Dakota Servold Made A Whole Transworld Video By Himself

It requires a certain steeliness of nerve, a never-look-down style of confidence, to trundle off to market in this bold Year of the Capybara with a wagonload of minimal suede uppers and vulcan soles, seeking purchase and fingerholds upon shoe walls heavy-laden with stay-puft ’90s boots and eBay-ready $150 MSRP limited editions. Just so, Sole Tech’s Emerica this week shows itself to be similarly unshook to point the stalwart footwear concern’s perennially green-tinted lens 180 degrees away from the prevailing stand-and-zoom, face-shoes-face treatment of the modern patterned pants wearers and curb bashers, uploading ‘There’s So Much More,’ a super heavy solo part from tentpole teamrider Dakota Servold, stretched to a feature-length 10 minute runtime.

Here, the feature in question calls back to a certain high-gloss production freighted with snippets of worldly observations, funded by White Pages-scale advertising revenues and coated in creamy atmospherics and b-roll. Whereas energetic beverage conglomerate Red Bull GmbH five years ago conjured the Transworld video spirit for its handrail-drizzled ‘U Good?’, its slow-mo and trip-hop accoutrements lacked much in the way of verbal introspection by the likes of Jamie Foy and Alex Midler. Matt Gotwig generated a fine approximation with his 2021 ‘Birds’ part that came complete with Atiba Jefferson bleep-bloop credits music supervision, but no voiceover; Neils Bennett’s ‘Heroes/Helden’ last year got closer still, dipping into the soul music archives and recruiting Mike Carroll for a brief voiceover.

 

Dakota Servold’s Emerica vid covers all those bases and more, opening with pontifications on the horizon-wide opportunity of the open road and spots waiting to be discovered, interspersed with various quotables and ending with a Young Jeezy/’Thug Motivation’-adjacent exhortation to “go out there.” Other Transworldisms appear throughout, including copious slow-mo, mixed media, desert wastes, fuzzboxed guitars, sunrays blaring through treebranches, and a quotable title.

 

One benefit of the full-production treatment is that Dakota Servold’s tricks are given lots of room to breathe, with lengthy takes and various angles and little filler, and unlike other multi-song epics such as Marc Johnson in ‘Fully Flared’ or Mark Suciu’s ‘Verso,’ this one doesn’t easily divide into chapters. Dakota Servold rummages pretty deep to pull out some pretty wild clips like the frontside bluntslide all the way through the Robert Frost Middle School kinks, the 50-50 up to frontside bluntslide 180 to switch 50-50 down, or that pole jam out to crooked grind down the rail toward the end.

 

After Mike Carroll in Niels Bennett’s vid last year and the Carhartt WIP one several weeks ago, is the voiceover threatening to once again trend? Has the Transworld video format become its own subgenre at this point? Where did he come up with that frontside 180 to switch 50-50 to fakie frontside boardslide combo? Is that one rebar-made rail destined to end a ‘Grains’ video or maybe a future Matt Andersen/Jake Baldini joint?

Midsummer Video Roundup: And Now

“Fuckin, I don’t know”

Okay, can I just tell you my favorite thing about this new Transworld video, even more so than Kenny Hoyle’s opening kickflip, or Richie Jackson’s paisley pirate outfits, or Nick Trapasso: no fucking voiceovers. This closely approximates my personal reaction, except on a couch. I was wearing basically the same amount of body armor.

Pretty much every time a TWS video has come out in the last few years I’m inclined to think “hmm, this is the best TWS video in years” which may or may not actually be the case after a few weeks of viewing. But this time, guys… this time for sure (no Bullwinkle) I think “And Now” really is the best TWS vids in quite some time. There’s been some hoopla in the magazine about how this is like the new “In Bloom,” which I can see, sort of. But that begs the question: who’s gonna flame out Trainwreck style?

Transworld videos at this point are an institution, like Madonna for instance, and if you took the 20 or so videos they’ve put out over the last 15 years (TWS that is) you’d have a fairly accurate roadmap of trick trends, skateboard fashion, and evolving film/edit techniques that generally represent the best in skate videos at any particular point. A lot of the credit goes to Ty Evans, who presided over the TWS golden age of “Feedback”/”The Reason”/”Modus Operandi,” but the revolving cast of filmer/editors that has passed through those hallowed AOL/Time Warner doors since has taken up his blueprint and soldiered on, with mostly positive results. Filming innovations and high production value aside though, there’s Ty tropes that maintained long past their expiration date, like the intolerable voiceovers (some sounded like they were reading off a teleprompter) and the vaguely hilarious inanity of the titles.

So it’s cool that “And Now,” humorously inane title aside, tones down the starry-eyed “wow, skating, man” and keeps things moving. No overblown intro montage (not too overblown anyhow), no goddamn voiceovers, no skits unless you count Richie Jackson’s whole part. Reckless dumbass David Gravette comes out blasting with his charbroiled rail moves and winds things up with a trick that’s sure to get some novices sacked before the snow flies. Matt Miller I was really looking forward to and he came through with a solid part of fairly straightforward skating, fakie flip body varial noseblunt aside. (That’s what it was right? I had to rewind many times.) But generally he had a minimum of the polejam/wallie/manual combos that TWS videos have showcased heavily the last couple years.

That of course is handled with psychedelic aplomb by Richie Jackson, dark hippie avenger from Oz, who twirls and skids and somehow powerslides down stairs. Some of the tricks are pretty inspired and I was relieved to see him work in some more standard-issue shit, like the b/s 5-0 revert and the switch 360 flip, because sometimes I get the sinking feeling that these guys known for doing nutty/dork/novelty tricks all day long may not be able to actually skate any other way.

Kenny Hoyle is just great. The angle on that switch bigspin heelflip he does over the hump is so good. A prime example of a skater who on paper might not sound that sound exciting but the way he lands tricks does it all. Nick Trapasso is sort of the same (see the way he rides away from the double-set switch frontside heelflip) but freakishly talented enough to inspire head-scratching and rewinding. There’s some stuff I’m not into at all, like the nollie tuck-knee, but it’s hard to complain much. It’s like he can do anything. Both the song choice and the electric blue socks are kind of untouchable.

Then there’s Sean Malto, who seems to be the living, hardflipping nightmare of every skatepark old guy who narrows his eyes and mutters “damn kids” as some 9th-grader glides down the rail. Switch kickflip frontside k-grinds, cab feebles, et cetera. It goes on for some time. I can imagine people complaining that the marquee tricks have already been in ads, but for me, the full gnarliness of those tricks didn’t quite translate through the 2-D photo format, although that could just be my brain problem. Malto, though: So much command and confidence, and he’s so young. At least he looks young. If my calculations above are correct Malto will soon be sleeved up and bloated from alcohol misuse, so as long as the legions of skatepark old guys can keep their guts in check til then, the last laugh may yet be theirs.

In summary, best TWS video in years. I think. No voiceovers!