Recent No Complys #1: Wes Kremer

Closing off the week and the look at Recent No Complys is Wes Kremer with a trio of clips (but 5 trick variations) from his Real Street part. Traditionally the no comply is a play-around trick that keeps the flow going, so who better to utilize it than the man who's always having fun and flowing around on his board. Never passing up a moment to flash the 'Mafia sign, Wes starts things off with what I'd like to call a nose comply impossible. Just for the heck of it and because it looks so cool. Then, at a legit Chinese street spot, Wes scoops a non-compliant front shove down some stairs (how hard must it be to actually catch that trick?), keeps flowing with the David Gravette signature done as smoothly as ever, and then no comply frontside flips up the long 4 stair. Hold up. No comply frontside flip up? Has that ever been done? I don't even get how you can controllably flip the board when no complying up stairs, much less frontside flip as if it was a kicker. Even if it has been done, it certainly hasn't been caught a good 2 or 3 steps higher than it needed to be. Only Wes. And if that wasn't enough, Wes shows PJ and Moose that he's got the frontside heelflip 360 too by no complying with it down some stairs. Now Louie Barletta's non-flipping version from Bonus Round is still demonstrative of the fun you can have not only with some no complys but with a full part as well, and Albert Nyberg's version to lipslide is still one of the craziest tricks ever, but there's something different when Wes does the trick. Regardless of the technicality or the loads of fun with these tricks, Wes's skating is always pretty special.

Recent No Complys #5: Lem Villemin

Starting things off for the Recent No Complys is a clip from the beginning of May with the man of steeze himself: Lem Villemin. Torsten Frank shot a wonderful cruising piece called "Owl Eyes on Lem Villemin", showcasing Lem and his homies taking a casual (I use that somewhat loosely) stroll through the streets of Stuttgart. While some pretty solid tricks and street gaps go down in this awesome night session, the one trick that caught my eye is Lem's no comply backside 360 at 1:44. Now David Gravette still wears the crown for this trick, but Lem's version is noteworthy for two main reasons: the pop, and the nonchalance. It may be Cliche to say it, but the deck certainly may have helped with the pop. The nonchalance on the other hand, you can only attribute that to Lem.

Next Week: SOTY 2013 Contenders

It's always hard to think of there being only one single Skater of the Year, but Thrasher has kept up with the task every year since 1990 of honoring one awesome ripper with the title. Now that we're in the last quarter of 2013, it's an appropriate time to take a look at some of this years top contenders for SOTY. This week will be my personal top 5 picks for who I think could take the title.
It's always tricky with the politics in the skate industry because the award for SOTY can almost be considered a universal title, yet it's exclusively given out by Thrasher Magazine. So whoever decides the winner in the end has to have some preference towards skaters with loads of coverage in Thrasher specifically, as opposed to other magazines. This does shift my Top 5 somewhat, but regardless, here are a bunch of guys that could definitely be deserving of such a title but that I don't think will ultimately win the award:

Dudes like Tommy Sandoval and Dane Burman skated the gnarliest (to say the least) spots in Road Less Traveled, and are likely going to have standout parts in Cold War, assuming it still comes out before the end of the year. Unless those parts are seriously groundbreaking, their not-technically-full-parts-but-more-like-montage-clips from RLT probably won't put them at the SOTY level this year, in my opinion. Same goes for Chris Cole, who has been on the contest circuit this year. You can never count him out for dropping a legendary part in Cold War, yet I think it's going to have to be just that in order for him to come close for SOTY.
Guys like Walker Ryan and Julian Davidson (who dropped most of his footage while still am...would that make a difference towards SOTY?) came out with loads of really great footage this year. Both had amazing parts in Perpetual Motion, which coming from Transworld may not help them in the SOTY race. Walker had a really awesome part in Organika's Grow With Us as well as a sweet Mag Minute for the Skateboard Mag (again probably not helpful for Thrasher's SOTY). Julian had sweet footage in his Element Pro Part including that wonderful Bercy frontside flip, as well as a nice clip for getting on Etnies. Despite both of these dudes killing it this year, I feel like their lack of Thrasher coverage goes against them with respect to getting SOTY.
Then there were guys like Jim Greco and Bob Burnquist who each dropped a single part, but a single part that was insane in both instances. Greco even came out with probably the most memorable commercial ever (for me anyway) for Supra that I'd consider for his year of awesome skating. For these two guys, despite dropping epic video parts, I just have a gut feeling like they're missing something for the SOTY running.
David Gravette came out with a nutty part in CSFU and backed it up with his just as crazy Real Street part. Again, David could totally deserve SOTY this year after these ridiculous parts but I just don't personally see him winning this year.
Daryl Angel is sort of an underrated guy for me but with the potential to still make a really strong run for SOTY this year. He had a memorable couple of tricks in Austyn Gillette's part in Cosmic Vomit 2 and still has a part coming out in Chronicles Vol. 2 as well as some clips if not a part in Habitat's Search the Horizon (assuming that's released before the end of the year). I'd say his more simplistic take on his tricks together with his smooth and speedy style combine for the potential for a pretty awesome part in the Nike video, something worth mentioning with this SOTY talk.
Also, there are guys like Shane O'Neill and Luan Oliveira that likely will have outstanding parts in Chronicles Vol. 2, but much like Chris Cole with Cold War, those parts will surely have to be outstanding to be considered in line for SOTY 2013.
And finally, considering that the Plan B video is not going to drop before the year ends, that takes away a good number of other skaters that could easily be in the run for SOTY. 2014 better watch out for this though...

