THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

once Thrasher announces its Skater of the Year™ in early December, the majority of the Skateboarding Industry goes into hibernation until spring hits. usually, it feels like a bit of a lull — i mean, mark suciu surely doesn’t have enough footage for another part this week, does he? — but this year we’ve been blessed with a slew of cult classics from largely independent sources. Rat Ratz 6, Cole Navin’s Leap Year, Vice II, Jourdynn Sherman’s ATLwings, Gray Skate Mag’s Concrete River, Quasi’s Almost Heaven, Ben Chadourne’s J’Suis Pais Ben, and Yardsale’s YS UK all dropped in the doldrums of a post a post-SOTY winter.

a lot of what made each of these videos so satisfying is their regionalism. they’re not the result of months long International tours (although Quasi is close with Almost Heaven, but we’ll give it a pass since it was all domestic, and not really to any place anyone would normally vacation). it’s usually just some people, skating their local spots. they’re no different than you or i — much better, sure, but in a way that’s comprehensible, not in a Shane O’Neill switch-back-crook-fakie-late-flip-out type of way. most of the skaters in these videos resemble the local kids at your park (if they also had the same bag of tricks in the streets), so you can’t help but share in their excitement after a made trick. and there’s a special type of local expertise at play, a type of creativity arising from familiarity, from staring at the same Spot for the umpteenth time wondering what you can come up with.

RAT RATZ 6

Rat Ratz 6 is the video that really Inspired this column. the whole video covers a half dozen spots at most, the music choices are questionable at best, and it clearly looks like they’re imitating bill strobeck. despite all this — or maybe because of — it’s one of my favorite videos i’ve ever seen. it’s carefree and random and sometimes lacking in taste (the nollie lazer flip and the multiple varial flips probably caused Thrasher to leave their email on delivered, but this was always going to be a Quartersnacks joint anyways), just like the kids who made the video, the way kids should be. these are the days they’re going to remember for the rest of their lives. the rest of us are just lucky they brought a camera along for the ride.

(also side note: every skateboarding coming of age movie *cough* mikey alfred *cough* is just a worse, over edited version of this. i reckon this is because it’s made by adults trying to mimic teenagers, which is never pretty. if you’re going to make something like this, you have to accept the little bit of cringe that comes with it, because that’s where the magic lies. you can’t omit edit that sort of thing out in post production.)

(side note 2: there’s tons of fits in this video, and i think i’m gonna have to add the button down with just the top button buttoned to my rotation. is it washed for a 22-year-old to take fashion advice from teenagers? i’m certainly cutting it close.)

THE CONCRETE RIVER

Gray Skate Mag and Jim Craven’s The Concrete River is the exact type of video i probably would’ve scrolled by at any other time of the year, or at best, pigeonholed to my watch later list. but when there’s new Yuto footage, or a Milton Martinez part, it’s hard to muster the attention to watch two dudes skate the crustiest ditch in Cyprus. the video is filmed more like a nature documentary than a skate part. sweeping panoramic and wide angle shots capture the scale and disarray of the ditch, juxtaposed with the beauty of Cyprus’s countryside. but don’t let the tranquility of the environment fool you; this video is Gnarly.

Mikey Patrick opens the video with a kick flip frontside air on a bank that doesn’t seem to curve inwards enough to keep him from careening off the cliffside. the reverberations across the ditch as he stomps the trick on the rollaway similarly characterize the scale at hand. the music is ambient, and with the emphasis on the sounds of the board, you get the feeling that you’re at the spot with them. the amount of creativity in the face of something so Gnarly is hard to fathom. take Charlie Munro’s tre flip fakie on the roof of an adjacent building. there’s so many ways for it to go wrong; maybe you hit a pebble in the roll up and slam, maybe you slip out and your board falls off the building, maybe you slip out and fall off the building, maybe you slam and scrape yourself and get tetanus from the rust. there’s so much death defying shit packed into the 5:08 runtime, masquerading as a chill nature spot. truly, Levi’s™ skateboarding put their whole Cyprussy into this one.

