twenty twenty too

skateboarding’s oscars concluded earlier this month when Thrasher™ awarded its 2022 Skater of the Year® award to Tyshawn Jones. we here at disco—theque are fashionably late to the party with our own awards, and since there’s no sense hopping on the post-SOTY discourse to try and eek out some sad clicks for Google® ad service revenue, we’ll be looking exclusively at skaters not included in the official SOTY list for our highly prestigious awards. but before we get to the (vegetarian) meat of the article, first some honorable mentions that were dope but not quite long enough for this list:

Stu Kirst — Stu 04

*frontside boardslide to action movie car hood rollover*

Stu has that Tharsher™ hellrider disregard for his own life that leaves you noticeably flinching multiple times throughout his parts, and this video is no different. there’s slams in here that are tricks in and of themselves. front boardsliding a hand rail? cool. flipping over the hood of a parked car immediately after? that’s a line, baby. and don’t just take it from me - about 2 minutes into this part, Stu front 50s a rail with a bear trap at the end that’s so gnarly that it leaves aiden mackey with an expression of nervous relief, like he just realized he won’t have to spend the rest of his afternoon in a hospital waiting room wondering how many more class photo decks dill has to sell before he offers them health insurance.

Andre Treijinha — Hobbies

this may be counterintuitive to a list of skateboarding videos that i enjoyed in 2022, but the things about this video that appeal most to me are the things outside of just the skating. all the things you think of when you think of a parisian skate video are on full display here: the way it’s a little bit cold, a little bit dirty, as if you can still feel the stale cigarette smoke lingering in the background. right from the start when Andre throws down at a crosswalk as crowded as times square, you’re immersed in the tension and bustle that comes with skating a major city center. even the choice not to film in HD, to add that little extra layer of grain, pays dividends.

also, this shot has no business going this hard so casually dropped in a skate video with little further context.

Eetu Toropainen — Thunder Trucks

*switch frontside flip, kickflip nose manual*

a thunder part, a badbadnotgood song, released on freeskatemag? now this is a part for the free thinkers.

Nocturnup: Seoul

this isn’t a part i had much expectations for, mainly because i hadn’t seen the others in the series, the name isn’t particularly descriptive of any brand or skaters involved, and because it’s not quite long enough to be a full length, it hasn’t made many year end lists either. i hope filmer/editor nick richards really gets the license to make a proper full length because if you can make chris colbourn look like this, imagine what he could do with a decently interesting group of skaters.

Nocturnup: Seoul isnt’t too dissimilar from the Converse Nightlines video from a few years ago, only it takes place in a cleaner, more people-friendly urban environment than Converse’s American vision (there’s something in non car-centric urbanism and skateboarding that we here at disco—theque might explore in 2023 if the stars align properly). Still, if you could combine Converse’s budget and music choice (definitely a strong correlation here, i’m sure that sonic youth licensing fee isn’t cheap) with the skating and vision of this video, we’d really be in business.

Riley Hawk — Nepotism

when you’re a rail chomper in the vein of a riley hawk or a figgy or a braden hoban, it doesn’t really matter who your parents are. those rails don’t care that your dad has a video game, or that you had a bowl in your backyard as a child. riley could’ve been safe as a ledge guy or a tech skater and rode for birdhouse his whole career, but he never did, and that’s why he’s been certified as his own thing for such a long time.

still, it would’ve been a lot funnier if he called this part “nepo baby” instead, but he’s in his 30s so i’ll forgive him not knowing the latest slang. Nepotism also came out 8 months before that awful ny mag article that brought the nepotism discourse to new heights, proving once again that skateboarding is always at the start of every trend cycle, good or bad.

