Last week was one of the craziest weeks in terms of video parts released online, so I apologize for the late posting (almost a week late) but I finally got a concise and really gnarly group of videos of the week.
Top honors goes to one of my top favorites: Lucas Puig. His shared part in Something Sinister was the perfect display of nonchalant, stylish technical skating that you'd want in any video. There's a reason why Lucas is one of my favorites, and it's not the first name. It's the fact that he, in my opinion, has the illest style out there and makes all these ledge tricks look so good. I think the leaves caught in his trucks at 1:48 (on a switch front tail heelflip out to switch nonetheless) pretty much sum up the demeanor of how he filmed this part. Stephen Khou killed it too with some pretty tight tricks, but my boy Lucas shut it down! I can't wait till my DVD of the full video comes in.
I would love to write a paragraph for every one of these following videos because they were all that great, but I'll keep it short:
Walker Ryan - A Far Walk From Home - video parts from my two top favorites in one week!? too good to be true! Oh and pairing Walker with Patrik Wallner is a match made in heaven. Primitive Skateboards - Paul Rodriguez, Nick Tucker, and Carlos Ribeiro team up in one of the heaviest announcements in a while, and based on the jaw-droppers in this intro video, things are going to get heavy. Karsten Kleppan - Lakai Welcomes this Norwegian with an absolutely shredtastic video part full of super fast skating at a bunch of sick street spots. Jay Meador - Something Sinister - Jay oozes style (a common thread in Something Sinister it seems) and makes this part a blast to watch. Jaws - Happy Medium 3 - Just when you think Jaws needs to ice bath for about a year, he ups the ante once again in both skating tranny and deadly drops. Andrew Reynolds - Varial Heel Hollywood High - The persistence and determination needed for this trick is beyond anything most of us could imagine, but leave it up to The Boss to not accept anything but perfection. GX1000 - Moving Violation - This will no doubt make you want to go skate in the streets right now and just cause shenanigans with your homies. Brick City Street Styles - Living in Newark right now, I had no idea how much I was really missing out on until this great all-Newark video came out.
It would be modest to say that it's surprising to see Nick Tucker not even be am for a board company after all these years. He was basically part of, if not at the forefront of, the same crew in Sk8mafia that went pro a couple years ago, and that announcement itself was long overdue for those dudes. Whatever happened between Sk8mafia and Nick is still not clear to me, but apparently it was enough to thoroughly cut out Nick from the crew and set him back a few years. It's cool to see that it seems to be water under the bridge though as Kellen and Nick can still chill. What's even weirder is that he seems like a totally rad person too, so I can't imagine what had transpired. Regardless, after already being on a solid track to professionalism, Nick's status in the industry took a wild turn and he's had to put in work ever since.
I first found out about Nick through his FKD Park Project feature, which was instantly my favorite of the series. Even about a half decade ago he had the illest style (look at that boosted nollie heel over the hip!) and some craziest tricks like his now signature naturally boned nollie inward heel. After seeing this I looked more into Nick's footage and came across his Sk8mafia Am Video part, which continued that steezy style with a sweet display of his tech manual and ledge combos along with a nice mix of fliptricks down some large stair sets.
After those first two glimpses into Nick's skating, I knew enough to be psyched when he got Recruited at the Berrics. Expanding his bag of tricks, he comes through with some nice surprises like a nollie front foot late flip (when it was still a video-game-hard kind of trick and not something every kid can do at the skatepark like now), an inward heel manual impossible out (which will be eternally crazy), and one of the first nollie big spin inward heelflips I think I ever saw. These last three videos from Nick were all released some time around 2009 and already stirred up quite the conversation about him going pro.
At some point on the timeline there was the divergence with Sk8mafia, but Nick stayed relevant in the industry by being welcomed to Grizzly and coming out with this Diamond commercial. Now basically fully grown, every single clip in these two commercials without exaggeration has something remarkable about it. From super stylish fliptricks to really tech ledge combos made to look simple, from bigger flips and boned inward heels to a couple full 360 ollie flips, and then to the first late front foot flip out of a crooked grind that I think I ever saw. Nick was progressing skateboarding on his own at this point through "secondary" sponsor commercials. Not something your standard am can do too easily.
