Ant Smith knows a thing or two about Enders, considering most tricks he does are ender material. He will literally skate any spot, park or obstacle, no matter how rough, crusty or unskateable, and do a genuinely mind blowing trick on it. With this in mind, Ant seemed like the perfect guide to lead you through a Top 5 of final tricks from Skateboard video parts. – Ade
5. Sean Smith’s Switch Flip Back Tail from “In Progress”
I’ve landed a few kickflip back tails in my life. Every time I’ve had to work my arse off, and then promptly lost it the next time I’ve tried another. In a game of skate with Matt Clarke on a curb about 12 years ago (where you pretend it’s a coping and skate straight at it) he set a switch back tail which to this day is the only one I’ve ever landed.
I know times are changing and people skate up and over things that 10-20 years ago would blow your mind, but even still the T-block at the Buszy is pretty hefty in my opinion, and skating it from the floor is daft. Sean Smith’s Switch Flip Back Tail from flat well and truly twisted my melon.
Contemplating doing that trick on a biscuit is unfathomable, let alone a curb, let alone on a waist high ledge. Bonkers. Whilst scraping up what was left of my blown mind, a relatively unheard of at the time James Bush switch tre flips the 8 set at the MK art gallery seconds after Sean’s ender, which just put the icing on the cake really! MK RIP
4. Ali Boulala’s Darkslide in “Sorry”
Is it Ali’s ender or Alex chalmers intro? Skate nerds debate here….
I’d say the true ender is supposed to be the slam on that monster of a set in Lyon that Jaws would go on to Melon about 20 years later, or Ali focusing a guitar. Just after those shenanigans you see him do a darkslide on a rail. The way he flips in, wobbles down the rail and then turns about 3 degrees out of it so he’s barely riding away and just stares in amazement at his feet until he stops rolling and then shouts “Wow!”… Fucking awesome! This was my first favourite skate video, which came out about a year or two after I started skating, and was the most heavily rinsed growing up.
3. Bob Burnquist’s Fakie 5-0 Flip Out in “As if”
The Tony Hawk games were my gateway drug into this crazy world I’ve been part of for the past two decades, and so I idolised US pros mainly because apart from Geoff Rowley and a couple others, the playable characters on the game were mostly from the states. In my early teens my mum got a better job and we got Sky, and more importantly the Extreme channel.
One day I stumbled across Andy Evans’ video “As If”, which is stacked full of younger versions of household UK names, alongside some obscure shredders that have either faded from or were never really in the limelight, and a killer Brum section. But the real mind melter for me was the British Champs bit. Any footage of a US pro in England would have been pretty mad for my young brain at the time, but finding 4 or 5 minutes of around 50 of the best pros on the planet from here, there and everywhere destroying an indoor skatepark 20 minutes drive away from where I grew up, and the first indoor skatepark I ever went to was incredible.
The whole section is a banger, and the Iron Maiden track is perfect as nearly every time I went to radlands it, or another gem, would have been blasted over the jukebox at some point throughout the sesh. The trick Burnquist does to cap it off would be mental today if done on a mini ramp. The fact that he did it on the biggest ramp at my local indoor park, that me and my mates were too scared to drop in on, and rides off of the side of the ramp and into the spectators, was just mega.
2. Tony Trujillo’s Last Run in “In Bloom”
The entire part is a banger, start to finish! When I got into skating ramps a bit more this was one I had to watch before going to the skatepark. This was who me and a lot of my fellow Kettering scum bags would try and emulate: rocking leather jackets, Ramones t shirts and hair cut, tight jeans and Vans.
The second the motley crue song kicks in it’s hell for leather, and there are some legit street hammers in this part from someone you put down as a park/tranny dog (shuv heels down gaps, FS flips over a handrail, to name a few). On his last line, he scratches about in this gnarly pool: look at the state of the shallow end that he is carving for speed, it’s so steep that it is baffling. TNT kills it.
1. Lucas Healey’s Frontside Boardslide from “Get 3”
The first time I ever skated in Coventry, I met a 13 or 14 year old kid called Lucas Healey. Most weekends I would come up and skate, and Lucas would literally always be out and would always be keen to skate anywhere and anything with anyone. You could tell straight away how talented he was and how good he was going to get if he stuck at it, and I don’t think anybody from Cov who knew him would have been especially surprised at the section he filmed for this video, but a lot of other people’s jaws were quite literally through the floor.
I hadn’t skated with him for a year or so when this part came out, and becoming part of Get Lesta unleashed his potential 5000 times over. At the Boardroom premiere, after the last trick a couple of hundred people were screaming their absolute faces off! The rail he front boards is one of those spots you sort of joke about, and I’m pretty sure we have all looked at it and thought “Haha yeah that’d be mad….”, but Lucas fucking went there. Absolute hero. Lucas you are the man.
The Terrible Company 
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