Even in 2015, there’s a commemorative éS block at Le Dome. It honors the millions of dollars in skate tourism the company brought to France these past fifteen years.
It seems like after every trip to Europe, the first order of business back at the QS office is to reconcile with Menik Mati. While every critical adult skate nerd writes it off, that video really planted the childhood seed for our European travel bug. Some kids wanted to go to California and skate a schoolyard; we wanted to go to Bercy.
Is there a spot on earth where one of the best tricks done on it was legitimately a 5050 kickflip? Maybe a curb in front of some 12-year-old’s house in Alaska? Noseslide shuv-its, willy grinds, varial flips up until just recently, 5050 kickflips — all of these tricks begin getting phased out halfway through high school. They’re kid tricks. “I’ve never done a flip-out trick — well, besides a 5050 kickflip — but that doesn’t count.”
So could you believe that a 5050 kickflip ranks as a peak achievement at one of the most iconic spots in all European #sk8 #fantasy? (Lord knows why, not like any of us can skate anything besides the three stairs there…)
Visit Le Dome with a bunch of nerds, pretend like you know what you’re talking about when you start rattling off the complications with the ledge, and start running down the A.B.Ds. After the twenty seconds you spend on Flo Marfaing’s 2000s repertoire, the first trick that will be mentioned is a 5050 kickflip by Rick Mccrank in the aforementioned three-hour skate video.
Why? That ledge is a four-foot-high block of ice down sixteen stairs. *The Shady One* learned of its perils not long after said A.B.D. conversation occurred, and he decided to try his luck at turning childhood dream into reality.
McCrank spent an entire five-minute part avoiding kinks on 5050s. (See: The first one at the Le Dome line or the first trick once the Russian chants start at the slo-mo part… though it is super weird he decided to frontside nosegrind a kinked round rail after all of that…) The real clincher was him deciding to flip over one while grinding on ice, down a five-foot drop, and over the remaining stairs. One of those moments where you which there was a) a long lens angle and b) video-makers from the early 2000s never discovered slow-mo.
Related: Firing Line — Artsy Edition
I think the more recent trick, where he bs 180s out of it, is cooler actually
I don’t remember what it showed up in though. Es ad or video?
^^Pretty Sweet bonus, unfortunately.
Who the fuuh writes off Menikmati?
Menikmati is everything that was terrible about the end of the 90s.
in Lordz: They Don’t Give A Fuck About Us Florentin Marfaing flips out of a fs tailslide perfectly that is the very best trick done there.
Fuck you roc
It’s only a kid trick if it’s done on something kid height.
Yeah I agree – who is writing off Menikmati? Maybe I’m missing something
Do Right And Kickflip Everything
menikmati was the first video i ever saw. for a while i thought it was weird that other videos didn’t give you a peek into the lives of the skaters before their parts
Saw the “premiere” of Menikmati on a small VHS combo at Tattooed Moms in Philly. Was bizarre and ill at the same time. i just remember seeing arto crook like 40 feet on some block and being completely shocked. we didn’t care about the marketing or over production aspect.
I love the hipsters talkin about writing off Menikmati or Opinion or the old darkstar video Battalion. Those videos had no interest in presenting any kind of cohesive narrative or style, they just wanted to show some skateboarding. And it turns out, there are actually some good parts (if you can stomach the Sven Kilchenmanns).
At least no one ever called them films
Kerry Getz on the rail in Jump Off a Building would be the other one. And nobody writes off Menikmati. Just the soundtrack.