2021 can be shortened to ’21. 2+1 is 3. 3 is the number of clips I put together for The Triple. Here’s a roundup of my favourite clips from the first week of 2021!
Honorable mention: Jason Lee’s Slipper Kickflip
I couldn’t not mention this clip on this week’s Triple. I’ve been a big fan of Jason Lee since I started skating in 2001 and his Video Days part is one of my favourite sections. He is quite the chameleon, having jumped from a skateboarding career, to acting, to directing, and now to photography, but it’s great to see he hasn’t lost his skills on a board. This fun clip shows him doing a Kickflip on his son’s board, in slippers, in his kitchen. I was incredibly stoked on it.
3. Reed Kanter’s Slappy Body Varial Fakie Nosegrind
First up is Reed Kanter, who pulled out this utterly incredible curb move and had me re-watching again and again to figure out what was happening. He slappies whilst facing Backside to the curb, and whilst the board is popping off the curb, just before the trucks connect, he body varials mid-slap.
Landing on the board in fakie, Kanter pushes a Fakie Nosegrind along the curb and then just pops off. I have no idea how it works, because when I slappy, releasing any force from the board simply causes the trick to fall apart, so this extremely dexterous little manoeuvre had my interest peaked from the get go.
2. Tiago Lopes Wall Bounce Flip
Hold the presses! This is the first time someone has been featured in The Triple twice. Tiago Lopes popped up in one of these lists about a month ago with some extreme ledge tech, and he is back again with something truly odd, which I honestly think breaks physics. How do we know Tiago isn’t a practitioner of Witchcraft? I think this trick is possibly magic.
The spot: a wall, and a lamppost almost directly next to it. This isn’t a skate spot. It doesn’t look like an obvious spot at all. Tiago cruises up, and flips his board at the wall, pushing it round the lamppost and through the other side.
This is almost Fancy Lad Skateboards territory, as I was expecting him to run around the lamppost and catch the board. What he actually does reaches into pure wizardry: as he flips the board, he kinda floats round the other side and lands back on the board. You know what, watching it again, this is definitely witchcraft. This shouldn’t be possible.
1. Jake Wooten’s Kickflip Fakie
I’m perhaps selling this short by just calling it a Kickflip Fakie, but if it makes it any better it is one of the best Kickflip Fakies I’ve ever seen. This clip comes from a rad seaside DIY spot I’ve seen coming out of the California scene over the last few weeks.
The spot Jake Wooten skates at consists of two wooden quarters built into a concrete barrier. The two quarters are these 3 ft high whippy things with 4 ft between them. Wooten bombs down the path toward the right quarter, and boosts about 4 ft into the air with a Kickflip, twists himself over the gap and catches the board in fakie, landing in the left quarter and rolling away.
This trick is so rad because it is boosted with such height and speed, and the amount of twisting Wooten does to get the catch makes my back hurt. His back foot flicks off the board in an almost unnatural way, and you can tell the position of his back foot is twisted to basically catch the board and force it into place for a perfect Fakie landing. As I said, best Kickflip Fakie ever.
The Terrible Company 
Leave a Reply