Video of the Week: Eric Thomas - Paradise in the Plains

This might be the first week in a while without some huge name video part release, but it was still full of really solid skating. Last Sunday, Paradise Wheels welcomed Eric Thomas to their team with this super fun video above. Probably flying under the radar for most people, this video really stuck out to me for the spot selection. From some of the coolest looking ditches to literally middle of nowhere spots to some pretty tall rooftop drops, Eric covers a wide variety of aesthetically pleasing and unique locations. The other thing that stuck out was that for the most part, the skating was rather slow. Now usually slow skating is a big turnoff and boring to watch, but Eric used it cleverly with the spots and creative tricks to keep me wanting more. It's definitely not your typical video part by these days' standards in any way, but it was thoroughly entertaining.

In other news:
-European legend Florentin Marfaing had a quick interview over at Red Bull and reminded us that he's still super sick.
-Brandon Taylor mixes really gnarly tricks with creativity for one of the better Mag Minutes in recent memory. The huge caveman is nuts!
-The Ollie Crew rolls deep and is featured skating some rad street spots in Vancouver and San Francisco (2/3 of San Vanelona...)
-Nate Lacoste came out with a new video part, shared with a few friends, for Roger Skateboards and it's definitely worth the watch.
-The Tilt Mode crew is stacked and this Archives video is full of sweet footage from the likes of Daryl Angel, Jon Nguyen, Zack Wallin, and Peter Raffin.
-Manolos Tapes is probably the best source for remixed videos in skateboarding. Once again it doesn't disappoint on remixing Parental Advisory with less acting and more street shredding.
-I've been a fan of James Espinoza and his buttery style, surprising amount of pop, crazy manual tricks, and fakie inward heelflips for a while, so it was great to see a short VX part from him.
-The latest Tum Yeto recruit, Tre Williams, silently destroys a bunch of California spots as if he was sleeping.
-Though it came out a little more than a week ago, I cannot neglect the latest part from Italo Romano. It's not only inspiring but it's full of really crazy tricks too!
-After Shane O'Neill's part in Chronicles 2 was released last week, more parts from the ripping video were released this week: Donovan Piscopo, Theotis Beasley, Luan Oliveira, and Ishod Wair.

Along with this, I have to give credit to the Berrics for coming out with the Populist. It's cool to get another source of major recognition in the skate industry on top of the big mags, such as Thrasher's SOTY or the TWS Awards. And my favorite part is that they basically compiled the best skaters' video parts from 2013 all on one page for a good day's worth of awesome skate video watching.

Video of the Week: Kevin Phelps

There were actually quite a few solid videos that came out this week, from the awesome team vibes and moments of the Pretty Sweet Tour, Vans release of Gilbert Crockett's part in Old Dominion to show the crusty East Coast spots, and even Ben Raemers' very fun and loose skating his Tiltmode part.
I'd also like to give an even more supporting nod to Tristan Funkhouser (aka T-Funk) with his first part for Baker Skateboards. Dude fits with Baker perfectly and already has a sick bag of man-style tricks at his age, which I respect a lot because the grom-style is not very appealing. His ender wallride is absolutely nuts, but I must say I would've killed to have seen that huge hippy jump from about 0:50 in his trailer for the part though...
Also special mention to Alain Saavedra for being welcomed to Consolidated with an extremely gnarly and just raw part. Big gaps and a really rugged style go together really well here.
And last special mention to Dustin Henry for a sweet On The Radar part for TWS. I'm a fan of anyone getting hooked up by Cliche, but it doesn't even matter because Dustin's quick feet and kickflips are very entertaining to watch.
The main video of this week goes to Kevin Phelps (above) with his part from Culture Shock. Hitting East Coast spots with West Coast tricks is really awesome to watch. It's really cool that Kevin has good pop, a lanky style that can still take some really solid impacts, a great bag of consistent tricks (that somehow kept getting larger throughout the part), and a unique take on well-known spots that lets him add memorable tricks to their histories.  Some of cool clips from the part include the smooth cab flip back disaster revert at 0:43, the front board at 1:37 mainly for the really cool look of all the red bricks at the spot, and the line at 2:17 because of the surprising half cab late back foot flip in the middle of two other really nice tricks. At 3:51, every clip becomes a banger pretty much: tailslide big flip on the NYC courthouse ledge, followed up by a nollie hardflip into that bank! Then Kevin goes to the other coast to double flip the Santa Monica triple set, which is super awesome. Then he stylishly lands a huge 50-50 drop off as well as a long noseslide big spin out on the same long ledge I remember David Gonzalez first lipsliding and then Eli Reed switch lipsliding. Later Kevin visits the huge brick double bank at 6:42 and skates it like no one else before with a giant ollie past the second bank to the flat below. And since 3 is always a lucky number, Kevin nails his third trick of the part at the NYC courthouse bank to finish things off: a ridiculous caballerial kickflip off the top shelf, somehow pulling out the switch drop and rollaway.