyle hammer that in certain ways has never before been seen. After hitting a record lotto jackpot, they kept their heads down and stayed on the proverbial grind for nearly three weeks before stepping forward to acknowledge their lifestyle hammer of $110 million that has made them “rich forever,” in the parlance of Maybach Music Group. In purely lotto terms, this was the equivalent of Geoff Rowley segueing into a modest flatground line after completing his Clipper assault and briefly praising the Lord.

The behaviour exhibited by the lucky retirees stands in sharp contrast to other rapidly enriched persons including footballer Chad Johnson, whose urge to share his exuberance upon scoring points has occasionally included unique collabs with other species.

“On the highway, I hit a deer,” Johnson said Tuesday, insisting he was serious and that the animal wasn’t hurt. “I kept him. He’s at home in the garage. I’m going to use him for the celebration this weekend. He’s a prop. They might suspend me for the last game, but I think this one is worth it.”

France’s Bastien Salabanzi has not divulged capturing live animals for the purposes of hyping supporters, but he has staked out ground as among skateboarding’s biggest believers in one’s self and in the past has openly expressed himself in front of a live arena audience. Like Greg Lutzka’s happily snapping fingers and Bob Burnquist’s tears of joy, Bastien Salabanzi’s penthouse quarters on cloud nine have left a bad taste in the mouths of some and occasionally drawn fire from others.

ESPN: Why do you get so much grief for doing that?
BS: It’s skateboarding. The cool attitude is to do the gnarliest thing and make it look like you do it every morning on the way to go get the bread at the store, like the trick is completely normal.

I don’t really care. I don’t want to be someone else. It makes me happy when I land something. But I can understand from an outside point of view, maybe from someone who liked to watch skateboarding but never really did it hard they cannot relate to that kind of behavior. For example, a lot of people talk about John McEnroe, that the guy is insane and he goes mental on the court but at the same time people agree that he was one of the best that has ever played. I’m sure he doesn’t care his reputation is to be completely crazy. What he cares about is the number of tournaments he’s won.

Skateboarding’s rejection of big upping one’s self is rooted in a historic aversion to the sort of chest-beating that characterized the mainstream sports kids were supposed to be pursuing in the 80s and 90s when the sheen of televised vert contests began to recede. The country wasn’t trying to care about Jovontae Turner doing 360 flips and nollie nose manuals and generally dudes weren’t fooling themselves. All this stuff was going on in parking lots and around back of some department stores, and if you knew you knew, etc.

Is this mode of thinking outdated when our $15 million man Rob Dyrdek is finally getting around to starring in some tossed-off show he pitched to MTV five years ago and decks regularly outsell Louisville Sluggers? Have we become so coldhearted as to begrudge Billy Marks a moment of euphoria at the big Wilshire handrail? Did Forrest Edwards transcend the self-cheering debate when he cooly explained the heaviness of his go-to tricks? Do yall realize this posting has incorporated so far three ESPN web-links?

It used to be humbler times, when a trick-namer such as Tony Hawk was gluing plies together by hand in the back of his Lexus as he stayed one step ahead of repo men and sought to put food on the table, or when bros were hopping fences to get at wealthier folks’ lightly used pools. Bastien Salabanzi recently skated a private park to try and qualify for a contest series where he could pocket some $1 million, and the idea of hiding his double-cabellarial flipping light under a bushel seems to strike him as outlandish.

What do you put the importance on?
At the end of the day I don’t want to be remembered as a cocky lunatic. I started skating in 1994. Today I watched the 12 minutes of footage from when I was a little kid and that’s when I was having so much fun and not caring about no industry or sponsors. I was just having fun and loving skating. That’s how I want to skate, to have fun and skating the way I want to skate like when I was 13.

I’m happy with the road I took and the way things happened; I don’t regret anything. But I do understand the people that find my behavior too much, at the same time I don’t care. I’m 26, I learned and I’ve evolved and think different. When I see my behavior at a contest from years ago I laugh so hard and think, “Wow, I was a little bit crazy.”

The Spirit of Competition

“show you how to hustle”

When you watch this video of Dennis Busenitz at the Adidas Skateboard Clash contest in Berlin and you see:
-the quick set-up switch backside 50-50 (0:30)
-the hip ollie, frontside ollie on the vert wall (1:20)
-smith grind up the little rail/backside lipslide on the slant box/etc line (2:09)
-backside 50-50 up the hubba (3:00), and
-the surprise finishing move (3:30)

Do you:
A. Wonder who else might have possibly won this contest?
B. Already know it was aside-from-Stevie-Ray-Vaughn-tattoo-looks-and-skates-like-he-did-when-he-was-16 Bastien Salabanzi?
C. Ponder how Dennis Busenitz has banked street cred and power-speed skating to such an extent that he has become revered alongside skate message board dieties Bobby Puleo, Julien Stranger and Gino Iannucci?
D. Wonder what Jereme Rogers was doing at the time?