10. Caleb McNeely – ‘CALEB’

The Huf vids have the past few years tended to be among the most consistent as far as output and craftsmanship and consistency, and marinating some type of local vibe into their rider-focused clips, such as this slightly melancholy, Rust Belt-tinged one of Caleb McNeely, a blue jeans and dirty t-shirt type gifted with a flickering backside kickflip and a love of big jumps to 5-0 grinds. There’s plenty Richmond spots in this which always look good, peppered with stuff like that frontside noseslide on the top rope of the reclaimed monument and the stately pair of brick pillar ollies at the end. DC’s welfare banks get hit up again, and Caleb McNeely adds another block-to-block gap to backside lipslide to the Huf archives after Nick Matthews’ beauty last year and more recent tribute in Thrasher.

Pat Burke’s Arrested Development

40 break

Let’s use Chris Cole’s SOTY as a stepping off-point for some chatter around the new Black Box Dist. videos, how aobut? File Pat Burke alongside David Gravette, Bryan Herman and other gleeful rabble-rouser types who seem to want nothing more of this earthly life than to cut class, blow smoke rings and kickflip shit. The scuzzy Virginian’s section in the Slave production “Radio Television”, maybe/probably the best one in a good video, has that slightly intoxicated spark of youth that for a lot of us made this whole thing exciting for reasons aside from jumping gaps and sliding blocks, in the days before you could skate the prefab park for gym class credit.

Meanwhile the kids like young Pat Burke probably would not care, similar to how he may or may not have cared about potential internet nitpicking over a sorta-janky switch kickflip he does before the fakie heelflip to switch crooked grind in this section, or any potential consequences involved with nollie backside flipping into a big scary bank. There’s the opening mudbath and also a noseblunt/lipslide surprise sort of thing in here that suggest a Spicoli/Trapasso/Lebowski type of rolling with punches going on with his skating, and it seems as if he likes his one red striped polo shirt about as much as switch frontside heelflips, and both probably suit him.

There’s a kind of rotten majesty that this section has in spades, a who-cares spark that dims when dudes get older and battle their demons and gotta skate for their mortgages and car notes and whatnot, even if they’re lucky enough to be packing a backside heelflip informed by a few summers at Lockwood or something. Well, except maybe Duane Peters. Then again it’s probably an indication you’re getting old yourself when you watch this kid Pat Burke slide a little whooping noseblunt on a quarterpipe and envy the whole scenario for the trick itself, but also that school’s-out-for-the-weekend feeling that gets fleeting pretty quick. Hold onto it, young Burke, and make sure you thank the gods of onion rings and canned beer with each switch heelflip and all the sweet animal feasting stock footage for the video.

We do this in broad daylight

Wha happen?

Jamie Thomas is given credit for a lot of things, such as the Zero quick-cut editing technique, reintroducing the world to Chris Cole and ruining skateboarding forevermore. But often people end up overlooking other things about the Zero warlord, like his deep flatground skills, his vertically integrated business approach and his eye for great tech skaters. While he’s generally associated with greaseball hessians of the Ellington and Garrett Hill variety, Jamie Thomas also put on the likes of Josh Kalis and Adrian Lopez, whose first line in Thrill of It All is still hot a decade-plus later.

(Did Jamie Thomas recruit Satva Leung to Toy Machine? Been a while…)

It’s a close thing, but at this point I guess I can pretty safely say that Gilbert Crockett had my favorite part in the generally underrated Mystery video last summer–snappy flip tricks, fast pushing and quick set-ups. As is the way of the skateboard world, he got a spot on the Fallen shoes team a couple months ago ahead of their video this summer, and the powers that be posted up this video last week of Crockett skating the Black-Box warehouse. Pretty much all these tricks are boss material in one way or another but the smooth-sailing switch b/s lipslide and the way he pops out of the frontside k-grind are particularly thrilling to me. Note to HD filmers: it is indeed possible to toggle the slo-mo off on HD footage, and it still looks amazing.

So while we all wait for the Fallen video, which supposedly is going to premier online at some point, here’s an older Gilbert Crockett part from the “Whathadhappenwaz” video, made by the Endless Grind people in North Carolina. Watch for the flared-out nosebonk at 2:05. And the sweet Arby’s product placement about 10 seconds earlier.