Speed Demons #3: Brandon Westgate

Everyone knows Brandon Westgate skates fast. Just look at this inhuman ollie from Emerica's Made and realize that there's no way he could make it up onto this loading dock without flying in from the car tow-in (besides the pop). Throughout all of his videos parts he comes through with that East Coast Powerhouse style of attacking spots with speed and pop. It's pretty rare to find a clip in his parts that doesn't involve some good speed to the trick.
Starting with Stay Gold, you can feel the speed with the pushing lead up at 0:47 as he gets ready to gap ollie between two banks spaced pretty far apart, banks that are typically only used for some manny tricks. Then at 2:12, Brandon begins the line by lofting a tre flip as the ground flies by and then pops a couple ollies in preparation for a huge gap to lipslide, finishing the line with soaring a front 180 much further past the stairs than necessary, all because of his speed. (This line is cleverly mimicked in Made with a fast gap to smith grind and a backside 360 down the stairs, once again sailing well beyond the last stair.) And at 2:35 you get the start of some high velocity SF footage, from sweet downhill driveway lines to the gigantic house-length ollie at 3:10.
In Brandon's Emerica Shoe Part, the downhill line at 0:46 starts off with nothing special in particular but quickly picks up so that his last ollie across the driveway is another flying moment. I haven't seen many people actually "push" going downhill, but Brandon does it in the line at 1:05 to prepare for a distance-covering frontside big spin, because there is never a thing as too much speed. And then at 3:06, to match his lines from Stay Gold, Brandon delivers two new and improved variations of some downhill lines from SF, of course zooming by at full speed.
One of the craziest clips I can remember from Brandon was the first one in his Real Street part, involving a tall ollie up onto a ledge from a small curb cut and then somehow managing to clear the length of an alleyway afterwards. It may not appear super fast at first but maintaining speed is mandatory to accomplish something like this.
And finally onto Westgate's latest epic video part in Made. The pushing in the title sequence alone is rather stunning because you know of just how fast he skates. The first 35 seconds of skating is all uncommonly fast, including some more sweet downhill SF lines, a couple gap to ledges, and an enormous street ollie. The 3 bleached-hair tricks are all super quick, including my personal favorite drop down ollie to prepare for the huge front 180 over the planter. Westgate's downhill frontside flip at the same sketchy looking spot as Trevor Colden's hardflip and Ishod's backside flip involves a serious switch hill bomb after he picks up a lot of speed from the run up. And then there's the double rail ollie into the bank at the school near the end of the part that again requires a bunch of speed.

Speed Demons #4: Austyn Gillette

Austyn Gillette definitely has one of the smoothest styles in skateboarding. But what makes it so much steezier is the fact that he skates super fast and still manages to make everything looks so debonair. I feel like the speed at which he skates is often overlooked simply because everyone is in awe about his style or pop or terrific flick. But there's a reason why he was the feature of a video part called "Quik" (above), where you can see some of Austyn's greatest pushes - regular and switch - and some great tricks at full speed. The cruising line on the sidewalk/bridge at the end is just a treat for the eyes.
One of my favorite parts of all time is Austyn in Habitat's Origin. He definitely exhibits his smooth speed in this video, particularly with the very first line. Without the need to push at all, he flies on by with an alley-oop back 180 up some stairs right into a fakie big flip over and across a long manny pad, at Embarcadero I believe. Then at 2:09 he hits back to back bump to bars that show his ability to maintain speed more than anything, still a huge speed demon factor. Haven't seen much back to back action like this other than maybe Boo Johnson with his ollie, front 360 but on mellower bump to bars or Brandon Westgate with his ollie, boardslide up and across. Those were both really sick clips, but Austyn was the first to my recollection of skating two bump to bars back to back. And closing off his Origin part was that enormous ollie at the Brooklyn Banks over the handrail.
In Austyn Unlimited, there are tons of clips with super fast rollaways and some downhill action that look super quick but also very easy for Austyn. To pick out a few tricks, the landing on the long front board at 1:55 really shows that he's going a lot faster than you'd think. At 2:34 he stretches out a really long ollie between two curb-like platforms and then follows that clip up with a speedy switch ollie over a wide patch of grass. Then at 3:16, Austyn puts down a very solid (and underrated) mark in the streets of San Fran with a sweet back 360 over a bank to bank walkway by some houses.
For more fast skating from Mr. Gillette, you can check out his part in Cosmic Vomit 2, where the first two lines in particular are rather rapid. Then, without exaggeration, I'd say every clip from Austyn in the Huf Stoops Euro Tour, conveniently compiled by some dedicated fan for watching Austyn exclusively here, involves a good deal of speed that you don't typically see with your average skater. But the super long ollies at 0:24 over the Southbank up-ledge and at 1:08 across a banked set of stairs are prime examples of the flowy speed that Austyn so effortlessly skates with.

