Video of the Week: Ryan Decenzo - Double Down

Friday was a wonderful day in the world of skateboarding. The Battle at the Berrics Finals night went down, live, and boy was it an experience. Seeing everything happen with no editing, just live action, conveys the crowd's energy and skaters' nervous excitement so much more clearly than the usual individual videos of the battles. And it's because of this modified medium of watching the Finals that the whole event was simply spectacular. I legitimately laughed out loud in stoked surprise when Sewa landed Koston's pressure flip, or when Luan miraculously pulled out his pressure heelflip along with some double flip variations to match Cody. The whole night was filled with great moments like these, intertwined with the equally touching and inspiring story of Johnny Romano, along with the unexpected technical insanity that was Cody Cepeda's Recruit part. While you can check The Berrics over the next few days to rewatch most of these features, it's hard to recreate that feeling of watching it all live.

Now to psych everyone up for that wonderful Friday evening was the Video of the Week - Ryan Decenzo's Double Down part - that came out just after noon on Friday. We already know Ryan is a killer on a skateboard from his Hallelujah and Forward Slash parts, so it needs to be recognized and appreciated just how quickly Ryan can churn out these lengthy, extremely gnarly parts. Charging the biggest rails, huge gaps, getting tech-gnar on some famous rails, and redefining how to skate rails with huge drop offs, Ryan impresses in every single clip, without exaggeration. If his trick on a rail seems even on the brink of being relatively simple, he'll be nollie-ing into it to provide that extra challenge. (Cause he really has one of the most insane nollies in the game.) I personally loved the enormous front 360 at 0:56, the big 360 flip lipslide at 3:06 followed by a super sketchy nollie back bluntslide (made to look easy), and then the pair of hammers at 4:23 down and over the steep rail. The whole part is really just an onslaught of gnarly tricks at gnarly spots, and deserves to stay on top of the internet waves for a quite a while before getting swept away in its growing tides.

In other skate news from the week:
Justin Figueroa kinked crooked grind ender from Bake and Destroy, the gnarliest crooked grind ever, is shown uncut with all of the attempts leading up to the epic make. I love raw, uncut footage.
Denzel White's part in Active Ride Shop's "Where Is It?" is super sick! Never heard of him but he is definitely here to stay after a part like this. The one-footed switch front 3 after the craziest roll-in 5-0 are so awesome, and he even has a similar downhill tre flip to Ryan's...doubling down indeed.
Nick Jensen's part in Jacob Harris' Eleventh Hour (highly recommended viewing) is filled with those one of a kind London vibes and the quick-footed precision that Nick is known to provide. The ender's pretty insane too.
Raymond Molinar's Metro Lines part is pretty fun to watch. Always happy with another Raymond part and this night-skating, spot-searching experience is quite enjoyable.
Body of Water is a feature organized by Dave Chami taking Walker Ryan, Dennis Busenitz, Josh Matthews, Joey Pepper, and Nestor Judkins to New Zealand. With a crew like this, good skating is guaranteed.
Shota Kikuchi has a new deck coming out for Consolidated and released this part to go with it. The rough Japanese spots really bring out Shota's raw skating as the part keeps picking up throughout.
Heroin Skateboards worked with The Skateboard Mag last week and introduced both Zack Krull, with a wild and ripping part, along with Joe O'Donnell, who has some quick feet, crazy ideas, loads of board control, and one heck of a nose manual. They also put out a pleasing montage, Egomaniacs Diss, that properly covers a few different skate styles.