Nick Trapasso, moments before enraging a stuffed-shirt dean of students with his relaxed attitude toward life
Back around the time when Jake Brown offered up his body to raise skateboarding’s profile on sports highlight/grievous injury clip shows, Brazilian melonfarmer Bob Burnquist took a certain amount of heat for appearing to anguish over the organ-lacerating slam, pace, and then proceed to wrest victory from the jaws of the Aussie-eating Megaramp. Some submitted that the classy thing would’ve been to cede the contest to Brown and his history-making 720, but Bob B eventually responded by saying that laying down, even for a badly injured bro, would’ve bummed Jake Brown out and violated the sacred spirit of the X Games themselfs, which would be a bummer of cataclysmic proportions, no doubt.
Only an MRI machine can know for sure what was going on in Jake Brown’s mind at the time, and given the prodigious amounts of the devil’s lettuce that Nick Trapasso is understood to blow, similar guessing at his motivations re: skating would be also a risky bet. But watching the Converse/Thrasher video it’s interesting to see some restraint in terms of what moves he does or doesn’t do at any given time, and in some ways it’s as refreshing as a cracked window to a hotboxed car.
Trapasso’s brand is one of festive floral leisurewear and tossed-off tricks, but the dude’s no slouch skill-wise, switch nose-grinding handrails and hucking that ginormous bigspin flip at the beginning. Not to mention, nollie nosegrinding a different handrail bearing an unfriendly kink. Perhaps the Spicoli thing is something of a put-on, but there’s some type of genuine relaxation to a dude who in 2010 will incorporate a flatground kickflip into a line*, or a similarly simple halfcab to set up a stair jump, or a halfhearted blunt fakie attempt thrown in after the behatted coping nosegrind. There’s a kind of who-cares confidence, the sort of thing that sometimes appears lost among trick trends and the rise of personal brands, and the backside heelflip he does at 2:44 is extremely wonky and sweet-looking.
*nods to Marc Johnson’s “Modus” flatground ollie
boil the ocean 