Summertime Mixtape Vol. 6 – Nate Broussard, ‘Static III’

In an era of loud arms and storked rollaways, Nate Broussard’s velvet-soft way with ledges and flip tricks seems a warm, calm ocean away. It is too lazy to say lazy —- gentle or patient maybe, not making the board or the feet or the knees work any harder than needed, just the right amount of pop to get up onto the block or over the rail, absorbing enough impact to mellowishly surf toward the next one. Even on tricks as abrupt or jarring as the switch 360 flip revert or the street gap to nose manual or the opening volcano boost to nose pivot, there’s improbably smooth resolution. His kickflip over the bar and past the grate must be remembered in song, his lines at the UK ledge spot should be enshrined. At a time when skating seems to have room for so many hangers-on and backward-looking career retconning, you hope this dude’s fade from the scene has been deliberate.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 6 – Donovon Piscopo, ‘Hockey Promo’

At some point, under the tutelage of dockworker-period Jason Dill and Pomade-packing AVE, yung Donovon Piscopo cast off his slim denim cuffs and went in for the hazy and vaguely violent beach-scuzz vibe of the California underbelly that roots the Hockey project. He’d already been refining his tricks away from the no-comply tailslide flip-outs, and for this no-tunes intro clip him and big John Fitzgerald soundtracked to their scrapes, impacts and background yelps —- Donovon Piscopo with a lower-key hand in the high-pop movement that emerged as a refreshed progression venue as handrails and stair counts took a breather. His bank to front blunt is huge in this vid, the backside smith grind to backside tailslide held to a crazy degree, the backside flip over the barrier caught in the 90-degree neighborhood and steered firmly the rest of the way around.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 6 – Kris Markovich, ‘Fight Fire with Fire’

Similar to the Wu and the Simpsons, both early-90s contemporaries, Kris Markovich’s questionable late-career moves have had the unfortunate effect of clouding a massive legacy for kids who weren’t around to catch a convincing decade-long run, and requiring oldsters who do to talk like annoyed oldsters. Nevertheless, his catalogue stands, and the somewhat fairly maligned Prime captured Kris Markovich during his angsty and nomadic World period for what’s surely among the company’s better-aging contributions to ‘the culture’: for the period, one of the top inward heelflips on offer, into shit even; Markovich staples like the backside 180 nosegrind, some big jumps, the speed; and not too deep yet into the white tees/blue jeans/white shoes era to dispense with the noseslides to fakie and fakie ollies that could merit fresh Instagram burn today. The closing 360 flip’s audible catch is a triumph of Steve Albini-style open-room sound engineering.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 6 – Lindsey Robertson, ‘Dying to Live’

A jaunty reggae tune for a one-man stress section introed at the time a singular figure — a glasses-wearing Florida kid enamored of heelflips, frontside noseslides and off-kilter tricks such as the (probably correctly) rarely spotted street stalefish. Lindsey Robertson’s part arrived at a time when a major board company still could uncork unknown talents in big videos, and Zero got somewhat questionable moves like the heelflip indy grab over with some help from the murky Jefferson Airplane single and a structure that sort of inverted the Zero template, opening with repeated slow-mo knockouts. Would that your summer is carefree enough to launch massive ollies, throw a shaka and then casually observe your own hand motions.