Weekly "Why Haven't I Seen This?" - 22

With the plethora of skate footage that's out there, it can be easy to overlook things. And yet, so often we stumble upon a video that we've never heard of and find ourselves asking why we hadn't seen it before. Each week, I plan to post another lesser-known video that deserves more recognition, for your viewing pleasure.

Do you like fast, powerful, creative skating? Then you'll like this video. Black and white videos? Then you'll LOVE this video. Do you like giant, paper mache arms? Then you'll care for this video like it's your firstborn, because all those elements are there. Our friend Phil Zwijsen from Belgium delivers a web part that I didn't want to end. Check it out!

Weekly "Why Haven't I Seen This?"-21

With the plethora of skate footage that's out there, it can be easy to overlook things. And yet, so often we stumble upon a video that we've never heard of and find ourselves asking why we hadn't seen it before. Each week, I plan to post another lesser-known video that deserves more recognition, for your viewing pleasure.

This one's a true gem. I was looking to feature Kyle Frederick this week, because although he has a super sick style, he kind of fell off the map once Chris Cole's clothing project, Omit Apparel, went under. In trying to find a good video to post, I came across this part from Focus Magazine's "Rise and Shine" video from 2007. So much of this video strikes me as weirdly prophetic. The video shares a title Nyjah Huston's famous part that came out in 2011. Kyle Frederick is seen doing a nollie late flip looong before they were cool (I know he's far from the first, but apart from him and Dave Bachinsky, I can't think of anyone else who was doing nollie late flips over things before P-Rod kicked off the trend that we're seeing now). We also get to see a baby version of Tom Asta, doing mostly the same tricks, but on smaller obstacles, which is still fun to watch in my eyes. We also get the obligatory appearance from Ian Berry that we get in any part that comes out of Philadelphia. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this gem as much as I did and take notice of how great of a skater Kyle Frederick is. If you haven't seen Tom Asta's latest part, go watch that now.

Weekly "Why Haven't I Seen This?" -20

With the plethora of skate footage that's out there, it can be easy to overlook things. And yet, so often we stumble upon a video that we've never heard of and find ourselves asking why we hadn't seen it before. Each week, I plan to post another lesser-known video that deserves more recognition, for your viewing pleasure.

This week, we've got Liam McCabe's part in Continuum. This 2013 video seems to feature Liam skating Powell boards, which indicates that he either is flow for Powell or was flow or am for Powell back before they cut most of their team, because he doesn't appear on the team page. For those of you who would like to propose that maybe he's just skating Powell boards and was never  sponsored by them, I would first like to refer you to how great this video part is and propose to you that he's too good to not be sponsored by somebody. If that doesn't convince you, then I would like to remind you that pretty much nobody besides the Powell team has skated their boards in years, so it's pretty unlikely. Anyway, I hope you like bigspin variations as much as I do, because Liam's got all of them wired. Hope you like it:

Skate Team Classifieds- Part 1

To put it simply, I think oversimplification is probably the easiest way to change the
way you think about something. Physicists use this tactic of simplification in virtually everything they do to make calculations more feasible, which is why many of you may have been wondering why your teacher in high school physics was always talking about spherical objects moving in a vacuum, strings always being thin with no mass, all surfaces being smooth (unless you talking about friction specifically) and bars always being perfectly rigid.

So lately, I've been applying this to other things that are hard to understand. Brand images, for example, are often nebulous and difficult to exactly describe. I mean, how do you describe Real's image?

 Minimalist, I guess? What about Plan B?

... Minimalist, I guess?

The point is, it's hard to pinpoint all of the distinctions that make a skateboarding brand special. Somehow, though, there usually seems to be a very set idea about what skaters fit well on what teams, despite the overall complexity involved in trying to explain what a brand is all about. Therefore, in the spirit of simplification, I decided that it would be both fun and beneficial to play out the following scenario:

If every professional and amateur skateboarder suddenly went on strike, and newspapers were still a thing, what would each company post as a classified ad in order to recruit skaters?

These are my best efforts. Feel free to add your own in the comments:

Weekly "Why Haven't I Seen This?" -19

With the plethora of skate footage that's out there, it can be easy to overlook things. And yet, so often we stumble upon a video that we've never heard of and find ourselves asking why we hadn't seen it before. Each week, I plan to post another lesser-known video that deserves more recognition, for your viewing pleasure.


Since I missed last week, I decided to go ahead and do a 2-for-1 deal on videos this week. Both of these videos come from the new video Ruff Ryderz 3 (Have you picked up on my increasing laziness yet?). I wasn't able to figure out too much about these guys, but I'm pretty sure they're a crew from Michigan and they seem to be shredding pretty consistently. For the first video, we've got Alex Knox. It would be weird for me to talk about this video part without mentioning the fact that Alex made the odd decision to do two of every trick in this part. Two kickflip backside boardslides on handrails, two bigspin backside boardslides on handrails, at least two hardflips down gaps, and two hardflip backside lipslides down handrails. I suppose he was hoping that his tricks would breed with each other to make more tricks, thereby giving him a bigger bag of tricks. Tricks don't work that way, Alex. Regardless, he did all of those tricks with great style and the fact that he did all of them multiple times shows me that he's really quite good at them- it's not as if he spent 10 hours trying each one. In any case, I don't mean to sound like I'm trash talking this part, I genuinely did enjoy it and I hope you guys do too.


This next one is David Engerer from the same video, and the best way I know how to entice you to watch it is to simply ask: Did you ever wonder what would happen if Dylan Reider and Austyn Gillette had a baby? Because now you don't have to! Just watch this video (which, even though I mock it, I also liked a lot)

Weekly "Why Haven't I Seen This?" - 18

With the plethora of skate footage that's out there, it can be easy to overlook things. And yet, so often we stumble upon a video that we've never heard of and find ourselves asking why we hadn't seen it before. Each week, I plan to post another lesser-known video that deserves more recognition, for your viewing pleasure.

This week we have a really impressive part from J. Miguel in the independent Brazilian video, "Original Expresso". In the process of watching a string of conceptually next level tricks, like his forward flip to revert that kicks things off, or the fakie tre flip noseslide that he does, one can't help but notice how bizarrely effortless every trick that he does is. His feet are confident and don't even hint at unintentional twitches or waivers, and he has excellent board control. You've done it again, Brazil.

The Real Reason Culture is so Important to Skateboarding

A lot of skateboarders are very protective of their culture. The funny thing is, skateboarding has become so big and so varied that it's impossible to actually define what 'skateboarding culture' is. If I were to paraphrase what Rodney Mullen has said about skateboarding in various interviews, for example, it would probably result in a sentence like, "Skateboarding is an outlet to create something new and contribute to something larger than yourself." By contrast, one of my first memories of someone explaining what skateboarding was to them was in this clip featured in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (Hey, remember when you weren't a weirdo for liking those games?) in which Chad Muska basically says that skateboarding is interesting because it doesn't have any rules and the only goal is to have fun.


Then others, like Mike Vallely, won't stop talking about how skateboarding is all about creativity and individuality, while others simply stick with saying, "Skateboarding's rad."

So if skateboarding means a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people, and nobody can agree  on what exactly it means to be a true 'skateboarder', then is it even a cohesive culture? And if it's not, then why are so many people so protective and defensive about their particular viewpoint on skateboarding?