Skating the Unskateable #1: David Gravette

The fact that David Gravette came out with this Gregslist video just to skate literal garbage from a rusty pipe to a piano shows his exact spirit for skateboarding: getting out of your comfort zone and conquering new obstacles. David is very good with this and has shown his expansion of spots particularly well with new ridiculous handrails and transitions. He skates some of the gnarliest obstacles possible and seriously expands on the possibilities of what can be skated. His handrail skating is some of the most dangerous and impressive in the game and has been for a good number of years now.
Looking back to his And Now part, aside from the few insane handrails that may be only skateable to a select few of handrail killers, the few clips from 1:47-2:10 peek into David's spot creativity. From a tall sewer tunnel to a cartoonishly enormous pole jam to a legit brick wall skatestopper built right at the end of a handrail (which David gaps out over nonchalantly).
In Hesh Law at 1:27, David skates a crazy handrail that is much longer than you'd expect, and then at 1:37 he skates a mini electrical box on the side of a telephone pole to show that nothing is out of reach.
In Beware of Sasquatch he skates a bracketed handrail at 2:54 and somehow avoids the natural skatestoppers, despite the lack of any surface area of a rail to grind on.
In Prevent This Tragedy he just glides around a super curved handrail and backside 180s out for good measure at 1:42, even though just maintaining composure through the curve seems impossible. The last rail has surely turned countless other handrail killers away, but with a godly 50-50 like David has he stays unaffected by the kink in the handrail as the rail just keeps getting longer and longer. Perfect balance cheat codes? Check.
Since David's been on a rampage of skating this past year, he released a CSFU Bonus Part in which he opens up skating a dirtbike course in the middle of the woods. Keyword: dirtbike. At 1:03 he steeply drops in and then rides a sketchy looking rail ingrained in the dirt and decides that it's not enough, so he comes out into a nose manual and then pops into the bowl. An impossible combo all starting from the impossible grind.
David's most recent full video part in CSFU (above) contains quite possibly the main reason for this week's subject: his very first trick of the part. After a long and mentally gruesome battle with the rail, David rides the roller coaster 50-50 through two full 90 degree turns containing small kinks, all while gradually going downhill as well. This trick in itself deserves a medal of some kind because balancing does not work like that. He later launches into a no pop full speed feeble grind at 1:42 around a tight curve; it's all in the posture on this one. At 2:02 he flies down a well-sloped handrail into two kinks and a shifting angle of the rail as well, gliding through the grind like it's nothing, even though just looking at the rail makes any trick seem unlikely. The run up for the rail at 2:52 appears to be way to small but a quick carve and David magically sticks with the enormous double kinker all the way down.
And lastly, in David's Real Street part (which is filled with some rather awesome clips) he slides right over a bunch of bike racks at 0:28. It's funny because bike racks are meant to stop you, but David clearly is having no business with these standard rules. The ender 50-50 is better shown here with all the trials and tribulations, both physical and mental. What's absurd about this trick is mixing the number of kinks with the actual steepness and shortness of them too. Only David could see this as being an actual spot to skate.