Obligatory SOTY Take: Nyj*h Never Deserved It

trigger warning: the following paragraph contains content relating to sexual assault.

the last thing the world needs is another take on the 2022 Thrasher Skater of the Year™ award, but it’s been a few weeks since the award went out so we’ll sneak one more in before the clock strikes midnight. nyjah huston is not a thrasher-ass skater and was never going to win it. thrasher isn’t the type to reward someone who skates in leggings with energy drink sponsors and uses radio friendly edits of rap songs for backing. like it or not, their SOTY award is the standard bearer of their brand for the year, and they want to project an image of hell riding and beer drinking and taking hard slams and not giving a fuck. nyjah is none of those things (although he may be a few other things). and on top of all the stretching and zumiez bullshit that nyjah comes with, he also comes with the r*pe allegations. i think it’s odd (and frankly, hypocritical and wrong)that thrasher would still promote his parts as heavily as they do if that’s something they would consider, but it probably (justifiably) played a factor in deciding not to give the award to nyjah. i hate writing about nyjah because i don’t think he deserves the coverage (whatever little this blog may generate), but it’s the elephant in the room for a lot of the discussions around this year’s SOTY race.

Obligatory Illegal Civ Take: Free Davonte Jolly

back in 2018 one of my homies spent $40 on the IC3 set that was essentially just a copy of IC3 with an illegal civilization branded tennis ball. i really wonder what he did with it. was the tennis ball bouncy enough to use? did your dog play with fetch with it? did you cut it open and put it on the bottom of your chair so that way you would only need to buy one sleeve of penn tennis balls to keep your chair from scraping the floor? one of life’s great mysteries. i’d text and ask but i don’t want to make him relive one the phattest L’s a human can take when it comes to skateboarding related consumption. anyways, i hope davonte jolly joins king skateboards, because he really was the only interesting thing about that brand after IC2.

What’s the Deal with Maxallure Skateboards?

i’ve skated many random odd skateparks in my life and met people of all styles tastes from many different walks of life and come to the realization that certain brands have to be cooking their books, none more so than maxallure skateboards. i have never seen someone skate a maxallure board. until this article i wasn’t even sure that they were a board company. and i know you haven’t seen their graphics either, because why would you. so i took the liberty of googling it, and this was what i found:

perhaps a little bit pretentious, but perhaps we’ll let it slide. as you can see from my list above, i like lil dre a lot. maybe his boards are sick?

not quite sure i would call this the point where “art meets skateboarding” but the scan is decently interesting and the clouds graphic is at least kind of funny in an ironic way. and what about the rest of their pros?

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a lot to unpack here so here goes:

there’s almost nothing i can say about jahn’s boards that could top the hilarity of what they actually look like.
if things don’t work out for marcos montoya at maxallure at least he’ll probably have a future at disorder as clive dixon’s waterboy.

if i didn’t know any better i would’ve assumed the marcello campanello starting line board was one of those prop boards they use in a tommy hilfiger ad.

so with all that out of the way, i think i can understand why i’ve never seen any in the wild.

Trend to Leave in 2022: Landing in a Manual

*this line is too fucking long for a description. just watch it.*

there’s certain tricks that no matter the difficulty, just never look good. hardflips are one. anything ellis frost or johnny giger have ever done also counts here. but lately, there’s been a trend of landing in a manual out of any ledge, rail or gap trick. it first started to go viral on social media because to the untrained eye, it looks like something from a Tony Hawk game. i never really cared, because i didn’t think it would make its way into everyday core skateboarding.

i’m looking at you, Casper Brooker. i don’t know how many times i can watch the same schtick in a row before i eventually want to close my computer and take up golf, but it’s around 4 minutes worth of tricks. and the worst part is, some of the stuff that Casper lands in here not in a manual is hard as hell, but it looks unimpressive because you’re expecting the manual and you don’t get it. i know atlantic drift is supposed to be arty and push the boundaries, but maybe some boundaries are there for a reason. thank god mark suciu got SOTY last year. can you imagine the heinous quick footed manual shit he would pull off on some unfortunate midwestern 8-stair rail?

now that i think about it, he kinda looks like that mf from the bear. also, if this is what that guy from the bear does in his time outside of the kitchen, no wonder he’s so intense in there. i’d be pissed if someone fucked up some spaghetti sauce when i have to go land a fakie manual out of a bluntslide when i get off the clock.

