Summertime Mixtape Vol. 5 – Darrell Stanton ‘Roll Forever’

Before Plan B and the $35,000 question, Darrell Stanton came up on Real and ripped Bay Area spots with an uncommonly loose-limbed style that nobody else really had then or since. Setting aside debates over the moniker and worth of the ‘forward flip’ — he could do them in lines — there is something about nearly every clip in this part from Real’s ‘Roll Forever,’ a full-length offered up for free in the days when that was achieved by packaging rainbow-reflecting DVD discs with paper magazines sent through the U.S. Postal Service to subscribers’ homes. Man-for-all-seasons Darrell Stanton spins his switch 180s late, sits on his window-ledge backside tailslides for a good long while, switch bigspins double sets and wow, that arm on the nollie frontside noseslide. For however many years he’s been out of the limelight now Darrell Stanton, who crushes three tricks down the SF Clipper hubba here, could still make a credible claim to the title for that spot, what with his Transworld part two years earlier.

4. Justin Figueroa – “Bake and Destroy”

No morning-after phone call lamenting any fiscal “gifts” that a David Gonzalez SOTY administration would ensure for High-Speed Productions and no signs of bitterness that the golden statue skated out of his grasp, Justin Figueroa nevertheless brought heat and a prematurely grizzled countenance to some rather crazy tricks in this Thrasher-backed Baker offering, including but not limited to an elongated version of Jamie Thomas’ crooked-grind barge down multiple kinks 10 years ago. Prowling streets and sidewalks and seeming to be only half-thinking of the next move, Justin Figueroa gets over a lot thanks to his switch backside prowess, displayed down a triple set and the Wilshire rails during their final days, alongside his sometimes ill-advised commitment to scary tricks like the frontside feeble revert and the switchstance hill bomb following the frontside kickflip. Jousting with the big rails and gaps suits a guy like this, looking like some barbarian warrior launching himself onto the back of a charging wooly mammoth and not always expecting to stay on.