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.

Slams #4: Figgy

Justin "Figgy" Figueroa without a doubt skates some gnarly rails. The fact that I've seen him in more torn up, shredded T-shirts than whole ones should demonstrate that. Not only that but his hands are always cut up from the battles he must go through for his difficult tricks. He's a pretty big dude so when he's tossing his carcass down some hefty rails and something goes wrong, the results are rather sketchy.
Though the clip is fairly old by now, the video above from a Skate Rock tour gives a nice view of the bone-jarring thud you hear when Figgy slams hard. Ankles, face, just a full body blow. Try not to grimace.
Figgy's stand-out part in Stay Gold was extremely rad because he skated so hard to get his gnarly tricks. All of Figgy's B-Sides from Stay Gold are great to watch for both the makes and the bails, but the main falls for me include the couple harsh and fast slams on the long tre flip at 1:51, the broken ankle and weird bending of his leg while trying to switch flip the ATL 5 block at 3:28, and the horrible sound of the bashed head on the front feeble bail at 4:19 where he just so happened to get a board to the head as well. Insult to injury. There's also a smith grind from the part where Figgy sacks the curved rail rather nicely that's fully explained here; the spot is also carried into the next part...
From Stay Gold to Bake and Destroy, Figgy didn't stop working and skating really hard. Right away you see the cut up arms and hands at the start of the part immediately followed by two gruesome bails involving some skidding on the ground and that impactful thump that never sounds good. The giant gash in his hand seals the deal. Getting totally flipped over the rail at 0:46 to the point where his legs just add to the weight crushing his head and neck into the ground adds to Figgy's list of rough bails.

Next Week: Switch Backside Kickflips

Switch backside flips are probably my favorite trick to watch, mostly for the fact that I can't do them whatsoever. Some guys have them, and then some guys have them very very well with great flick and style. This week I'm going to highlight my top 5 favorite switch backside flippers.
But before that, I'd like to point out a few great skaters and moments with that trick.
Stefan Janoski is obviously one of the most fluid and skilled switch skaters out there with his graceful light footed style. Everyone knows his switch flip is unmatchable and he definitely has a great switch backside one as well.
Furby's got plenty of those 180 fliptricks, switch backside flips being one of them. His clean style makes any of his tricks look thugged out.
Moose definitely has a great switch backside flip, I just happen to see him throw down more nollie frontside flips, so I don't have him pegged as much for doing it switch. But I must shoutout his Santa Monica triple set nollie frontside flip: that was sick!
In the new Emerica Made video, Jeremy Leabres perfectly lands a switch backside flip down the second of two fairly large sets, following a nollie backside flip. That was easily one of my favorite lines from the video and I'm really eager to watch Jeremy blow up.
Figgys battle at the heavily guarded triple set (in LA I believe) for Bake and Destroy was one of the sweetest things about his skating. I knew he could skate switch on handrails like no one else but I had no clue he had a switch backside flip like that. Combine that surprising flip trick with Figgys desire to just attack spots makes the behind the scenes to that trick just wonderful to watch, pretty much what every skater dreams of doing at some point.
And lastly, for one of my favorite individual switch backside flips of all time, I give ultimate credit to DJ Gaudin (who I had never heard of but will always remember now) for doing this trick down the infamous Wallenberg. The switch roll in itself is super sketchy, but somehow DJ manages to get a proper flick on his switch backside flip and stylishly execute that tough trick down the huge 4 block. Again, the video shows how great the session must've been as him and Forrest tried their awesome tricks, so seeing the makes provides that feeling of excited relief and giddiness even (for me at least).