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.

Two if by sea

Let the boys be boys

Okay, a quick video link update, since I have a bunch more videos I could write about but apparently I have yet to figure out how to make a video post that isn’t 1000 words long.

Slam City lookbook: the new catalog from London’s seminal skateshop, which remains difficult for jeg-lag addled foreigners to locate, even in this age of a stronger British pound. The catalog itself is alright, my favorite part being the two solid pages of nearly identical “Slam City Skates” t-shirts, but the money melon is on the second-to-last page where, if you wait out a couple minutes of high-def slo mo, you’re treated to a lengthy Craig Mack-powered whirlwind that is a who’s who of the 2008 UK skate scene. Chewy Cannon, yes.

Ohhh… on the UK tip, here’s something else: an all-too-brief line from none other than Carl Shipman including one of the more vicious transition moves I’ve seen this summer. I read an interview somewhere recently (48 blocks?) where he didn’t sound too eager to skate for a living again, but wouldn’t it be nice to see him astride a Stereo deck again? By the way both these links I stole off the lovely Tweaker blog.

Next: Twist your moustache and furrow your brow at this Gou Miyagi part from the “Overground Broadcasting” video:

One of the things that I thought kind of detracted from Richie Jackson’s otherwise pretty amazing part in “And Now” was the fact that a lot of those tricks couldn’t have been done without some lengthy set-up time as far as building or otherwise massaging spots to facilitate a powerslide chain-dangle wallride or whatever. (Let me tell you just how excited I am to see kids inevitably waxing up the ground at spots.) Gou Miyagi has a similarly twice-baked view of skateboarding but I like how he uses spots and objects the way they are to perform his bizarre and wonderful maneuvers; case in point, the bike rack. I don’t mind the editing at all either.

Finally, the always-current AWS Filmworks site put up a Dylan Rieder clip today that’s short but almost painfully good. The b/s nosegrind f/s revert took me back to Guy Mariano in Mouse. I basically watched this a dozen times today. As far as I remember the “Mind Field” video was supposed to premiere around, like, right now, but the dudes with the inside poop are supposedly saying it might be more like… early 09. I know, I know. Look at it this way, they’re definitely keeping it skate over there.