In this time of crypto currencies, rare earth minerals and collectible tokens, fortunes are made and lost on the strength of raw conviction, and sometimes, delicious menu items. Today’s frothy asset class may be tomorrow’s ‘dogecoin,’ led down the back road, shotgun in hand, to go ‘live on a farm.’ For every profitsome e-commerce adventure, there is a collapsed and hemorrhaging Pets.com, a phenomenon knowed to some as ‘the circle of life.’
In the similarly repetitious and vengeful skate sphere, the exact same scenario can be observed. Goofy boy pants have not only returned but command inflation-adjusted prices on the open market. You can film a pressure flip. RB Umali tapped in to contribute footage to noted revivalist John Shanahan’s 14th part of the year in the recent Pangle Jeans promo*. Genuine hype exists around the forthcoming Chocolate video**. As the koosh ball-shaped threat of Covid-19 gradually presents as more manageable, there are signs of new life and rebirth.
Samarria Brevard set things on tilt this month, as Thrasher unveiled her 360 flip hippie jump as the cover shot for the magazine’s January 2022 issue. As a trick it’s popped beyond most versions of this one and taken over/under a handrail approached frontside; as a cover, it is a milestone, the first Black woman on the storied periodical’s front, and the second woman in just four months after Breanna Gearing’s k-grind roof bomb from October.
Perhaps too obvious for most but quixotically updating web logs to note is the fact that Samarria Brevard’s cover trick here is not hitting the handrail, but avoiding it, making the photo another winsome landmark in handrail tricks’ yearslong decline as newsstand centerpiece and industry ‘talking point.’ Lo, six years ago Boiled Ocean.com digitally meandered over whether handrail skating had entered ‘middle age’; going off the leading indicator that is the periodical of record’s cover shot, we see its stock decline as relative values increase for tricks ranging from deep urban crannies, going upside down, reverse pole jams, and that singular and hazy vibe of skating rocks.
How far has handrail skating slid? Ask Mike Sinclair, industry man and candy-guzzling storyteller to the stars, recently relating in Thrasher: “I worked at Black Box in its heyday. Jamie once turned down an offer of 50 million dollars to sell. I couldn’t believe it. Jamie explained, “Mike, I never got into this for the money.” I replied, “Me neither, but I know a good fuckin’ deal when I see one.”
Jamie Thomas has since poured cold water on the precise valuation in question, but surely the sentiment marked some type of high water mark for the rail-centric brand of skating central to Zero, Baker and to other mid-aughts giants of the time. As the above chart demonstrates, handrail tricks on Thrasher covers rode high from like the 2005-2015 period, at times commanding the majority of front-page real estate. But after plateauing in the post-financial crisis period, such handrail tricks ‘expressed’ as a percentage of a given year’s covers dropped in 2021 to just 17% of the year’s total, a modern-era nadir that matched 2017’s figure, at the time the lowest profile for handrail skating on the cover of the magazine of record since the late 1990s.
Whereas the angular-bar discipline continues to be promoted and pushed forward by frothy-mouthed chompers such as Kyle Walker and Jack O’Grady, tech/gnar athletes like Miles Silvas and Nyjah Huston, and the still-rabid Zero team, the handrail more generally has shifted from flagship spot and obligatory ender-fodder to one among a steadily expanding galaxy of subgenres that have helped make the professional designation more malleable.
Following seemingly unsuccessful dalliances between skateboard companies and private equity lords, several subsequent developments argue for the handrail trick as an undervalued asset, if not a tangible investment vehicle destined for ‘infinity and beyond.’ Skating’s inherent contrarianism seems destined to eventually swing the pendulum back toward handrails, as hinted via sometimes surprising ‘gnarliness quotients’ in the recent Frog vid, the dizzying volley that closed Mark Suciu’s ‘Flora III’ vid and sealed his SOTY bid, and the ‘Euro rails are gnarlier’ argument from newly minted Palace pro-fessional Charlie Birch, (knowed in some circles as the British Geoff Rowley). The recent exuberance around non-fungible tokens could provide a medium thru which pros, filmographers and industry bros may seek to capture, stockpile and eventually reap riches, if handrail tricks again come to dominate ‘the conversation.’
Is Mike Mo Capaldi’s digital collectibles venture ‘ABD’, detailed recently on The Bunt, already locking up undervalued handrail-oriented intellectual property ahead of a coming NFT land grab? Will custom-built IG scrapers help moneyed trading firms monitor prevailing sentiment around particular pros and tricks to help calculate fair value of digital skating assets, and the opportune time to buy and sell as various disciplines shift in and out of vogue? Are there right now handrail tricks gathering dust in the attics and basements of parents’ houses, to be one day thrown up on a future Ebay or StockX type platform and swarmed by bot-wielding middle-agers, flush with cash and determined to land bid-battle hammers?
*Edited by noted camerophile Johnathan Shanahan
**Provided they do the correct thing and put on Hosea Peeters
boil the ocean 
