Anatomy Of A Gonz Bones Bearings Ad That Kinda Maybe Captures The Moment Between The Year That’s Been And The One Yet To Come

-‘Park would be killer if there was nobody here’ — the curse of idle wishes, fulfilled
–‘People are wearing colorful face masks to express themselves’
-Fraying at the edges but still (hopefully [probably]) holding together (right?)
-Impractically shaped, beautifully gripped board
-‘Life is all about transitions, bro’
-#ad
-the cold sweat of nervy anticipation, and cleaning agents soon required
-Deceptively clear skies
-2021, same as it was in 199X, same as it was in 1985, and 1918
-No toilet paper in sight
-Gonna make it (probably [hopefully {Right?}])

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 4 – Nate Jones ‘Real to Reel’

Midsummer days hot enough to put the sweat on you by 8 a.m. call to mind the carefree love that can blossom in young muskrats’ hearts, and of simpler and more wholesome times when highlights from a 411 commercial and a nice backside 5-0 on a ledge were legit inclusions for a video-opening, pro-inducing video part such as Nate Jones’ in Real’s century-launching ‘Real to Reel.’ Besides Nate Jones’ immaculate kickflip stylings, the rarely seen overhead angle to a street gap and the rarer-still acceptable varial flip, Nate Jones’s breezy, no-muss part captures him midway between the baggy-hoodied, yellow-teed everyman and the patchouli scented Bay ramblor that would years later claim his pro career. Beyond the snapshot of SF in a more livable time, you can catch glimpses of a spiritual forebear to Brian Delatorre’s GX hills handling and Dylan Rieder’s ‘Mindfield’ ender.

Ante Up, Human

A few go-rounds on crutches and going under the knife will suck some of the fun out of slam sections, versus the days when you might watch “Welcome To Hell” through the end of Jamie Thomas’ part and then return at the end of the night to press play again and revel in the bone crushing. There’s exceptions though and Mark Gonzales’ hunger for physical punishment in this Dan Wolfe-filmed Adidas clip is for sure one of them, just because it’s grimly inspiring to see a 41`-year-old man willing to repeatedly throw himself onto a curb without the roar of an X-game crowd egging him on. Maybe he’s into it too — a fast and fairly painless trip to the asphalt on a warm and sunny day sometimes can do more to clear the head than the prescribed number of warm-up kickflips. Dirt all over his shirt, he comes off hungry in this clip and it’s pretty awesome.

Street Sweeper

Between these Pappalardo clips, Deluxe’s zip-zinger features and this recent Brent Atchley commercial there seems to be a wave of cruising-oriented video coming out lately, coincidental or not. Depending on who’s doing the cruisering and where, such clips can be alternately boring, sublime or non-affecting, but all these clips recently reminded me of the above Tom Penny part from one of my most favorite and least-discussed videos, ATM Click’s “Come Together.” An early Manzoori/Miner production at a time when both were sponsored by the company, after working through some early days of being Gonz’s new and soon-to-be-discarded toy (and prior to its current form as a “mini logo” deck purveyour). The company was some type of sister to New School and home to a budding Jon West, who skated to “Andy Warhol” by David Bowie in this video that was really more like an extended friends-section, roping in everybody from Mat O’Brien to Hondo Soto to Jamie Thomas to Mike Frazier to a clip of Rob “Sluggo” Boyce hitting what looks like a backyard kicker on a snowboard. This mini-part by Penny gets squeezed in somewhere in the middle and is really just a couple launches at the Santa Rosa park and a lengthy street ramble that puts a lot of the dude’s greatness front and center — the supernaturally relaxed mannerisms, casually caught flips and a general kind of meandering genius. The song works too.

The Deluxe Online Catalog: Better Than The Post-Jail Gucci Mane Mixtape

No pancakes, just a cup of syrup

In a way I feel like Deluxe is almost too easy to like, they’re sort of like Fugazi. In it for the right reasons, street cred out the wazoo, around forever, down for the kids. Advertisimal NorCalcentralism aside they run a pretty big tent that administers Mic-E Reyes man-hugs to everyone from Theotis Beasley to Peter Hewitt to Peter Ramondetta to Huf. They’ve never done the hardgoods manufacturer equivalent of eating mushrooms and taking off their clothes and going up onto the roof to preach to the neighborhood. So in some ways I kind of feel like Deluxe is that solid, all-around good guy that everybody likes at the beginning of the war movies, the dude who gets shot and dies in Tom Hanks’ arms. Or wait, wasn’t it Tom Hanks who died? Anyway.

While the skateboard industry continues to rejigger video pricing in the post-YouTube world and magazines dip toes into the waters of digital publication, Deluxe seems to be blazing full-speed ahead, looking to harness the internet public’s thirst for pics of new products by turning their now exclusively online catalog into a sort of in-house 411. They’re rolling it out piece by piece; currently clips include a heartwarmingly gigglish video of the Mic-E tribute board on Krooked, the valiant struggles of a cameraman doing what he can to keep pace with a Dennis Busenitz hill bomb, and a short part from this Oklahoma kid named Kyle Walker, who pops a fun playground bridge ollie amongst some otherwise pretty bleak spots.

The highlight so far though is the Krooked section, which opens up with a couple Gonzo-goes-to-New York tricks and then introduces you to the increasingly grown up Krooked ams. I had a hard time keeping all these young yahoos straight in the “Gnaughty” vid, partially due to the hard-to-read titles and also my chronic illiteracy, and they all kind of skate alike (to mellow musical stylings of the 80s) but with their own power moves; witness Brad Cromer’s f/s crooked grind bigspin and mongoloid switch backside flip. Mike “Manderson” Anderson has become good as fuck switch and busts a high-velocity no comply in tight quarters and lil Luke Croker has evolved into a sometimes caveman-haired skateboard beast — his part’s the best I think. Hopefully when the Real section goes up they have footage of Nick Dompierre’s backside tailslide from that Thunder ad.

From switch crook grinds to switch tailslides, I rise

Word, ya heard

Getting old is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand you can buy alcohol and pull tabs with impunity, but at the same time you get bitter about certain things, like politics and bills and shit, and for some of us, the fact that for a whole generation of skateboarders, their first impression of Joey Suriel was some behind-the-wheel freestyling and bullshit funbox tricks. Most of his part in City Stars’ Street Cinema (7:20) wasn’t even that bad really, and not too far removed from his mid-90s peak (funbox tricks notwithstanding).

But aside from a couple cursory viewings to see what the old dudes on the message boards are all heated about, his clips in Trilogy, 20 Shot and Paco probably won’t have much of an impact on the goddamn youth of today. Which is too bad, because a good decade before he was slinging Odyssey backpacks and $50 Diamond t’s, Suriel had been hooked up by Stacy Peralta, anointed as pro by the Gonz and skated for a company that was repped by pros who weren’t even getting paid to wear the shirts. Meanwhile he filmed one of the hottest lines ever, containing a serious contender for the top 5 switch heelflips of all time (20 Shot, 7:00).

I just called the Menace Mastermind hotline and it’s disconnected, so until Kareem hooks it back up here’s the Joey Suriel interview on 48 Blocks, which is still pretty great:

You got to realize that Paulo was doing switch ollies and nollies over tables well before it was ever suppose to evolve to that… and I’m talking with authority too.. not just barely making it over. So to witness that and actually live it, to me, is hands down the illest ever, for that time.