Clive Dixon Joins Disorder

remarkable how you can somehow find a less cool brand to skate for after leaving birdhouse. also, he went from skating to the radiohead song “Creep” to skating with actual creeps. life comes at you fast.

now for the reason you clicked on this article in the first place:

Skateboarding Video of the Year: Primitive — Define

*tiago lemos, nollie half cab 5-0 (suski? fakie krook?) switch fs shuv out*

2022 continued the steady decline of the full length as the main outlet for the upper echelon’s of skating. yes, supreme and polar dropped full lengths, but can you watch Play Dead and tell me that video wasn’t rushed out to cement tyshawn’s SOTY chances? even Baker opted to drop their footage this year in 2 part sequences rather than hold on and combine them all into an hour long video. all of this is what really made primitive stick out like a sore thumb this year.

Primitive’s Define, skateboarding’s Irishman — a video that’s three times longer than it needs to be, featuring a leading man that is quite a bit past his prime that no one really wants acknowledge has lost his grip. i watched all hour and nine minutes of this video, and all that i can say about it is that it’s certainly a skateboarding video. i watch paul rodriguez skate and i feel nothing. miles silvas to me is hospital food. carlos riberio is 20mg of lexapro. robert neal is a trip to the yankee candle store with covid. tiago lemos is dope though. i don’t remember much of this video, but people certainly were skating, for a very long time.

Top 5 Skaters of the Year:

5. Lil Dre — Maxallure x Adidas “Beautiful Thoughts”

Dre could’ve had a bulletproof case for one of this list’s top three spots had he put out footage in the Maxallure video that came out at the beginning of the year, but to be honest, i’m glad he concentrated all of his footage for this video. INT CIRCLE was decent, but it was filmed on VX, and we as a society need to see every grain of lil dre in high definition 1080p. one of the main things i love about dre is that he could pull an evan mock and embrace the influencer shit full time and skate on occaision (i have no qualms with what evan is doing for the record, get your bag however you have to) but he’s still out here in the streets, switch flipping 12 stairs. there’s a certain subset of skaters that are absolutely A1 in both style and power — dylan rieder and ishod wair both come to mind — that dre has hinted that he has the chops to be a part of, and this part pushes him that little bit closer to that upper echelon, that pinnacle of steez.

i mean, look at this trick. the flare jeans, the studded belt, the way he lands like iron man. who is doing it like this?

dropping in on something more than double your height counts extra when beauty companies want to use your face to sell their products. just an absolute sicko, man.

4. Lucien Genand — Boardslide Hood

it’s never been more evident that we’re living in a post-blobys society. the all black converse with black socks and cut off jeans, the board well past its expiration date, the need for chapstick, the wallies, nollies, and inexplicable combos. since this video came out, lucien has started getting quasi boards, which makes sense, since a lot of these spots look like they could be in ohio.

this is paris, so there’s also three separate instances of things on fire in this video. vive la france, baby.

3. Nick Matthews — Venture x Uprising and Nike SB|HUF|Forever

nothing has made 2022 feel longer than the fact that Nick Matthews’ ollie over that longass ledge in downtown chicago (above) was this year, but alas, the passage of time is infinite yet gradual, it is absurd that Nick Matthews spent the majority of this year without a board sponsor, but he ended it by getting on anti hero and getting a thrasher cover too. hopefully 2023 will be the year they turn him pro, because there aren’t many people out there who can skate the spots he skates. he’s the face of the chicago scene, so it only made sense that when supreme opened up their store in the city they had to check in and make sure shit was sweet before they dropped (they also employed nick’s brother, blake, for some of the filming).

but back to that first ollie. since skateboarding is an olympic sport now, maybe we can send nick for long jumping. the 2020 bronze medalist jumped a little under 27 feet, and i’d be willing to bet nick could give that podium a run for their money. i mean, that’s t funk china banks level fucked up, and i feel like it flew relatively under the radar because nick is so unassuming. how many ollies can you look at and question whether or not tyshawn joens would be able to pull it off?

