Hits Similar

A hot and tense summer, now bookended by violence and heartache. The world is in motion. There is a feeling of general unmooredness, less and less seems clear. Boys of Summer is selling a sweater that prominently boasts the Century 21 logo. Onetime gap phenom Auby Taylor recently released perhaps the best vert part in years. 10C41 has been previously discussed. Mixed media artist Chris Joslin this week captured the international malaise in a shirtless Instantgram post:”@Rockstarenergy,” he wrote, “hits different with some @ChickFilA.”

True enough. And so it is that skateboarding subconsciously reaches for comfort in the familiar, a well-worn anchor in the storm. Last spring, asphalt-leaping SOTY frontrunner Mason Silva offered a ‘Real to Reel’-flavored introductory part for the storied NorCal board concern. This summer, Brandon Turner stole the show in Sk8Mafia’s new vid, 20 years on from ‘Fulfill the Dream’ precociousness and channeling all that’s come since into a switchstance benihana. This week, roadworn Austyn Gillette followed up Former’s uncommonly heavy ‘Cheap Perfume’ vid by returning to the Habitat team, via a winking ‘welcome back’ clip featuring an obligatory acoustic guitar. Elsewhere, retro shoe models, including some that had no business reemerging from the CCS catalogues of yore, run rampant across shoe walls.

The biggest beneficiary may be Julian Davidson, lately of Element, this month resurfacing via professional endorsement deals for the Jamie Foy-led Deathwish Board Co as well as the percuolating Emerica Shoes. In a hotly gesticulating realm and arena which seems, on any given day, to be governed by track-panted Europeans, New York sidewalk spot impresarios draped in clip art, or Floridians, Julian Davidson is a departure in every way — a born-n-bred SoCalian from Long Beach, reared up in Element and TWS vids, whose Emerica intro clip centered on big rails and gaps. Such ‘consensus skating’ over the past decade became increasingly shaky middle ground as fragmenting subgenres pushed switch backside heelflips down the Wallenberg gap, fakie manuals across streets, and mile-long switch backside tailslides, but in these fluctuating times now perhaps holds the timeworn appeal of a John Hughes movie, a two-weeks-skated deck, a platter of warm lasagna.

Have you, dear reader, found yourself in bed, half-liddedly wallowing in WarmUpZone/4Ply‘s data-heavy gaze across toxic avenger Fred Gall’s formidable and beloved video catalogue? Will the Vent City Pod Cast choose an ollie for its trick of the week? How come Alien Workshop hasn’t flowed a bunch of the new Philly generation? Is Thrasher, which ran in the Louie Lopez issue a Baker 3 retrospective and lately has been posting up Baker 4 parts, in danger of becoming trapped in some sort of Baker nostalgia feedback loop that requires a moustache and wide-brimmed hat, or a bat facial tattoo, to escape?

Jamie Foy Is The 90-10 King

These days, tricks need to do more. Executing barrel rolls, 180-degree denominated rotations and combinations thereof long ago ceased to be enough. In our bristly and perspirating time, tricks are called upon to be vehicles — grinding, sliding platforms upon which a body can place other tricks, greater distance, more kinks, personal brands, and, for those heedful of Rob Dyrdek’s sensible advice, luxury automobile lease payments.

Such is the role for certain tricks that years ago became too basic to regularly inspire on their own — the boardslide, the 50-50 grind, the backside noseslide. The recent dad trick renaissance aside, these maneuveurs now occupy a building-block role similar to the wide and flat Lego pieces upon which any number of castles, moon bases or Disney-licensed models can and must be constructed. While the noseslide has segued into a nostalgia piece and the boardslide has undergone some brutal grafting-on of other tricks to ‘stay relevant,’ their forms by and large have remained the same. Less so with the 50-50, which as we shall see has gradually mutated into nearly an entirely different trick altogether, so as to go deeper, farther and sometimes, to a different time/space entirely.

The year was 1992, Instagram had yet to be innovated, and Pat Duffy was the Terminator in plaid flannel; upon initial viewing, his double-kink 50-50 grind down the handrail towards the end initially struck some as unbelievable camera trickery. But upon chin-strokeful lookings back, the trick is fairly textbook in its execution, a hint of toe-side pinch on the mount, leveled out between the trucks for the rest of the descent. Jamie Thomas, top street-style skateboarder and late-1990s inheritor of the House 50-50, made them truly so in ‘Welcome to Hell’ — sailing one down the big Brooklyn Banks rail, the noted tail-tap ride-out on the long flat bar, and leaning slightly backside through the final 20-stair. But similar to the industry empire-building that was to come, Jamie Thomas also hints toward the utilitarian evolution the 50-50 itself would undergo over the next decades, skewing the rail between the toe-side of his front truck and the heel side of his rear truck in the bump-to-bar 50-50 transfer.

Twenty something years later, robots drive our semi trucks, the biggest Nas in the music biz is a country-western singer, and the 50-50 is a different creature. You can still find the ‘classic editions,’ but it’s just as common to find the post-Y2K, hybrid-ready variant: the 90/10, or 10/90, in which the rail is jammed nearly crossways between the front and back trucks for improved positioning for the next kink, or the flip trick out, or the final 20 feet. In our bionic age, the main requirement no longer is just getting to the bottom, the people require more.

It should come as no surprise that the lead 90-10 practitioner is Jamie Foy, the ‘pinch god’ knowed for popping out of frontside crooked grinds higher than lesser ones can ollie. For Jamie Foy, the 90-10 is the preferred landing position for once-unthinkables like kickflipping onto a round and ‘skateproofed’ bar. With the 90-10, he can hop onto a round kinker and very soon pop a shove-it out, relax atop a cutty triple set while eyeing the sidewalk ride-off to come, or navigate the gentleman’s curve of yet another overlong and kinked round rail.

Like all worthwhile paydirt in skateboarding’s great intellectual property pile, the 90-10 rapidly has drawn eager prospectors well on their way toward mining it out. The skate industry’s little bro made good Kader Sylla is a convert, as is Creature’s heathen warlord Kevin Baekkel. Jamie Foy’s SOTY predecessor Kyle Walker uses a long 90-10 to reposition at the tail end of his ‘Spinning Away’ helicopter factory before riding away clean.

Will the 90-10, practical but aesthetically sort of off-putting, clear the way for a renaissance of ‘true’ 50-50s, similar to what Brian Wenning’s mid-block pop-outs did for the backside nosegrind? Is the 90-10 made easier through truck wear on similarly pinch-ready tricks, such as the crooked grinds that dig out what Ted Barrow has termed the ‘crook nook’? Is the increasingly technical nature and rising danger quotient of modern 90-10-related tricks antithetical to the more mellow, soul-carving world envisioned by the probable Ipath-skating hippies whose loose trucks style opened the way for first the pinch and then the 90-10 itself?