Oh So We’re Good Now With Fakie Frontside Shove-Its Fam?

The ancient Egyptians, knowed as a people sprung from the intergalactic union of slender dog-headed humanoids and architecturally inclined space aliens, based their centuries-long dynasty upon advanced mathematics and in particular, the power of three. Just as star-guided numerologies dictated the design of pyramidal tombs and, later, the sport trike, so too can these be drawn upon to identify and analyze a prickly and little-foreseen situation confronting ‘the culture’ in 2019: the unlikely normalization of the fakie frontside shove-it.

Lo, the pathway to this current state of affairs was laid equally by the ascendance of Polar, where an early vid nodded to and propelled the shove-it, and the broad rejection of ’00s kickflip culture, characterized by thirsty ams balling for position by adding toe-centric flip tricks into or out of various other activities, or clamoring for ever-larger parking lot gaps. The frontside shove-it, notoriously difficult to photograph, in recent years has offered both a reprieve from the switch frontside bigspin, largely discarded as a gap-chomping tool, and the backside bigspin, thoroughly rinsed as a line-ender as the current decade limps to its unknown conclusion.

Where does this leave hot shoes hungry to differentiate their video part/montage slice/IG post from the footage glut’s deafening roar? There are few untouched trick deposits of years past left to be mined, and those still remaining can be treacherous — enter verbose career risk-taker Jason Dill, whose Vita-shod stairstepping became an instant rewind in the VCR age and has rightly become the stuff of legend. The current generation, though, holds up this rare gem and turns it topwise, gazing beyond the set-top dismount and fixating instead on the mostly forgotten trick preceding it, a fat fakie frontside pop shove-it over a barrier.

Beyond the frontside pop shove-it, the nollie pop shove-it for years has been a standby for popping over fences and blocks, the regular pop shove-it has enjoyed a resurgence recently as a kickflip alternative over bumps-to-cans and -bars, and switch versions continue to have their place in lines and down gaps. Whereas the nollie frontside pop shove-it might remain too near a relative to the unfairly maligned nollie backside bigspin, the fakie frontside pop shove-it, not much better aesthetically, is finding unlikely traction. Austyn Gillette, still fleet of foot despite life’s heavy wear, threw one over a bench and down a drop in his ‘Radiant Cure’ part last year. John Shanahan, cut-and-sew curator of the late-90s movement who also has assisted in the debatable reclamation of mustard-coloured tees, pulled from Dill’s ‘Photosynthesis’ archives for his Thoro ender. And last week, Skyscraper City Quasi flowee Nick Matthews hopped perhaps the best-looking recent example at Flushing’s recently hot gap, pristinely popped and whip-quick spun.

Is the fakie frontside pop shove-it’s rise an offshoot of the ‘dad trick’ movement, the tip of a ‘Brutalist’-minded stylistic school centered on ugly tricks including but not limited to varial flips and wallride nollie outs, or something far more weird and outlandish? Which would score higher in a Street League impact section, a fakie frontside pop shove-it or its more successful cousin, the fakie heelflip? Who’s gone one over the big wall at Pulaski?

Official Like A Referee

When people apply that well-worn “robot” complaint to footage from the likes of Shane O’Neill and Paul Rodriguez my head tends to vaguely nod but when watching the footage itself this head-motion is usually replaced by the furrowing of brows in a vain attempt to grasp really why that is. Like how come Shane O’Neill doing a 360-flip noseslide nollie 270 heelflip out the hard way doesn’t stir me from the couch/computer chair, is it something to do with his arms, would it make a difference if he were taller, was not performing in a warehouse painted in neutral colors, etc. Maybe it is one of the galaxy’s great ungraspables, but all that type of confusion seems silly when you’re skipping backward on your first trip through the new Real video to watch Jake Donnelly’s section again and screw your face up (again) at how he takes the recoil on the switch heelflip over the schoolyard ledge and steps, or how he hangs onto the kickflip b/s tailslide down that orange hubba, or scootches to safety landing the screwed-up backside 180 over the railing. Additional thumbs up to the crack on the kickflip frontside tailslide and the switch f/s bigspin near the end, but probably the top compliment you could pay this section would be to acknowledge it prompted you to shut off a vid that still held unseen parts from Peter Ramondetta, Ishod Wair, Dennis Busenitz and Max Schaaf to go out and skate.

Greg Lutzka Wins The Dew Tour That Is This Earthly Life

One Toyota to rule them all

Like many others, my imagination was captivated this week with the revelation that frontside-favoring Milwaukeean Greg Lutzka completed an agreement with Toyota to produce a line of white cars with a drawing on the side. While it may have made more sense for Toyota to go with, say, valley boy Mikey Taylor for this honor given his fondness for street racing and, one can only assume, Tokyo drifting as well, you have to commend Lutzka for his business savvy and sheer ballsiness, managing to convince a global car company to adorn the side of a hatch-back with a funny-looking moustache dude pulling his pud.

(Notice to Madison Avenue: This is exactly the type of low-brow, bottom-of-the-barrel approach that I keep trying to tell you resonates with kids today. And this is why those kids are tomorrow’s today’s Toyota buyers.)

Wikipedia (where someone, possibly on the Lutzka payroll, keeps rather close tabs on his trophy-packed contest schedule), tells us that the Matrix is Toyota’s Heathcliff to the Garfield that is the Pontiac Vibe. It has received mixed reviews for safety, much like Greg Lutzka’s trick selection. Yet it also received solid marks for reliability, much like Greg Lutzka’s trick selection. Again, I refer you to the exhaustive Lutzkapedia contest compendium.

Now a lot of people poke fun at Greg Lutzka, or as he’s increasingly known, the Greg Lutzka. There was that embarrassing month-long stint on Krooked, a partnership rumored to have come apart following the revelation that the GL adorned his bedroom walls with his own likeness in the form of Illennium ads or what have you. And one of my great regrets of last year was that I never devoted one of these none-too-precious postings to the kind of amazing Globe section, themed as it was with French techno music and some really sweet “Krazy Kings”-esque special effects.

But the Greg Lutzka’s earnest Midwestern cluelessness is deeply endearing, and puts his finger-snappin’, hat-wearin’, frontside flippin’ spinnin’ in the sort of perspective that you can’t get when he strolls the club in a leather jacket. Why, just a few years ago the kid needed a sit-down* to learn the proper way to wipe and discard the wasteful, shameful, hateful “tissue glove” method.

Now look at him. His name sparkles proudly on the side of a Toyota hatch-back. He knows Lil Jon and Ryan Sheckler. He sells his own hat made from the skin of synthetic frogs, developed in a secret laboratory owned by Oakley glasses. Australian footwear concern Globe recently approached him to design a shoe, which does closely resemble the Muska’s vaunted Sky-Top, but this is hardly a mark against the Greg Lutzka. As we all know it is nigh impossible to fade the Muska, and one can only hope to follow his lead. Which the GL wisely has done in this instance. So don’t try and tell me the kid hasn’t made it.

*from a Big Brother writer, no less