I wanted to do a video review this week, but there’s a distinct lack of full lengths dropping this month. This is an understandable drought given that it’s the beginning of the year, and most of the big videos dropped in December to get a shoe in for Thrasher’s SOTY awards. Having said that, there are still some rad full parts and web edits dropping – all of them not long enough to warrant a full video review, but at the very least enough for me to hype them up and point your digital fingers towards.
“Straight to Flat” by Dom Alden
Yes, I know this one came out on December 30th, but I couldn’t do a round-up of recent videos without mentioning it. “Straight to Flat” is a 10 minute edit from Dom Alden, who you might better know as @narco_mumm on Instagram. Dom works at Betongpark with our old buddy Daryl Nobbs, and has rounded up a significant portion of related shredders for this pure 10 minutes of raw, unapologetically rad skateboarding. The video is mostly a montage of this London based crew, but features the most Daryl Nobbs footage I have seen in years. I’ve always loved watching Daryl skate and seeing this almost 5 minute non-stop assault on parks and streets of London and further afield gave me mega nostalgia for later 2000’s era Terribleco.
Ryan Townley’s “Layers” Part
Welcome’s Ryan Townley kicked off 2021 with a banger of a part here – featuring a few clips that go shared and shared again and again over Instagram. Proving to be the master of the “bump to bar”, Townley attacks plenty of kicker/rail setups throughout this part, whether it’s flips over, or grinds/bonks, or even wallrides: his combines a lot of different trick types onto many versions of this well worn obstacle type. On top of this, there are some real eyebrow raising, progressive tricks here, raising the bar for what is possible on the street. A boosted straight no comply over a stair gap with a closed gate at the bottom is a personal highlight, as is the insane wallride hippy jump that closes the part.
Forecast “Shoot The Moon”
This video from the South West based Forecast crew is 10 minutes of amazing skateboarding across the skateparks and spots of the Bristol and Devon area. Featuring the likes of Ryan Price, Sam Beckett, Jordan Thackeray, the video is just pure candy for your eyes if you enjoy huge airs, long grinds on concrete coping and are missing the summer sun.
There’s a bevvy of footage from Sox here – a dude with one of the most flowy, loose, chilled out styles on transition. He puts out some amazing footage and every trick he does causes me to blink in disbelief. Always a pleasure to see him skate. The video closes with a mini-part from Ryan Price, who has always been an unstoppable coping killer since I first encountered him in some of the old Gnargore videos. His footage in “Shoot The Moon” definitely makes him one to watch, pulling out gnarly tricks on even gnarlier terrain.
Ace Pelka’s “Creative Control” Part
This part dropped during the first week of January, and if you follow Ace Pelka aka “Slappyredz” on Instagram, then you know he often pushes the boundaries of curb skating to its limits. As this part proves, however, he’s adept at skating all kinds of terrain – dominating wallrides, transitions and incredibly long ledges throughout a 2 song long section on the Thrasher Website. Some of the longer grinds and slides in this part are so long you could boil the kettle in the time it takes him to mount and dismount a ledge.
Mike Mag’s “Burden Of Dreams”
This video on the Jenkem Youtube channel is largely notable because Mike Mag filmed this whole part themed around a boat trip he took down the Amazon river. The clip is 5 minutes of flowy, cruising shredding on some decidedly crusty South America architecture set to some lovely chilled out jazz. The climate and locations are very tropical, but there’s something extremely familiar and comforting about the spots Mike hits up here that reminds me of the kind of horrendous spots we have to contend with here in England. With that in mind, some of the tricks in this clip come with an added level of context that make me appreciate how much he has to graft, and I came away even more impressed with just how smooth he makes it all look.
Bryce Wettstein’s “Stereophonic Debut” part
Bryce Wettstein is a rainbow clad vert wizard, who has recently been picked up by Stereo as the latest addition to their team. Watching this introductory part, it’s obvious why. Her style on transition is super solid and floaty, and is reminiscent of Video Days era Jason Lee. There are boosted airs and textbook stalls aplenty here, but Bryce has some a selection of more inventive and quirky transition tricks at her disposal as well, including a dark sweeper variation: dark sweeper, to dark disaster, to tail. Myself and Joxa are the only people I know to mess with the dreaded dark sweeper, so I was super stoked to see someone else experimenting with the scariest sweeper variation.
Clay Kreiner’s “Delusional” part
If you aren’t familiar with Madness Skateboards, I would describe them as Anti-Hero on Cocaine (this is not an indication that any of their team are coke heads, by the way). The gnarly, fucked up transition shredding you expect from teams like Anti-Hero and Creature is turned up to 11 by Madness’ crew of ramp slayers. Featuring the likes of previously mentioned Forecast homie Sam Beckett and vert titan Alex Perelson, there is a distinct vert heavy slant to their team – although these guys who clearly grew up on the vert ramp are often seen destroying anything remotely quarter pipe based, and bring some truly insane moves to any bowls, pools, skateparks and even mega ramps they encounter.
A perfect example of this can be seen in Clay Kreiner’s latest part that went up on the Thrasher site on January 11th. He spends almost 4 and a half minutes boosting insane airs, forcing relentless, mach 10 grinds on coping, and performing some truly astonishing flip grab variations on all manner of transitional terrain. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it has coping Kreiner will destroy it. This is the very forefront in innovative transition skating, pushing the discipline in ways both gnarly and technical.
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