ALMOST HEAVEN

one of the perennial debates that haunts #skatetwitter is the debate over whether or not tour videos are any good. personally, i came of age after the mid 2000s tour video boom, so i’m at best indifferent to them (although if you have a personal favorite and care to enlighten me, feel free to send it to morandanielh@gmail.com and put me on). tour videos typically occupy the liminal space between Chill Homie Vid and Try Hard Sponsored Vid without really accomplishing either. Almost Heaven is successful because it’s more of a Quasi version of a Chill Homie Vid, just with footage that so happens to be gathered from a 15,000 mile tour. with that comes all the strangeness and quirks that comes from a brand whose two best skaters are a guy that looks like Sid from Toy Story™ and a guy named Gilbert.

the video opens with a zine that covers the weird shit Quasi skaters would decide is worth documenting for posterity, like a hearse with 24 inch rims sandwiched between photos of spots and skaters. the skating itself isn’t particularly mindblowing (at least not for this caliber of skater; it’s still miles than 99% of the skateboarding public on its best day) but it’s still refreshing to see how they skate on a day to day basis and see the things they’re working on that may not make it to a traditional video part. maybe that makes Almost Heaven not too dissimilar from any other tour video (there’s also plenty of van hijinks included, like prank calling the other van pretending that you have Tom Penny on the line). maybe i’m just a Quasi truther, but those 21 minutes went down easily.

the best part of the video is saved for the end, with the overlay of a cover of bruce springsteen’s “dancing in the dark.” initially beginning with bruce’s version overlayed on roadside images of America, you’re quickly costed by Quasi’s cover as one final montage of skating takes place. and really, what could be a better soundtrack for a midwestern skate brand hitting the crustiest spots in rural America than an iPhone™ recorded parody of a springsteen song with lyrics like “you can’t be the Boss without a Bureaucracy.”

ATLwings

ATLwings is another banger for regionalism. i’ve always thought it’s Odd that Atlanta isn’t more important in skating since it’s relevant in everything else (although they did give us Grant Taylor). ATLwings combines the teenage fever of Rat Ratz 6 with the locality of, well, Rat Ratz 6, but also Almost Heaven, Leap Year, and Vice II. I’ve spent the last few months skating in New York, so i almost forgot how cold the Southern staple outfit of DCs, white socks, Big Ass Jorts, and an oversized t-shirt is. luckily i was handily reminded inside the first minute.

a pessimist might say that too much of this video is similarly influenced by bill strobeck (i know that man wakes up and plays “wokeuplikethis” by Playboi Carti every morning), but it’s not completely beholden to his style. for one, the colorist didn’t fuck up the saturation sliders in After Effects, and i didn’t get dizzy from all the zooming and slow motion. there was also a great continuity of spots spread out throughout the video. often when watching a Supreme video, you’ll see one piece of the video dedicated to one specific spot, amalgamating clips from each skater. i prefer ATLwings’s model of spacing out each clip to avoid the natural comparisons that happen when presenting tricks alongside each other. watching each skater get their licks in at Black Blocks and Atlanta Federal Center let each trick breath on its own, rather than turning it into a best trick contest. shoutout to filter/editor Jourdynn Sherman; this video is a masterpiece.

LEAP YEAR

with its rich color saturation and slightly fuzzy rendering (during non skating frames), Leap Year looks like the way you remember your happiest memories, but with the slightest tinge of wistfulness. it’s bright and warm like a dream, and washed out like an old photograph, all of which pairs well with the simplicity of skating on offer. there’s very little in terms of technical flip-in/flip-out skating in Leap Year, and the video is better for it. take the nose slide and back smith at the 1:40 mark (shown below) as examples.

yes, flipping in/out would be a harder trick, but it wouldn’t look as smooth, especially since these are two of the only straightforward tricks in the video. nearly every other trick is about unlocking some new spot, either by slapping/wall riding/curving or gapping to get there. in fact, the only flip out of a grind comes at the 3:33 mark following a sloppy 50-50 (up a round rail), and it’s the type of flip that comes from pushing your board down rather than flicking it out.

as 2022 gets underway, i hope we get a SOTY from a non traditional place. what would a SOTY from Portland, or from Atlanta, or the Midwest look like? and not just a SOTY from there; a SOTY whose footage is from there. but if we’re getting consistent bangers like this on their own terms, is Thrasher’s crown truly necessary?

RAT RATZ 6

THE CONCRETE RIVER

ALMOST HEAVEN

ATLwings

LEAP YEAR

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