Though we are still a few months off from year-end recap season, the winner of “Best Facial Hair Assortment in a Video Part” is a clear shoe-in. Leo Gutman — who hoisted up the imaginary Q.S.S.O.T.Y. trophy in 2013 following his masterful closing section in Jeremy Elkin’s Brodies video — spends his new Vague mag part donning an assortment of looks that would make one of those laminated posters in the front window of a barbershop jealous.
But the variety doesn’t stop at the grooming styles. While Gil Scott-Heron sings about home being where the hatred is, we are invited to witness rollaways on banks barely wider than a skateboard itself — which surely must hate Mr. Gutman for finally getting one over on their uninviting geometry. He rethinks well-worn skateboard landmarks like the Brooklyn Museum with an awkward-angle backside flip, and dares to leave the wretched ConEd Banks with a clip that required zero wax. Leo even treads back to that mini-brick-platform-bank-thing behind some store in Coney Island, which he has been skating since the 144p days, and ends the part with a trick on a scrap of FDR Drive cement that maybe hasn’t appeared in a video since ABC Skateshop was around.
Anyway, Leo rules, this part is great, creative, fun — and he has an interview accompanying this part over on the Vague site. Filmed by Dmitry Brylev.