Speed Demons #5: Omar Salazar

Omar Salazar is a ball of energy. His wild eagerness to straight out go for anything is portrayed in as much as in his lifestyle and as it is in his skating. It's this energy that keeps Omar skating super fast and attacking anything that stands in his way, making most of his footage very memorable simply for the pushing or flying along at full speed towards obstacles.
In his Nothing But The Truth part above, the line at 0:15 looks like he should lose control with just about every movement, but Omar handles the speed and flies on by with a couple of fun, fast tricks, following them with a beautifully stomped switch heel without slowing. Seeing his shirt flying around at 0:55 gives you a reasonable idea of just how fast he is going, uphill nonetheless. Really, this whole part is filled with some very fast skating, and Omar's controlled-chaotic style is what makes him stand out as a super fast skater.
In Mind Field, Omar snakes around a sweet channel at about 1:08 to show off his control at such high speeds. Obviously there are tons of speedy clips throughout the whole part but this one in particular sticks out.
Looking at Omar's part in First Love, there's not much need to go further than the introductory hill bomb at 0:36. The way he shows no problems at all with the speed and even has enough confident control to woosh around with his scraping ollies just for fun is remarkable. Also, in the line at 3:08, he hits a ledge with a back tail at probably the highest speed I've seen someone somewhat swerve into the ledge. Then the last 4 clips are all just full-on fast assaults of the spots, including some sweet downhill action.
In this Spitfire commercial at 0:43 Omar hits the top ledge on a bank fast enough that he doesn't even need to get on top of the smith grind to cover more than half of the ledge, all before gliding through a few more pushes (exaggerating how slow the crowd is skating) towards a huge ollie. And the clip right after that with the gap to 50-50 all the way through is a true testament to how fast he skates.

Next Week: Speed Demons

After the delay this past week, next week will officially look at the speed demons in skateboarding. So since the topic was already previewed last Sunday, please look at that post for a proper introduction to the speed demons: http://skatehighfives.blogspot.com/2013/12/next-week-speed-demons.html

Video of the Week: Dee Ostrander Baker Part

First off, Aidan Campbell's new part that came out today was pretty awesome. Ever since his sml wheels intro, I was hyped on him and wanted to see more. His new part for Etnies (between AB&A and David Reyes' new part and all the other commercial features Etnies, Etnies could've easily worked towards a full length team video!) was exactly what was needed to bring Aidan to the spotlight. His style and smile make everything he does look super fun and easy, not to mention the really great editing we've come to expect from these Etnies videos. His trick selection is great and mixes in some pretty gnarly spots with some classy tricks. And the knee bend as he holds onto the boardslide at the end is priceless.

