Summertime Mixtape Vol. 10 – Steve Durante, ‘Inhabitants’

For a minute or two in the waning days of the Dubya Bush administration, Steve Durante looked about ready to form Habitat’s new core. A Jerseyite rocking a Fred Gall bun, Steve Durante translated the Wenning hunch and ledge tech to the pivot fakie/brown cords era, ratcheting up the difficulty quotient a notch or several with tricks here like the switch frontside shove-it 5-0, the switch backside lipslide variations and the nollie noseblunt pop-out in the middle of Cincinnati’s most knowed loading dock ledge. This dude was one of the few on the national scene putting in time in Philadelphia during the lull between the Stevie/Kalis era and the Sabotage resurgence; the line here through the Muni plaza still could slot seamlessly into any of the latter crew’s vids. 

4. Gustav Tønnesen — ‘Reverb’

The easygoing freedom radiating off Gustav Tønnesen’s otherworldly tricks arises partly from his and Sour’s congenial, blissful separate-ness from the California pro-circuit rat race. He generally seems unconcerned, and it’s probably a contributor to rather than detractor from Sour’s assorted successes and achievements since the Sweet split. The askew ‘spot’ choosings and bottomless skill reservoir regularly exhibited in the ‘Sour Solution’ entires can leave one wondering what a Gustav Tønnesen part could look like given the ‘big-budget’ treatment and an indulgence toward more-standard video part trick choices, and Adidas’ late-arriving ‘Reverb’ vid offers one version — there’s a nollie 270 fronside noseslide into a bank, a switch crooked grind in a line, a switch hardflip over a gap, all typically feather-light and unhurried, but it’s not long before he’s wallriding out of a backside noseblunt slide and finding all types of things to do with a corrugated metal vent thing. Inevitably, he is drawn to Max Palmer’s angle-ironed cage-bank and the Rector Street bench’s final hours before boosting a switch kickflip off a few angled bricks and up a four-foot euro gap, as it was foretold. An actual magician.