To Russia With Hjalte & Nik — ‘Firesides’ by Ben Chadourne

The crew from 2018’s eastern European road trip video, “Glory Push,” is back — this time going further east into earth’s largest country.

Like Jacob Harris before him, Ben Chadourne also brought along Nik Stain to chase around in circles through marble remnants of the Soviet Union. Unlike the Atlantic Drift auteur, Ben shot his video on a camera that did not cease production in the same decade that the Soviet Union ceased to exist ;)

Thanks to the aforementioned “Atlantic Drift” installment (which def broke through the “skate video discussed in real life”-barrier), and the otherworldly Planeta Patsanov leading for Best Foreign Film Oscar contention, Moscow and its post-World Cup redevelopment was looking like it was piquing the interest of us mainstream skate travelers (e.g. people who look for cheap flights to Barce and Copenhagen on Kayak, not the guys booking Trans-Siberian railway skate trips.) Now that COVID-19 has reduced skate travel to “Maybe we drive up to Albany this weekend and skate the plaza,” we see foreign spots as we did when we were kids watching our first skate videos: desirable, exotic, inaccessible, far.

I feel like one of these dudes mentioned there were plans for a second trip to Moscow to keep filming for this video before the world froze. With seemingly little confidence in Russia’s approved COVID vaccine that has not even completed clinical trials, they went ahead and released “Firesides” early, too. When every trick in a four-minute trip edit is as precise as this one, more footage would’ve maybe only diluted the impact. Anyone who ranks “Nik Stain doing long nosegrinds” as one of their favorite genres of skateboarding will be pleased.

Features Hjalte, Nik, Paul Grund and Bobby Dekeyzer.