Winter Viewing: The Brodies

Photo by Pep Kim

Jeremy Elkin made his Brodies video available for online viewing today. Deep freeze depression = temporarily suspended. You can still purchase the DVD set with all four of his videos, a photo book, etc. over on the Theories site.

Who was the last skater to do four or five tricks in a video that got everyone hyped, who didn’t have a readily available part somewhere in the depths of YouTube? Accessible video technology put a stop to that towards the latter end of the previous decade. Except the dudes in this one came a bit before that shift: Akira hasn’t had a part since Mixtape 2 (during which he was probably a teenager), German has two awesome shared parts to his name but they’re seven years apart, Rob Campbell has been meddling in YouTube compilation land for years since EST 2, and Leo Gutman, legitimately one of the best skaters in New York, hasn’t been seen outside of the occasional montage since Flipmode 3 in 2006.

The Brodies is a slice of 2001-2006 — when filmers were fewer, resources were scarcer, but distractions were just as rampant — plus six or seven years of the advancements we have today. New York skateboarding is full of sick “whatever happened to” guys, and this video thankfully keeps that title away from a handful of the top candidates. Added bonus of Aaron Herrington, Daniel Kim and Jason Spivey footage. Both teams played hard.

(BTW since it’s awards season it all, it should be mentioned that The Brodies won two of our year-end honors: #22 for Akira’s entire part filmed in sweatpants and #4 for Leo’s Q.S.S.O.T.Y. win.)

Related: Theories has interviews with all of the dudes in the video, and Elkin’s Vimeo page has his other three videos if you’re too poor to buy the DVD.