The Video of the Week, and probably the homie video of the year, without a doubt goes to Shep Dawgs Vol. 4. With the perfect soundtrack to keep the good vibes and gnarly sessions going, the loads of footage gathered in this true full length video starts off strong and never lets up. It's crazy because quite a few parts could have been the ender, but AJ Zavala (part featured above) puts his name on the radar with some nutty handrail variations and all around ripping. Definitely worth getting the DVD, the Shep Dawgs prove that there's nothing quite like feeding off the energy of each other and skating with the homies.
Cory Kennedy and Bert Wootton had their parts in Rat Poison released by The Skateboard Mag and boy are they awesome! Cory never ceases to amaze in whatever he's trying, be it some dork around trick, some crazy handrail, or a super tech ledge trick (or even making a line out of two varial flips), and Bert strings together some of the trickiest lines (the one at 2:00 is too good) while making everything look like it's nothing. X Games Real Street is bound to make your day better. Even with some arguably strange competitiveness forced by the X Games overlords, these 16 mini parts from your favorite skaters are always worth it. Tom Karangelov's Out of Sync part for Thunder Trucks has a couple of minutes of fast and gnarly skating, never slowing down since his Cold War part.
There's lots of rad London shredding in Innocence & Experience from Hold Tight London Andrew Cannon's latest part for Theeve Trucks is super clean and full of good vibes. Vince Duran has a Surprise Spring Cleaning, which is definitely not as throwaway as it sounds. His fakie ollie and variations with it is for sure one of the best in the game right now. Jon Holland's part for The Cinematographer Project with the Sk8mafia squad was re-released through Transworld this past week and worth a few views if you haven't seen it on the full DVD already.
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.
