Marble Floors, Gold Turlets and Chandeliers

Belatedly, another ten good ones from last year:

Nik Stain – ‘Bruns Skate Jawn’
The half-cab flips could’ve come straight out of an early Prime video, in a good way.

Aaron Herrington – ‘Static 4’
Skating to song, probably the best possible pace-setter for the two Static videos to come.

Brandon Westgate – ‘Zoo England’
He doesn’t slow down

Eli Reed – Japan part
Eli Reed goes Magenta in Tokyo with some scarfs and socks. See if you can find the ‘Street Cinema’ spot.

Matt Miller – DC shoe part
Rob Welsh’s onetime water boy released one of the gnarlier parts all year, and got a shoe for his trouble, potentially eliminating the descriptor ‘unheralded’ from his career. Switch 360 flip noseblunt, switch backside 360 noseblunt, etc.

Youness Amrani – ‘Almost a Part’
Some late-period 411VM vibes from this one, in a good way. Downhill manual revert and late 180 on the heelflip varial are bananas.

Chewy Cannon – ‘Transmission’
Dead or alive, there are few better to watch skate

Matt Bennett – ‘True Blue’
It’s cool to see how far this dude has been able to take his sack of mainly unconventional tricks – the pop out of the handrail fakie backside tailslide (to regular) is of note.

Carlos Iqui – ‘Iqui Does It’
Stevie William’s ‘Reason’ opener-attempter, but on a hubba.

Jamal Williams – ‘Static 5’
Among the best put-together video parts this year, and possibly for all of history

Title TK

Even without flipping it over and looking for the little logo you could probably tell skateboarding bears a “made in America” seal just because of the tendency towards going big, and sometimes going overboard. Big pants/small wheels, goofy boys, paint-on pants, substance abuse, stair counts, ledge combos, the personas of Alva, Muska, Mike Plumb, et cetera. The mega ramp. You have your top dogs specific to a certain latitude/longitude as the pendulum swings this way or that, for instance Ron Knigge or Josh Kasper or Ray Underhill, and then what turn out to be the more longview types that might rise up during one era or another but don’t wind up being defined by it and find ways to roll with whatever’s going at the moment, say Carroll, Daewon Song, Jason Dill, Grant Taylor — Mark Gonzales. Like, there may be more technically skilled or bigger-jumping dudes going at any one point, but if you’re watching “the Storm,” you’ve got Jerry Hsu on one hand and Scott Paezelt on another.

All of which is a typically long-winded way of coping with a melting of mind following a couple watches of Eli Reed’s entry in the X-Games “real street” competition, a minute-long clip that’s a little gratuitous as far as including a couple magazine cover clips and some of the more original (versus “creative”) tricks to come along in a good while. If I was, heaven forfend, a judge on “America’s Next Top Flow Bro” I would formulate some sound bite to the effect that Eli Reed has a “point of view.” Like, who’s doing nollie bonelesses on name hubbas? Switch backside 360 manual? I’m sure there are some “Forecast” seeds that have pulled similar 360-flip nosegrinds and switch bigspin flips but a key difference is that this dude’s method has that appealing stink on it. Switch k-grind for the 90s dudes and wise use of the big switch ollie, which also helped get me onboard with Mikey Taylor during the City Stars days. A minute long and this is easily one of the best sections all year, I hope he gets the $50k or whatever it is.

4. Eli Reed – “Zoo York State of Mind”

Eli Reed switch kickflipped into New York’s courthouse bank in a display of sexual prowess that earned him his choice of mates and long-delayed professional status from the Zoo board of directors late this year. Fate sometimes seems to align against this dude, what with whoever was in charge over there sandbagging his part with BTO’s ode to the union movement, and the faintly snarky way people keep bringing up that amazing Celtics outfit he used to rock. Not to be that guy, but the ollie up the curb at the beginning of the part is sort of beautiful, and you can’t hold down someone who’s intent on nollie nosemanualing into a crazy bank and then switch ollieing into a second bank that also is crazy. One of the great things about this part and Eli Reed in general is that he’s all over the place in more ways than one (switch bigspin flip nose manual, hardflip manual on that banked ledge), and here’s hoping he has some shit in that new Converse/Thrasher vid which I have not yet seen so we’re counting it for next year’s tiresome list-making, FYI.

Eli, It’s Real Velour… Let Yourself Go

Sweat/Suit

Not to be overlooked amongst recent video productions endorsed by Paul Rodriguez and Jereme Rogers are efforts to identify and elevate next generations of possible pro-level kids, in the process allowing some semi-established types to re-frame their whole deals and possibly help bust out of the dreaded man-am ranks, types such as one-time World warrior Jason Wakuzawa and former velour tracksuit proponent Eli Reed.

Reed along with Pudwill had one of the hotter sections in the ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ vid, his relocation to Southern California apparently helping him develop oodles of crazy switchstance tricks that I personally had no idea he could do (or anybody else either when it came to the Flushing Meadows switch ollie). But, it looks like that part may be a warmup to still yet further bonkers shit in Zoo York’s “State of Mind” video, if Eli Reed’s entry in the Berrics’ venerable “Bangin” series last week is to be believed. All manner of crazy tricks in there — he seems to have learned a bunch of transition stuff in addition to taking some of his older moves, turning them around and doing them down hubbas — and I sorta dig the fact that his switch stuff looks switch, if that makes sense. Meanwhile my personal jury is still out on whether the navy Dickies top the sweat suit.

P-Rod, Girl and the Enigma of the Mobius Strip

Innocence, destroyed

While the planet, nay, galaxy awaits the already-classic “Street Dreams”, featuring the long-awaited debut of durag enthusiast-turned-auteur Rob Dyrdek and guest starring Ryan Dunn with the evil mom from the O.C., Paul Rodriguez isn’t waiting around for some Decenzo brother to hand him his daytime Emmy. No, P-Rod is blazing ahead with another star turn in the upcoming “Vicious Circle”, which for purposes of this post I choose to view as a complex, feature-length metaphor about his years skating for Girl skateboards.

Some of this is fairly overt: “Boy meets girl,” a nod to the days before the honeymoon ended, when P-Rod was still the next Koston, Plan B existed only on DVD and nobody ever heard of Sean Malto. Paul had a more innocent view of the world then, as you can tell from the nifty suit he wears in early scenes.

However: “Girl has past… past won’t let her go.” P-Rod here is suggesting here that Rick and Mike are akin to the child of an abusive household: determined not to repeat Rocco’s excesses and transgressions, they succeed only in driving away their young stars (P-Rod and Jereme, represented here by P-Rod and “Angel”, a reference to Rogers’ Christian beliefs and pasty pallor).

Paul Rodriguez does a bit of gun-waving, perhaps channeling the unrefined anger of Sal Rocco Jr., and soon the film takes a disturbing turn as P-Rod seeks catharsis via revenge fantasy: the “Girl” dies, and as fingers point in his direction, Paul is determined to clear his name.

Whether this suggests that Rodriguez believes Plan B (portrayed in the film as life after Girl) will bury his former employer is open to interpretation. It’s a disturbing thought, nearly as troublesome as P-Rod Senior expounding on his son’s numerous attractive qualities.

The title certainly plays off the resurrection/rebirth themes that Plan B has mined since Danny and Colin brought it back, and P-Rod’s gracious comment on the role – “I was blessed to be given it… I have to do the best with my opportunities” – is easily applied to the offer that wooed him away from Girl in the first place.

In short, a troubling and fascinating picture of the fractured worldview of a young man, frustrated, consumed with revenge and constantly battling against his own crushing talent. Also, “Street Dreams” coming soon.