ABD by Bob Burnquist BTW
The danger with evolving into an institution, at least as far as the wonderful world of skateboard videos goes, is the risk of devolving into formula, and TWS’s video output definitely has one, with variances depending on who’s behind the lens in any given year. So it’s worth noting what “Rite Foot Forward” does in terms of coloring outside the lines laid down by Evans*, Hunt, et al–mostly a slim 35-minute runtime that again dispenses with the voiceovers (best move TWS vids have made in the last six years, besides filming Richard Angelides) and most of the bum footage. This time around the Holland/Ray duo leave the dusty 70’s roadhouse rock in favor of a color-splashed perpetual motion machine similar to the one that powered Nike’s “Debacle” vid, but with a little more of a retro 80’s feel. One personal highlight was the intro’s opening synth line, which had me thinking for a hot second that “RFF” would dare to be stupid, though these hopes were soon dashed like so many Weird Al Grammy dreams.
Kellen James is definitely sipping on that I-can-fuck-with-Koston juice, and who knows, maybe he can these days. There’s credit to be given to dudes who see the classical appeal in switch k-grinding handrails and his nollie bigspin backside tailslide is mean; also liked how he got all Kyle Leeper on those pavilion blocks and the round-the-way switch noseblunt. Nice part with the perfect first-section song, and while there’s only so many frontside shoves out of backside lipslides that the world needs, the world is Kellen James’ oyster right now as far as skateboard tricks go, which seems like a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, I forgot to mention before how I was a fan of Joey Brezinski’s 180 switch manual-body varial line.
Fun historical analogues in the montage, not limited to Slash’s Bartman tee–Dan Peterka comes out of retirement for a mondo kink boardslide and Theotis Beasley touches down on a backside double heelflip, and while I’m sure somebody somewhere has done one since the heady days of “Big Pants Small Wheels,” I’ll be durned if I’ve seen one personally. At a certain point comes Corey Duffel, whose brand of punk rawk has a kind of calculatedness that’s summed up really well in the credits-footage bluntslide, where he knocks some loosened knobs off a ledge and scatters them in front of the camera, just so. We’ll note for the record the sports jerseys, give props to the backside tailslide, and submit that adding nosegrabs generally does not always make a trick compelling.
Recently unretired Matt Beach is quite different, in a few different ways. It’s another notch in the altruistic column for Nike Inc. and I think skateboarding right now needs more people with his type of mindset in general. Good tricks were the switch tailslide switch kickflip, the ice powerslide and that frontside blunt pop to fakie, and it’s cool that this dude can come out of the wilderness and bust Jimmy Carlin ledge tricks if he wants to. Nice but lengthy song too, although the last trick is worth the wait and one for the books, whatever those are and wherever they’re kept.
*Slow-mo headstand kid was a definite shout-out
boil the ocean 