Is Gou Miyagi An Undercover Dream Policeman?

This holiday season the laboratory statisticians who devise Street League algorithms have further reason to curse the name and shovel coal into the stocking of Gou Miyagi, the Japanese urchin busily polishing the “other” bucket that sits alongside the lengthening ranks of subgenres residing under the twin pillars of “street” and “transition,” with an asterisk even. The ongoing uphill/big ollie/super fast movement reminds that people will find a way to keep things from getting too stale (here, a firecracker up six), but this dude is still out there figuring out ways to do tricks backward and inside out.

When I seen this guy’s previous part in “Overground Broadcasting” I sat back and thought it over for a while since personally I didn’t go in for William Spencer’s brand of stuntwork, where a lot of the time the skateboard seemed incidental to the whole thing. Like he could have been flipping onto a pogo ball, or an ironing board. Richie Jackson’s stuff skewed a little bit more toward conventional firecrackers and powerslides and pole jams so on. This Gou Miyagi still seems like he’s on his own wonderful/horrible planet decked out with a bunch of curvy round handrails all over the place.

It’s cool to me that this “Subspecies” part is shorter. Maybe he’s working off some injury since it does seem like several things could go terribly wrong with a few of these moves but you like to think he’s sitting around like Joey Brezinski and envisioning tricks, like he suggested in that Slap interview a while ago. My favorite one is when he walks his axles across the top of the ledge, attention former freestylers, please post in the comments section the technical name for walking on the axles, thx.

Funnel Cloud

Got the warm fuzzys seeing Raymond Molinar pop up in the Trapasso-facepaint Skateboard Mag the other day, partly because I’ve been worried about him fading out ever since his departure off Habitat, partly cuz there’s a little bit of Henry Sanchez-style spazz crustiness to his take on technical ledge tricks that’s pleasing to the eye. My initial recollections date back to some tricks in a TWS vid montage, possibly “Free Your Mind,” which would’ve been an all-time classic with another part and 1/3 as many skits — he did lines in those Vans with the giant V on the side, reminiscent of some Vision Street Wears, and even back then he had the switch kickflip backside tailslides. This entry in Popwar’s short-lived “Video Hype” DVD teaser series I thought of as his official/proper debut and it’s also worth revisiting as some Utahn has revived the brand-name, a strategy that could deliver profit and pleasure to all involved, and maybe even a lucky few who are not.