SOTYs Yet to Come, Seen Through the Truth-Telling Prism of Freshly Spilled Guts

In ancient Rome, soothsayers would seek prophecy, divine guidance and betting tips in the entrails of sacred animals, surveying plumpness of spleen and colouration of liver to help foresee military conquests and innovate the hot dog. Just as Jupiter, Mars and various other heavenly bros guided the blessed knives of bloody-fingered oracles, so does Boil Ocean Web Page probe the still-steamy innards of skating in 2017 to predict contenders, near-missers and hangers-on that define our reality today as the 2017 Skater of the Year campaign, still looking wide open, careens into this year’s final quarter:

Louie Lopez: Of all the Flip ‘Xtremely Sorry’-era tween pickups, it has been among the windingest roads for once-Lil Louie Lopez, who took his time choosing a path betwixt the contest-circuit hittingness of Luan Oliveira, David Gonzales’ Hot Topic handrailing and the towheaded glamour often associated with Curren Caples and Ben Nordberg. For yung LL, there is a middle way flavoured with GX1000 hills and wallies; it already would have been a noteworthy year for him, what with a pop-shove powered part for Spitfire, a Thrasher interview heavy on shitting-related questions and a slot on the Thrasher/Spitfire trip, but he also delivered among the year’s most memorable Instagram clips — possessing all the elements, a banging trick, legendary spot, beer, freaking out squares. And he’s probably got another video part in him by early December.

Tiago Lemos: Could it be an unacceptable breach of protocol to award Skater of the Year to an individual increasingly suspected of being a Greek demigod of yore? Seeming to operate in near-perpetual bio-mode, Tiago Lemos still has yet to report confirmed kills of multiheaded and mythical beasties. He has, however, spent much of 2017 pushing switch mongo from one of the world’s most gargantuan switch backside tailslides to sliding a similarly sized one into a fakie manual to fakie flip out, alongside hucking humongous backside flips, surviving the fiery judgement of Fort Miley’s tall bar, and rebounding from his Dime Glory Challenge game of skate drubbing with another waist-high switch k-grind, apparently the minimum height at which this dude operates.

Shane O’Neill: Continuing his explorations of technical skating as abstract art, Shane O’Neill’s mind-numbing ‘Levels’ part in late summer posited skating as a video game in which the buttoned-up Ozzian advanced by defeating gradually more difficult ‘boss tricks,’ including a nollie backside flip late-shove-it down a solid assortment of stairs, a switch heelflip switch feeble grind on a fun-sized rail, and a fireball-heaving tribute to business partner Paul Rodriguez’s climactic Tampa-house-bringer-downer from ‘Street Dreams’. Whereas questions remain as to whether Shane O’Neill actually pushed up to his road-clearing switch kickflip opener/cover, he makes another compelling case for vanquishing the skate careerist’s Bowser, given a lesser-noticed VX part earlier in the year, services rendered in years past and likely gas in the tank for continued video achievement before the year is out.

Evan Smith: The stringy haired, starry-eyed savant seemed to have just missed Thrasher’s brass ring last year, his eye-popping kickflip wallrides ultimately falling to Kyle Walker’s kink deluge. But Evan Smith shambled on, going bananas off pillars and somehow deciding to disaster out of a switchstance manual in a 2017-opening Spitfire part. He’s since matched feats with Wes Kremer in the DC vid, shaved with puddle water, and delighted Jake Phelps with a relaxed attitude toward fearsome handrails on the Thrasher/Spitfire trip, while earning redemption points for voyaging beyond Starheadbody songs for his parts. You could choose worse.

Riley Hawk: Just as Bucky Lasek found his own lane as a domestic manservant for Tony Hawk in ‘The End,’ Riley Hawk, once a pint-sized counter-pounder, has emerged from the family breakfast nook to carve his own cavern from the sheer rock face that is the skate industry, winding down the first Lakai full-length in a decade with a knack for kinks, a willingness to fingerflip out of nosegrinds and an ironclad grip on grinds of both the Barley and Bennett persuasions. Whether he has offered enough to Thrasher’s goatheaded gods or suffered suitably to become the first second-generation SOTY is a question strictly for the hooded priests who tend HSP’s sacrificial pyres, but you could sort of see it.