Then just this past year, Primitive Apparel dropped their full video, Pain is Beauty, with Nick getting the curtains (above). When I watch skate videos, I will definitely remember the tricks that jump out of the norm to warrant multiple viewings. Late flips, double flips, etc. all do that job, and Nick includes plenty of those in this part to keep you on the edge of your seat. But it's more than that. He comes through with new tricks for his bag (gap to switch 5-0 and switch backside flip over the bump to bar were cool to see from Nick) to show personal progress, a quality everyone wants to see out of their favorite skaters. And then throw in a one-of-a-kind style, arguably one of the best in skateboarding, and you have yourself a super enjoyable and memorable part.
And then there's the fact that he still isn't officially am for any team yet that is a shocking jump back to reality. He's had plenty of sessions with the Expedition team to at least be considered "flow" for them, and this has been going on for a considerable time by now so that's grounded pretty well. But I've never seen an official welcome for Nick to Expedition and he isn't even listed on their roster on Facebook. (Wow, roster sounds way too much like a sport now...ugh.) It's a really weird situation.
Nick already skates with a sense of professionalism already, a mastery of his fliptricks and board control that truly represent his good number of years skateboarding and coming up. Plus, being able to switch inward heel jaw-droppingly beautifully second try down a pretty large set is way too worthy to be flow for much longer. From his Full-Clip Friday, we know he's been skating this year and even improving: better consistency, more pop, flawless trick execution, and still somehow coming up with new tricks. With that as just park footage, and coming off of a good 9 months or so since Pain is Beauty, Nick's bound to have some footage in store for 2014. And since he's been consistently skating with Expedition in 2013, it only makes sense that he will finally get his official blow up in 2014.
Shane O'Neill is kind of like Moose in that they both have basically claimed the nollie frontside flip through their excellent use of the trick, yet Shane has also done wonders with the switch backside flip. Everyone knows Shane is a wizard when it comes to skating: he can do basically any trick he really wants to and somehow make it look like he's had that trick down for years. I'd say there's a fine line between stylish and robotic, and Shane knows exactly where to walk on the stylish side without wavering too far over. This is evident with his switch backside kickflips. Just look at his Trickipedia for the trick at the Berrics. (You know when you get a Trickipedia for a trick that you've definitely mastered it.) Shane encompasses just the right amounts of flicking without going too ninja, the right amount of spinning board and body without overdoing the late backside rotation almost into a pivot, and the right amount of knee flexing so his posture while popping and landing is the most comfortably looking I've seen. A trick like this with Shane's style is the pinnacle of bringing jealousy to those that watch him skate as for how easy he makes the trick look.
Shane's put out some top notch parts over the past 4 years or so that are obviously worth watching for the diversity of tricks, yet the few switch backside flips thrown in them definitely stand out.
In Skate Mental's Am Chowder, Shane works a switch backside flip into a banked manual at 1:41 with enough ease to calmly 180 out at the end. He also nails a really nice one at 2:29 at this foundation gap.
In his going pro video part through Skate Mental and the Berrics (above), Shane continues to show his comfortability with the trick at 0:47 across a flat gap and especially in the combo trick at 2:48, the likes of which I had not even imagined possible before this video part. (Remember how monumental this part was when it came out back in 2010? Looking at it now is a trip because of how much crazier skateboarding has become in every respect. Woah...)
Recently, in Primitive's team video Pain is Beauty, Shane perfectly executes a switch backside flip over a picnic table at 7:52, which again demonstrates the right balance of everything good in a stylish fliptrick.
And lastly, in Not Another Transworld Video, Shane does the trick into a nose manual at 0:53 (holding it for quite some time) and just to be safe he nollie flips out. At 1:39 he utilizes the lily manual pads with a quick ollie up then a frontside 180 switch manny switch backside flip out, fully rotating the trick on its way out and sustaining his momentum too, just because that's how good he has the trick. He immediately follows that clip up at 1:45 by speedily switch backside flipping with a sick flick across a long gap. And then at 2:39 you can witness the culmination of all switch backside flippage with the ultimate ledge combo that I had been dreaming about seeing for years: switch kickflip back tail switch backside flip 270 out.
