Summertime Mixtape #2: Cairo Foster “Real to Reel”

Cairo Foster was a great ambassador for Real because he did such a good job straddling the technical stuff that burned the Bay into the map in the early/mid-90s and the heavier, trick-centric movement brought on during the hammer area, but he never came off as too worked up about either one. Around the time this video came out I remember seeing Cairo Foster skate a sweaty July demo in a warehouse with the garage doors all pulled up, where he was the sole dude to hit up the big handrail from the awkward side and backside tailslid it to boot, an impressively off-kilter trick that squares with the way he gets this part moving with that ollie over the block to backside noseblunt. This section’s less cinematic than Cairo Foster’s big breakout role in TWS’s ‘the Reason’ but probably a better representation of what he was about at the time, scanning some well loved SF spots, the early years of his long-running love affair with the nollie hardflip and a beaut of a switch backside flip over the library channel. Recall watching this video often from a folding chair in a sparsely furnished apartment that also featured a mattress on the floor and clothes arranged into piles; on another day I maybe would’ve picked Nate Jones’ section in this same release.

Awake, Yall

Did yall see this one? P-Rod channels this blog website’s RSS feed into his preternaturally gifted feets and puts into action two of the recent mumblings, switch b/s tailsliding the Mission district’s 3-up-3-down and a pretty jaw-dropping commercial clip, smooshed together for the purpose of explaining Paul Rodriguez’ new alliance with Venture trucks. Whether this suggests Silver is on the block I have no idea, but all three tricks recorded for this clip are the type of top-drawer shit that makes Paul Rodriguez’s case for being one of the best skaters working, rather than just a dude who can do a lot of tricks. Could watch that SSBSTS over and over..

10. Luke Croker – Deluxe Catalogue

And off we go again, counting down this here blog-site’s top ten video parts of the year:

At some point along the space-time continuum, fair-haired Australian gangler Luke Croker evolved into the bloodthirsty and hard-charging Neanderthal depicted in this heavy section from last summer’s online Deluxe catalog, which shook the internet with an impact along the same lines as the invention of fire or a woolly mammoth careening off a cliff. Watch as Croker sweeps the stringy mane from his eyes like so many sabre-tooth tiger entrails, bludgeoning gaps and ledges with a technical speedball combo a la Anthony Van Engelen or a “Third-Eye Vision” Reese Forbes. He’s got this gift for landing tricks smooth and at speed but not making them look inconsequential. The orange rainbow backside tailslide is particularly fun-looking and wouldn’t it be nice to race around town, backside 180’ing up curbs the hard way.

The Deluxe Online Catalog: Better Than The Post-Jail Gucci Mane Mixtape

No pancakes, just a cup of syrup

In a way I feel like Deluxe is almost too easy to like, they’re sort of like Fugazi. In it for the right reasons, street cred out the wazoo, around forever, down for the kids. Advertisimal NorCalcentralism aside they run a pretty big tent that administers Mic-E Reyes man-hugs to everyone from Theotis Beasley to Peter Hewitt to Peter Ramondetta to Huf. They’ve never done the hardgoods manufacturer equivalent of eating mushrooms and taking off their clothes and going up onto the roof to preach to the neighborhood. So in some ways I kind of feel like Deluxe is that solid, all-around good guy that everybody likes at the beginning of the war movies, the dude who gets shot and dies in Tom Hanks’ arms. Or wait, wasn’t it Tom Hanks who died? Anyway.

While the skateboard industry continues to rejigger video pricing in the post-YouTube world and magazines dip toes into the waters of digital publication, Deluxe seems to be blazing full-speed ahead, looking to harness the internet public’s thirst for pics of new products by turning their now exclusively online catalog into a sort of in-house 411. They’re rolling it out piece by piece; currently clips include a heartwarmingly gigglish video of the Mic-E tribute board on Krooked, the valiant struggles of a cameraman doing what he can to keep pace with a Dennis Busenitz hill bomb, and a short part from this Oklahoma kid named Kyle Walker, who pops a fun playground bridge ollie amongst some otherwise pretty bleak spots.

The highlight so far though is the Krooked section, which opens up with a couple Gonzo-goes-to-New York tricks and then introduces you to the increasingly grown up Krooked ams. I had a hard time keeping all these young yahoos straight in the “Gnaughty” vid, partially due to the hard-to-read titles and also my chronic illiteracy, and they all kind of skate alike (to mellow musical stylings of the 80s) but with their own power moves; witness Brad Cromer’s f/s crooked grind bigspin and mongoloid switch backside flip. Mike “Manderson” Anderson has become good as fuck switch and busts a high-velocity no comply in tight quarters and lil Luke Croker has evolved into a sometimes caveman-haired skateboard beast — his part’s the best I think. Hopefully when the Real section goes up they have footage of Nick Dompierre’s backside tailslide from that Thunder ad.

Exalt the new god

The Real World

So while the rest of us were BBQing and firecrackering and generally getting our Fourth of July on, and DNA was counting their snowboard cash and not updating their goddam video sites, Deluxe debuted DLX-TV with a slew of clips, old and new. Which is good news for this noble country and the planet in general, seeing’s how there really is not enough footage of Peter Ramondetta lately, or Frank Gerwer ever. Highlights are the 3rd & Army session, the Civic Center ledge session and Jake Donnelly in general (his day in the life kinda drags though). Also the mighty Mark Appleyard’s Thunder commercial, which pleases my eye nearly as much as those one type of fireworks that explode, and then the tracers start going all wonky at crazy angles. Hopefully Bob can hurry up and land his next kickflip into the Amazon rainforest or whatever for the Flip video, so we can skip past it to that two-song part Appleyard supposedly has in the can already.

As a bonus, here’s a link to Ramondetta’s sadly underappreciated part in the ill-fated C1RCA vid. Here comes the cheap shot: It’s Time… to think of a better name for the next video, guys.