Oskar Rozenberg Hallberg: Polar’s diminutive and demonic secret weapon from ‘I Like It Here Inside My Mind…’ over the past year sprouted into an all-points threatener in the mold of Grant Taylor or Tony Trujillo, flowing and blasting through transitioned concrete on several non-contiguous continents in the service of rarified endorsees Spitfire, Thrasher and Nike, en route to an on-the-money professional induction. The young Swede has put in the requisite miles for Thrasher — at one point supervising a fishhook-and-thread stitch job on the sadly departed P-Stone’s lacerated ass — and remains a footage machine, whipping out lipslides to smith grinds and towering kickflips in between pocketing contest purses. Of note, maybe: It has been sixteen years since the Thrasher nod went to a Euro.

Jamie Foy: Young but a handrail workhorse, Jamie Foy’s burly physique, Floridian mane and can-do mindset have enamoured him to the Thrasher bosses, who cheered his addition to Deathwish and Shake Junt Griptape Co USA before recruiting him to Thrasher’s kickoff ‘Am Scramble’ trip. Jamie Foy’s contempt for fear and double-barreled approach occasionally recall a Revolution Mother-era Mike Vallely, except with 360 flips, though it remains unclear whether this may work for or against him in the modern SOTY stakes.

‘People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, okay? They come to Lakai Limited Footwear for the atmosphere and the attitude. Okay? That’s what ‘The Flare’ is about. It’s about fun.’

What if you’d been told, on the occasion of ‘Fully Flared’s premiere nigh ten years ago, that Anthony Pappalardo’s part would provide a primary guiding light for the shoe supplier’s next full-length video — would you have believed it? Similarly could any 80’s baby have guessed that it would be Crailtap’s joint tour vids with Anti-Hero that would set the Girl and Choco camp’s course for much of the ’10s? What would you say if some time-mastering pixie had whispered ten years ago that Lakai would require the vision of a Mattel toy company exec to navigate the wiles of a marketplace commanded by Nike and Adidas? Could a mere humanoid imagination conjure a world in which Jake Phelps is a recognized television personality, Dr. Dre works for Apple Computers, a new Star Wars movie comes out every year, and Gucci Mane lives a life of domestic sobriety?

It’s true, all of it. Now comes “The Flare,” Lakai’s first formal video project since Barack Obama’s inauguration, perceived by some as a comeback, executed more like a reboot. Any lingering pathos or hard feeling from recent years’ departures and drama is shoved to one side by a grinning Italian who opens the vid with the type of low-fi inventiveness that once drew wiggly yellow lines across California streets and breathed life into a fuschia-hued setup. Following any initial disorientation and upset stomachs, Federico Vitetta dispenses with much of the high-tech effects and in-your-face emoting that at times distracted and dragged on the Ty Evans-helmed productions, instead plunking in moustachioed passersby on horseback, operatic music drops and occasional WWFing of trash cans, lightening the load carried by Altamont Capital’s newest flarees.

Whether the intro’s orbish viewfinder is emblematic of some proverbial rolling stone, casting loose all moss and withered tendrils of the past as it rolls beneath that flatbed trailer, is a question best left up to individual viewers and low-scoring undergraduate term papers. Lakai’s slate is not wiped fully clean — Simon Bannerot, a curly-haired hucker with a lovely fakie frontside kickflip, is tagged in by ‘Fully Flared’ curtain-hoister Mike Mo Capaldi to fulfill similar duties here, gliding long frontside noseslides, nose manualing down steps and launching what’s got to be one of the more daring wallies this side of Lizard King’s parking ramp blast. Sebo Walker goes in with Cory Kennedy fits and a princely De La Soul tune for his gnarliest part to date, Jon Sciano tosses an M-80 of a 360 flip over a garbage bin, Raven Tershy goes the distance on the Andy Roy bar and twirls a magnificent Cab disaster, Yonnie Cruz cracks a switch ollie into one of multiple hairy hills. Jesus Fernandez’s ledge tech remains in ascent — he gets onto the Dylan Rieder block switch — while Vincent Alvarez strings together a marathon line at the LA High School banks, and Stevie Perez jumps a rickety bar to a backside smith grind and traces some fairly tech lines through various European blocks. Riley Hawk chisels further his own legacy via speed-metal fueled 360 flip noseblunts and screeching kickflip 360 wallride.