But even with that, I simply cannot look past Dee Ostrander's new part that he dropped for Baker. The Baker vibes always make you feel like you're with the homies, so when Dee starts casually ripping everything up for 6 full minutes, the destruction is too good for words. Dee skates some huge, gnarly spots, from rails to gaps to street wide grass gaps from huge ditches (aka the insane ender). So the skating itself is enough to amaze anyone and get skaters psyched to go shred the streets. The taildrop boardslide at 3:16 hyped me up so much! But the fact that everything is done with an apathetic ease left me in awe, which makes sense since Dee just so happened to drop a 6 minute part full of bangers completely out of the blue. Anyway, this part is nuts and deserves plenty of re-watches.

Yoshi Tanenbaum has been killing it lately and doesn't seem to be slowing down after his sick Mag Minute came out.
Though it will be taken down soon, Ben Hatchell's part from Cold War was released on Thrasher showing that anything he puts out is all-terrain gold. Seriously though, the quality of the gnarly footage in Cold War is ridiculous. It might be on the shorter side but I'll take nonstop thrashing footage over an over-edited piece any day.
After Dan Murphy's shared part with Dave Bachinsky in Natural Selection came out not too long ago, he's now releasing more solid footage as a commercial for his truck sponsor, Theeve.
Almost Skateboards is one of my favorite companies because their team is nothing short of legendary and every single one of those dudes skates super creatively (to say the least) and has a blast while doing it. So this new feature from a good group of guys on the team was awesome, not to mention basically a full new part from Youness, yet another footage machine.
The LRG Europe squad is darn talented, like extremely talented, at skateboarding and it shows in their sweet tour video through Cyprus.
Nice NYC vibes throughout this video, Off The Braxx, with a crazy ender part from Dylan Witkin, who somehow managed to find loads of big handrails in the city.
There have to be hundreds if not thousands of dudes that are under the skateboarding industry's radar, but Chris Luhring and Julian Klein both came out with tight parts this week for Creation/Satori and Atlas Skateboarding respectively that should definitely help with that. Haven't heard of either of them before but their names will stick out after seeing their skating here. 

Actually Next Week: Speed Demons

Since I want to do the Speed Demons justice and not fly through them on this blog as fast as their skating, I will save the posts for next week when they will be thoroughly covered. Until then, enjoy what I may say is my favorite single video part of all time below. (It's only weird to say that because it's a mixtape of footage, but it's outstanding regardless.)

Next Week: Speed Demons

Skaters are getting gnarlier and crazier these days, so seeing them skate faster to push skateboarding (almost literally) to new limits is no surprise. But there are a group of skaters that just stick out because of how fast they skate, and how consistently they skate at that speed. So this week I'm going to cover the top 5 speed demons that are personally the ones I think of when it comes to fast skating.

There are tons of other dudes that skate super fast too, so it's obligatory that I mention a few names here as well:
Tony Trujillo, TNT, rips extremely hard in his part in In Bloom, street and tranny, to cement himself as one of the fastest skaters for sure.
John Cardiel, like TNT, skates so crazily fast on street and tranny in his part in Sight Unseen. The line at 0:39 is too awesome.
Corey Duffel skates down some insanely huge gaps and does so by skating insanely fast. The last ollie in his Real Street part seems unreal and will stick in your memory after watching it just once.
Danny Way deserves the mention for sure. Breaking gap distance and height records...oh and this land speed record as well.
Grant Taylor skates super fast, wild in a controlled way, and just simply powerful. Before his Chronicles part dropped, he was awarded SOTY 2011, for a definitive reason I might add, through this video part on Thrasher. That very first line gets me every time just thinking about that high-speed half cab and then ollieing over the guy on the bench.
Chris Pfanner is another dude that skates some huge gaps and goes on an all out assault at every spot. There are some speedy lines and long gaps here in this Volcom Stone-Age clip.
Jordan Hoffart has been known to skate pretty fast. Every one of his parts has some clips that are just full-on speed, but the insane ollie from Bones New Ground will be the trick from Jordan that sticks out the most.
Gilbert Crockett also skates really fast. Though pretty short, his Life-Splicing part is probably my favorite part of Gilbert's. Without exaggeration, every single clip involves some solid speed, and the final ollie still blows my mind.