2. Brian O’Dwyer — She’s Cheating

Brian has the style and power of a late 90s VHS classic adolescent bully, one who plays sandlot baseball with no gloves, wears a backwards hat, and spits everywhere. switch backside noseblunt through the entire length of muni’s ledge, there’s no other way to describe that than just straight up bullying. and the sheer variety of clips he’s able to get out of muni is astounding.

*absolutely titanic frontside boardslide*

between Brian, Sully, and Kader, Baker has a crazy amount of young talent on their roster. can you imagine a video of all three of them together?

during the midst of the SOTY discourse, gifted hater argued that the reason Louie Lopez deserved it over Tyshawn Jones is because Louie was skating spots we’d never really seen before, whereas Tyshawn largely skates the same handful of new york city’s most infamous spots and builds on them year after year. this video is why i disagree with his logic. it’s 2022, and we’ve seen muni in videos for almost 30 years. ishod, josh kalis, stevie williams, jamal smith, mark suciu, some of the most creative and unique and talented skaters we’ve ever seen have skated and filmed here and know it like the back of their hand. so for us to be able to get a homie video of a non-professional skater getting multiple NBDs at such a famous spot is a reminder of skateboarding’s seemingly infinite world of possibilities. would brian’s skating hit so hard if he was skating spots we’d never seen before? i doubt it. you have to have such a ridiculously creative eye to come up with half of these tricks, not to mention the sheer amount of ability and courage to try.

1. Heitor da Silva — Vice Versa Love

heitor is a true 1 of 1 skater, so in some ways it feels a little silly to put him in a year end ranking. he’s definitely not the cleanest skater, or the most technically gifted, or the gnarliest, but if you had the choice to be heitor da silva or any other skater on the planet, you’re picking heitor, 10 times out of 10. and to give us over 7 minutes of footage? heitor lowkey has that dawg in him. and nothing perfectly encapsulates this better than the opening clip. after a quick montage of snacks and waterfalls and boating, we’re welcomed to the action with heitor’s fakie backside flip at the outskirts of a beach town, before he runs into the ocean after landing the trick. at first glance, it’s the exact sort of picturesque scenescape that heitor fits into so well, but then you notice just how sandy and scratched up his back is, clearly the result of a few falls. those little hints, that steel fist underneath his velvet glove, that’s the real secret of heitor da silva. yes, it looks like it all comes that easy to him, but it’s not because it always did. he’s human too, just like you and i. he can still take a slam, just like you and — he’ll just look way better while he does it.

*frontside 180, fakie manual, headphone catch*

i swear this clip is the reason i nearly got run over a million times by the wired headphone skaters at blue park this summer, but no one, and i mean no one, can possibly be as unbothered as heitor. most importantly in Vice Versa Love, there’s a clip of heitor on ableton with a mic. fuck a part, i need a .wav of heitor loops. i KNOW that man is cooking something delicious.

*slappy back crook 180 out, switch hardflip*

watching this part back, i definitely tried my best to copy heitor’s homework here. i loosened my trucks to the point they were almost falling off, i wore the wife beater, the silvertab jorts, the mustache. every trick i landed was a little bit sketchy (although that might be more from my own lack of ability than any sort of stylistic choice). you just can’t help it when you watch this video. and i really can’t understate enough how much of an instant classic this video is. ten years from now, am i going to go back and watch any of the louie lopez videos (it’s been two months and i can’t remember a single trick from any of them), or the nyjah parts, or anything from t funk? probably not. but you can bet i’ll return to this video before i go front 180 a 3 stair.