Mike Carroll and Rick Howard pop in here and there, Mike Carroll taking a version of his downtown Los Angeles line from ‘Fully Flared’ to a narrow ledge, and Rick Howard shove-iting onto well-worn New York concrete, but the most direct references to Lakai’s prior tentpole come from Tyler Pacheco, a young box-wallriding blazer who seems to have memorized that vid’s lines and lore on his way toward meeting and skating with his childhood heroes. For all its storied catalogue, though, the Crailtap camp never has seemed particularly stuck on legacy-burnishing when it comes to their videos, and the passage of time, trends and team members merits a different context in which ‘The Flare’ ought to be considered.

Probably it is true that this video will not alter skating’s course the way ‘Fully Flared’ did, and may not attain ‘Yeah Right’s’ level of envelop-pushing handrail pyrotechnics, or capture an era like ‘Mouse.’ Does it have to? It’s worth considering that before Lakai offered up MJ’s 13-minute opus, brought Guy Mariano’s career back from the dead, and helped establish Lucas Puig’s international sensationdom, it was Mike Carroll and Rick Howard’s chosen roster of style luminaries and promising youngsters who collectively weren’t setting out to craft some vision of skating to come, or on any mission to refurbish any beloved brand name. Toward the end, what’s arguably ‘The Flare’s’ biggest twist doesn’t involve a bunch of fire or green screens but rather a clever spin on skating with the bros.

Was this type of team reset the best thing to happen to Lakai? Do any full-length vids have the capacity these days to change the conversation and hit as hard as ‘Fully Flared’ did 10 years ago? Will Tyler Pacheco set off a multiyear trend of table-bonking flip tricks capped off with the ‘Carroll Thumb’? Is Jesus Fernandez an odds-on favorite to win, place or show in the race for the year’s best hardflip?

Mayan Calendar Fail And Some Other Notes From The Year That Was

Ten more parts
-Austyn Gillette – “Unlimited”
This dude’s footage always is worth checking for — switch backside flip at the end had the craziest catch.
-Keelan Dadd – “Parental Advisory”
-Russ Milligan – “Business As Usual”
I think Russ Milligan at this point may be destined to go down as criminally overlooked, but it’s good he’s found a niche in SF.
-Forrest Edwards – “Wild Power”
-Nate Broussard – “Secondhand Stoke”
Somebody could make a case on how this dude’s languid style and focus on simple tricks might’ve helped refocus Dylan Rieder in his evolution toward the Gravis part.
-Ross Norman – “Civilized”
Ross Norman slayed in “Last of the Mohicans” a few years ago and he’s apparently been putting in time at his own personal Love Park. The heather-gray crew-neck sweatshirt is overdue for a comeback.
-Gilbert Crockett – “Cellout”
-Conor Champion – “3Hunna”
Attention video makers, the farther “Carter 2” fades in the rear-view mirror, so does the bar grow higher for any use of Dwayne Carter music in parts. Ponder this as we take in Conor Champion’s huge switch backside tailslide.
-Brian Peacock – “DC China”
-Adrian Vega – “Outdated”
No super-secret recipe here, just clean tricks at good spots and a brassy song.

What is the over-under on how many months will pass before Mark Suciu is rated pro?

Just curious, the stance here is obvious. There was this one too.

