4. Guru Khalsa – “Origin”

(29:53)

Rewatching Guru Khalsa’s pretty heavy part in the Habitat video this fall, I got to wondering to what degree (if any) he maybe was brought up under the tutelage of Anthony Correa, who probably doesn’t get as much credit these days as he deserves for the low-key ripping he put in around the turn of the decade — was reminded as I tried and failed to find the Guru Khalsa “Origin” part online but instead came up with this old local vid part, where the first line is about as 1990s as it gets. Anyway in jarring contrast to somebody like Daryl Angel, who at least for me requires concentration to fully appreciate the difficulty of some of his tricks, Guru Khalsa’s emerged as one of the standout street stylers on the evolved Habitat team and is refining a mixture of general wildness and loose control. He shares the blessing of nollie b/s noseblunts with fellow Texan Jeremy Holmes and the “Origin” part put together a lot of his promise, his switch stuff got more difficult and he filmed several of the best-looking tricks in a video that also included skating from Steve Durante as well as a Stefan Janoski switch kickflip.

Sleeping Through the Afternoon

Tick-tock

Ayy, don’t think of it as a lull in posting, but instead rather a meta-type comment on laziness and sloth, or more specifically the type of calculated and semi-responsible laziness apparently practiced by Mark Appleyard over the last half-decade as we continue to parse the new Flip video. Appleyard’s part was good and all – indeed pretty great at points, yah – but kind of like when you first learned about Dr. Dre’s history with Eazy E and Jerry Heller, the thing took on a whole new depth after I checked out Appleyard’s Thrasher interview (Geoff Rowley cover).

I heard a rumor that you finished your part years ago.
Yes I did. The bulk of it I fininshed in 2004, right after the SOTY, when I was really on fire.

You’re like the kid that finishes his homework before class is even over.
Yeah, get ‘er done. Finish it on up.

So this hasn’t been a big push for you these last few months.
Not really. I don’t really work well under pressure. I try, but as far as going out and kickflip boardsliding down El Toro, that’s not really my style. I don’t really want to risk anything or get hurt ’cause I like to skate a lot. I want to be able to skate on a daily basis and not to anything that’s too stressful.
…
What trick are you most pleased with in the video?
Maybe the tre flip noseslide I did down Wilshire — five years ago.

Reading between the lines (on the page and in the vid) you can roughly guess that Appleyard has spent the past five years more or less perpetually bumping reggae music and occasionally buying expensive Rolex timepieces or filming a trick. There’s no jarring fresh-to-hesh schism going on but you could kind of place some of the footage by the bagginess of any given pair of pants. Beyond an acknowledged addiction to the nollie backside bigspin he remains super good, a solid case for the frontside noseslide to fakie and other tricks that others sometimes would do better to leave alone, like the switch 180 manual/5-0 (the one down the Standford hubba ledge was pretty bonkers). Notable also: the nollie bigspin b/s tailslide and the kickflip b/s tailslide shove-it on the just-liberated Hubba Hideout, and taken on its own, slipping the nollie backside noseblunt in the first third of the part hints at a far more interesting video that could’ve been, at least editing-wise.

There’s less nuance to former Appleyard roomie Rodrigo TX’s section, but of course way more tech-trick fireworks, with a lot of stuff that looks like it could’ve been shoehorned into his “Menikmati” section (5-0 180 out on the hubba, or anytime he wears shorts). The tall backside tail’s awesome, along with the picnic table Pupecki and the Mariano bench trick, and that one line sort of made me wish more dudes skated in camo pants still. Most of those Barcelona bench moves are totally out of hand and in terms of raw unbridled skills TX probably still ranks alongside your Chris Coles, Marc Johnsons and Eric Kostons.

Over and Out

RJ Blastoff

One of the things that got me excited about the Sieben/Lowry Roger adventure, besides their penchant for wholesale idiocy and ads like this, was the fact that they put on Texas’s Jeremy Holmes, who in this humble tool’s opinion is one of the overlooked skateboarders of the current generation. If you’re not familiar, youtuber and all-around Baron Davis fan “juliandude” has got you with a decent four-minute career retrospective, provided you don’t mind DTP, slow-mo nollie heelflips on flat and comic sans ms. (Me, I’m a fan.)

What I am significantly less fanatical about is the news out of the Lone Star state yesterday that after what I can only assume was a torrid 60-day love affair, Roger and Holmes have parted ways, one way or the other. Which leaves the team looking pretty much like it already was, sans Holmes and plus a handful of youtube heroes that shall remain nameless until they are voted on by you, the American people, and various other countries out there that also have internet.

Anyway, who’s to say what went down that fateful night (let’s assume it was at night) in Texas, a place where ice is prized for its cooling properties and nothing is the way it seems. Perhaps there were sticker invoice irregularities involved, or maybe Jeremy Holmes is waiting out the remaining 48 hours of his contract with Roger before announcing that he has joined Birdhouse. In the meantime here’s about a minute of shit from a Texas video last year that features that Ghostface remake of the Rakim song and a switch crooked grind drop-down to ah, switch crooked grind again.