Bring Hither the Fatted Calf and Kill It

As the blind oracles foretold, Lennie Kirk is proving to be the guiding touchstone for skateboarding in 2016, with his devotion to hammer-handy fish multiplier Jesus Christ’s ’33 resuscitation and Lennie Kirk’s own unlikely rise from beneath that Pac-Bell van foreshadowing the timely return of top-shelf talents to the turbulent and beery pool that is skating in 2016.

Paul Rodriguez, he of the multi-sponsor fitted and long-distance switch 360 flips, already rolled away the stone and commanded the grave-cloths removed from the pro career of French double-flip enthusiast Bastien Salabanzi. With the Christian season of Lent upon us, Paul Rodriguez would play at the Lazarus legend again, this time bringing out onetime fellow City Star Devine Calloway for what by some poorly considered blog webpages’ count would be his third go-round with the skate biz, after his initial City Star twinkle, his Chocolate grown-up resurfacing some years later and post-‘Pretty Sweet’ bonus footage low profile. Nothing’s changed, it would seem, and besides his apparently mostly successful kicking of a costly New Era habit, he could’ve popped out the fakie flip 5-0 and that Crisco-smooth bigspin immediately following his still-impressive TWS part nearly a decade back.

Days later on the other coast, long-lost Tompkins wunderkind Yaje Popson officially moved his 64-Crayola wardrobe into Alien Workshop’s radiation-proof geodesic dome, itself recently restored to life via Rob Dyrdek’s Street League and television show dollarydoos. Despite what sounded like dual knee injuries, a somewhat dispiriting parting of ways with the Crailtap camp amid the heightened and heated ‘Pretty Sweet’ filming campaign, and the bucolic pleasures of small-city life in Brazil, Yaje Popson’s tricks remain super on point (switch backside smith grind, that pyramid ledge trick) and as suited as any to the worthwhile project that is refurbishing the Sovereign Sect, though maybe a little bit less surprising than Devine Calloway’s rebound given last year’s Sk8Rats turn and how he plainly spoke of missing it all. A TWS interview promises heavier hitting yet to come.

The limited economic prospects, increasingly crowded competition for unique eyeballs and impressions, and ever-present risk cocktail of age and injury raises questions around the logic of gone-once pros and bros returning for further bites of the industry cherry. Yet return they do, from Tom Penny’s bleary trip back in ‘Sorry’ to Guy Mariano’s wristguarded tech triumph in ‘Fully Flared’, the Muska’s single-gloved victory lap with Element, Christian Hosoi’s post-prison bid adventures, Supreme’s Paulo Diaz exhumation, and the extended post-Shorty’s go-rounds enabled by Sk8Mafia. More curiouser may be how such prodigal sons typically not just are welcomed but cheered back — witness last year’s outpouring of support after Kevin Spanky Long’s return journey to Baker put him again astride a pro board and back in the proverbial van.

Is the skate sphere unique in its tolerance for such wilderness years, spent consuming substances, recovering from blown-out joints, pursuing alternate careers or raising families? In the parlance of major-league team sports, comebacks usually are intra-game affairs, with some allowance for those rare talents drawing sufficient investment to bide a season or more in physical therapy, but clawing one’s way back into the professional universe after years away seems a rarer feat still, whether fueled by Kenny Powers-level moxie or some other chemical reaction. But even with a decade or more off magazine pages, digital video discs and relevant social media mobile networks, it’s difficult to imagine an increasingly fragmented and nostalgia-shaped boarding industry turning its collective nose up if long-faded lords like Sean Sheffey, Alex Gall, Scott Kane, Mike Maldonado, Billy Valdes, Pat Channita, Tim O’Connor, Jon West, Ted de Gros, or Gideon Choi turned up with a video part approaching their respective primes and the gumption to keep at it.

Does skating’s willingness and seeming zeal to re-embrace its wandering prodigals flow from the same spiritual mountain spring that nurtures tendencies to stockpile decks skated beyond any reasonable use, pack grocery-store boxes full of even lean-year Transworlds, and scour Ebay auctions to expensively recapture some spark first kindled in a long-lost CCS catalogue? As skating is lassoed, saddled, broken and eventually led head-down and besequined into that great Olympic rodeo, replete with floodlights and sad clowns, will lapsed pros resurface more often or must all spare dollarydoos shower down upon the podium-bound few? Has the YouTube age made it harder or easier for pros to recatapult dormant careers? Is Brian Wenning at Love Park right now? Yall saw Jeremy Klein’s kickflip bench stall in the Greco movie right?

Pete Eldridge: King of Crush

Got the street sweeper

As far as comebacks go, Tom Penny and Guy Mariano don’t much resemble the dudes they were when they left the game, for better or worse. Meanwhile if you were a video editing sorcerer you could probably cut and paste most of the tricks from Pete Eldridge’s part in the new Mystery promo and plug them into his old Bootleg part* without too much trouble. I guess it was probably only about five years ago, but you know how skateboarding careers go. Didn’t Anthony Mosely come and go in less time?

The east coast Eldridge still has it in spades – commanding nollie backside heelflip in the first line, even if it isn’t screwed up the way J Strickland used to enjoy doing with flatground tricks. When he stomps down tricks like that boosted ollie over the hubba you can practically hear the urethane compressing when his wheels slam down, or when he’s lofting all that shit over the various bump-to-bars (switch frontside shove-it, cranked backside 180, switch whirlybird in Spain). Frontside flip pictured overhead is power Ginsu status and the last trick straightened me in my seat and put expletives on my tongue. Mighty nice to have him back.

Am I the only one who’s into Mystery’s clean B&W video gloss? It reminds me of the old Eastern Exposures. The rest of the promo’s good. Everen Stallion didn’t do a whole lot for me aside from his smooth and powerful-sounding moniker and affection for nollie b/s bigspin ledge variations, but I’ll give it up for the stretched 180 into the bank and the five-oh shove-it in Chinatown… and the final 360 flip over the rail was hot. Jimmy Carlin makes montage highlights with the smith grind hardflip and the (erm) forward flip, I liked Windsor James taking the nollie flip backside over the rail too, but I think Dennis Durrant held it down hardest with all that ledge techery and switch frontside k-grind, like nothing. Do you think he’s gonna have the last section in whatever video they make next, because I kind of do.

Seperately: Was Ryan Smith’s only trick that stalefish? Lost weekends or not, it’s too soon for that dude to fade. Frontside flip nosegrind hydro hideout, this was supposed to be a ten-year run.

*I always thought PE had the upper hand on PR with the Nas instrumental.