Ten shared parts/promos
-Alien Workshop – “Cinematographer”
If they would’ve sold this part alone via Itunes for $4.99 I think they might have been able to keep AVE in Dapper Dan for decades. Companies should think about devoting their resources toward pumping out well-produced smaller projects like this every year or so, versus these five-year global slogs that wind up relegating half the dudes’ footage to a bonus reel most people will watch twice. Jake Johnson’s nollie wallride here is the real deal.
-Adidas – “New York City”
Adidas and Dan Wolfe have been making the best tour clips out for some time now and this ranks at the top of the stack, up there with the Greece one. Pete Eldridge’s loosey bought him a ticket to years’ worth of message-board dissertations on style.
-Politic – “Introducing”
–“Ordos”
These vids that offer peaks into weird crannies of the world are super worthwhile.
-Polar – “No Complies & Wallrides+shuvits”
-Palace – “N***** WIT ALTITUDE”
-Tim & Eric – “Secondhand Stoke”
Helping hand on the front flip warms the heart
-Dennis Busenitz/Real team – “Cinematographer”
-Bobby Worrest, Daniel Kim & Tim McDermott – “Stop Fakin 2”
Worrest, lines at Pulaski
-Lucas Puig & Co. – “Adidas roadtrip”
The red hat and those cement boobs got a lotta mileage this year. Between Cliche and Adidas and those blue shorts, is Lucas Puig officially the most Euro pro out?
-Magenta – “Hill Street Blues 2”

The rise of Riley Hawk

It has been interesting to track Riley Hawk’s come-up these past few years and his moves. Flying the Birdhouse coop and farming his hair and scumstache under the Baker banner was one thing but all the footage done recently is another, he’s got an interesting take on the heelflip and he’s moved onto a bigger canvas from the ledge combos that got him on the radar a few years ago. This one is my favorite among the several sections he made this year.

A re-re-rise of Tom Penny
Tom Penny footage these days is a crap shoot, but this brand-new clip from the DC “Embassy” park is the best in quite a while. There is still some magic in those feet, between the switch nosegrind, switch frontside flip and ollie impossible.

The next next generation

Make it so

Much like gingerism and Sigfried and Roy’s white tigers, it would appear that professional-level skateboarding is a regressive gene. While there may very well be tons of pro skaters’ children ripping out there with or without the bastard tag, it’s taken until 2008 for the first second-generation pro to come along, who presumably is out there using his embiggened paychecks to work on a third generation as we speak. Which isn’t to say there haven’t been promising prospects. Lance Jr, who seemed on the virge of a triple-threat career as a skate-artist/actor/boarder, has apparently hung up the stick in favor of a guitar. Knox meanwhile is still out there grinding somewhere, having caught the bloodshot eye of Tosh Townend. He had a part in Tosh’s Sin Habits video last year that I never saw but heard was alright.

But as long as there are bars and demos pro skaters will procreate, and with that in mind we turn to a new generation of pro progeny. The Birdman not from New Orleans the other day uploaded this video of the Hawk empire’s firstborn heir skating with a decidedly 2008 style, so much so that if I hadn’t been stone sober I would have thought somebody mislabeled an Austyn Gillette video. (As things stand I remain uncertain.) No longer the helmet-headed munchkin kickflipping off launch ramps, Hudson Riley’s got a taste for flip-outs and ledge pirouettes, and wears the Fully Flared influence on his sleeve. Of course it’s intriguing to imagine what kind of shit he’d do on a ramp but when you’re doing Jesus’s tricks six months after the video came out vert is probably the furthest thing from your mind. Judging by the varied choice in footwear I’m guessing that sponsorship probably is as well, being the naturally gifted spawn of action sports’ moneyed elite. It’s plain that Riley Hawk could get on with somebody if he stays with it, but you have to wonder if he even cares. Maybe he’s got his mind on bigger (read: better-paying) options.

On the other end of the spectrum is Anakin Senn, who gets to hone his flick all summer on the road with the Emerica’s Angels. In the Epicly Laterd clip he seems to have a fairly free-flowing approach, carving quarterpipes and gliding a nice frontside boardslide at the 4:18 mark (with a bonus slam from Dad immediately afterward). Being the offspring of a fairly reticent pro there’s probably no reality TV cameras in his future, but the green machine seems happy to have him around and it would be cool to see where he takes things, raised by one of the great all-around skateboarders of the 90s. On the other hand, he may well end up doing his own thing and forgoing the whole skateboarding-as-career move, which may or may not be a bad thing, particularly if he suffers a disfiguring lava injury and is rebuilt as a shameless contest-winning machine bent on galactic domination. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

Side note: perhaps the reconstituted Big Brother should get Earl Parker to interview Anakin Senn for a “Goddam Ams” feature.