Sunday 27 June 2010

good and evil battle at the berrics

it may just be that i'm searching too deep into the berrics to find some sort of skate related metaphor but as i logged onto the berrics at 8 am(GMT) to watch the mike mo/ramondetta game i realised that this could be a severly underappreciated clash. not just in the whole flatgroud litteral sense but more of a clash of values,images even beliefs.on the one hand you had mike mo the idol to many a socal,lakai and girl wearing teenager.The silky smooth messiah of the flip in flip out,ledge tap dancing movement about to wage battle with peter ramondetta.Possibly the most evillooking skater around summoning up the power of satan,which is very trendy at the moment,with a selction of satanic tattos,a shaved head/beard combo and some of the gnarliest skating around.
sadly it was not meant to be and even with a pretty bad ankle injury mike mo battled through against a tirade of evil heel variations, and the very unsatanic shove late flip, managing to banish ramondetta back to hell from whence he came

Friday 25 June 2010

scots skate street aswell?

For anyone who pays attention to the goings on in the UK scene,through magazine coverage and competitions,it may come as a surprise to find that their are actually skaters in Scotland who skate street.

This clip,which i came across on the sidewalk site, features one such skater:who goes by the name of tom shimmin.
Now i've read interviews with him and seen his recent sidewalk cover but uptill this point i've never see substantial footage of him.

The skating itself is exactly the stuff i like to watch: mostly fast lines consisting of tricks in their basic form,without too many flips and grind combinations sprinkled on top,done on less than perfect spots delivered in a good style with a slight hint of sketchiness. So very much an east coast esque style of skating taken to the less grimy streets of glasgow on a rare sunny day.
Though the standout trick for me has to be that feeble to nosemanny,there were a lot of lines that caught my eye such as that big ollie over the cone and the line ending in the switch front 270 into the bank.

Thursday 24 June 2010

flatground trick fursdays

This new and ,hopefully, weekly feature has been inspired by a thread on Skateboard city: a forum I visit regularly, about your favourite flatground tricks in a line from videos. This is basically a longer more detailed version of my post on there.

The skater in question this week is John Tanner. who is,most probably unheard of for most people in america. he's been on the come-up recently and has released some very on point footage,in his part in the htl video and in various internet/dvd montages and friend sections.
The trick is from one of these htl related internet clips.


The trick that most caught my eye is the bs 360 over the rumble strip at 0:12.My first impression of this line is that,judging from the way Tanner dresses and skates, he really looks like he should be on chocolate, and i think he may have been flowed boards by them for a bit before he got on cliche.
There are a number of factors that make this trick such a standoutto me.For one, he is going pretty fast which,as every skater knows,makes any trick 10 times more impressive and also his relaxed style in preparing for the trick adds to the vibe that he's just cruising and would do this even if he wasn't being filmed (though this is probably not true it still gives off a good vibe). then there's the execution of the bs 360 itself. it's a lesser seen trick in lines and it's inclusion always adds a little variety and a sense of' 'rawness' (is that even an adjective?) to any line. the fact that it isn't very common gives off the feel that it is probably fairly hard to execute properly(i don't have any personal expirience in this as i have never been able to get clos to a fully rotated back 3) and by god is this trick executed properly: it's fully rotated and theres none of this 'landing 180 and pivoting', his front foot stays on the whole time(which in my opinion makes the trick look alot better). also theres that liitle reposition of weight as he lands up on the nose,as i always feel the right amount of inperfection in a trick can actually enhance it's overall look.

Then there is the whole matter of the fact that it's done over a rumble strip:something i ollie over all the time when i'm skating in towns and cities.
But i guess you could say i'm over analysing it,which i probably am.

introductory musings

hello.
i've always toyed with the idea of starting a blog and have finally got around to making one. i'm not exactly a computer whizz so if there are any layout fuck ups i apologise in advance.
i don't have an exact plan on the actual direction of the blog and will ,probably, just post anything i feel is particularly interesting or post my opinion on something skate related. i will try not to make this just another youwillsoon/boiltheocean esque blog,though they are two of my favourite sklogs around.
i happen to live in the uk,which explains the title as i guess the majority of readers (if any) will reside in the good ol' usa. so my posts won't be entirely centered around the american skate scene as i will also blog about the going ons here in the uk and in europe.

yes,i know the layout is very basic but i shall try and develop it over time. i'll also apologise for the countless grammatical and spelling mistakes that will be littered around this blog.
i hope to post regularly as i have a lot of free time at the moment and am spending alot of it lurking on various websites and forums.

also critique is welcomed,so feel free to hate away.