Five Favorite Parts With Nick Boserio

Headline Photo by Hjalte Halberg
Intro + Interview by Farran Golding

We’ve previously discussed how the familiarity with a skateboarder’s output can create an “Oh yeah, I see it”-bias before conducting a “Five Favorite Parts” interview.

Nick Boserio didn’t fall into this archetype, but surprisingly, none of his chosen video parts offered much indication as to where his frantic, Indiana-Jones-escaping-a-boulder approach to skateboarding might have taken root. Maintaining that mystery feels about right for someone who appreciates skateboarding that has a “rare” feel to it.

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Erik Ellington — Emerica: This Is Skateboarding (2003)

If you watched This Is Skateboarding when it came out, it meant you watched the same video 400 times. You watched videos by yourself, with your mates, and [This Is Skateboarding] was definitely one of them for me.

The Ellington part is fucking sick. It’s got the Danzig song [“777”]. It was at the height of [the popularity of] his shoe. There’s that first line when he’s got the lanyard hanging out of his pocket, his intro falling down stairs, he’s got a black eye and this slow-mo look – it’s everything. He was a “style guy.” You know when you first start understanding style? He was one of the first people that stood out. There weren’t as many avenues to show personality either: you had one video part or a weird 411 ad.

The pace of it – Ellington’s style is so powerful, but it’s really slow, in a way. That personality stuff and the song is probably what did it. I like when people are relatable. At that age, even someone being goofy helps because they’re the same stance as you, so you see yourself in them a little bit.

There’s a Danzig shopping meme — I always think about that as well, which is dumb. You should look that up.

Daniel Shimizu — Foundation Skateboards: That’s Life (2004)

Shimizu is a friend of mine, so there’s a personal connection. I don’t think I watched this religiously when it came out – I think I was too young – I went back to it, kinda. He skates like no one else, he’s laughing in a line, he’s got bootcut pants on. It’s when Nike started and they look cool – he’s in his prime and it’s a great video part. And it’s absolutely the song as well. Me and my friend Geldy [Josh Roberts] – who does Magenta videos now — we had a full summer of going to the bar and screaming at the DJ, “Please play ‘Damaged Goods!'” then going fucking insane on the dance floor.

His skating is so different. When your body is psychically different to anyone else, you’re guaranteed to have interesting style. That’s Shimizu. With how he’s put together, you can just recognize his style.

Some of those lines are put together so strangely. There’s two where he starts at the same grass gap. Line skating is awesome. You do see more of the person. I’d love to make more of a big deal of it, but I don’t have that many lines, so I’d be shooting myself in the foot. With Shimizu, his lines seem so natural that some of them didn’t even make that much sense. They’re kind of anti-climatic, a little bit offbeat. You don’t really see that. Most of the time, lines are classically put together. He hucks down the gap, then it’s a bunch of dead air afterwards — pushing really stylishly — then it picks up again. Normally you’ve got to have a flatground trick and it’s straight into it or it’s a trick up a curb and things pick up. It’s a different pace.

I’ve got a special place in my heart for Shimizu. He put me up in his house in L.A. and that was huge for me, getting to skate with Jason Hernandez. He was so nice to me. I was such a piece of garbage at that point in my life. I feel like he thought it was funny and we got along. It’s hard to like things when people aren’t close to you or your friends, at this point.

Callum Paul — Sydrow Productions: Glory Ride (2011)

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When you YouTube Callum’s part, it plays with the full outro [to the video] and that’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about Sydor [Britten Andrews], who made it.

It’s a good introduction to what was going on at the time. It was the perfect storm in Melbourne of people having nothing else to do and Sydor being an awesome filmer. He’s a cool filmmaker now; he does stuff in Aboriginal communities. He made a great video and I think the Mapstones were part of that. It’s the thing that made you want to move to Melbourne, which I did in the end.

Callum’s part is the best part. It’s contextual as well — it might not seem that interesting now, maybe — because everyone and their fuckin’ dog jumps in the water and slides around crazy things. Everything about it was so good. Not that I even want to make that big of a deal out of Callum because he’s kind of a bastard sometimes, but he’s a mad genius as well. As much as he tortures everyone else, he’s the most tortured. Even the footage where he’s in his wimpy cashmere jumper and half-tight Dickies looks good. I watched it to double-check that I wanted to publicly give credit to Callum, and it’s great still.

It’s probably the most worthwhile Australian part to make a big deal out of. He’s a rare species.

Nik Stain — Skate Jawn: Bruns (2014)

I’ll be honest, this part is chosen completely for the fact that he kickflips into the bank, drops off the thing back into the bank, and the way his arms throw up into the air off the curb. The arms off the curb was psychotic. You shouldn’t try and deal with speed that way. The whole thing is in a shitty hoody with dirt on it. You’d never heard of him before and he’s doing all these manuals. He goes fast and the song is so good as well.

I got to skate with him a bunch the first time we were in Puerto Rico together. He filmed this downhill line. It built up and built up, got faster and faster. His process is insane. It was hot, humid, we’re drinking at 10 o’clock at night, and he’d warm up for an hour pushing really fast. He would skate around the plaza in the heat, then he would still want to film something afterwards. It’s the opposite of the way I operate. He was doing really long crooks, skating ledges for fucking ages. It would build slowly until he was like, “Oh, this is the thing I want to film.” I’d be fucking done after an hour of pushing around and around and around.

There are two or three lines [in Bruns] that look like they’re on the same piece of shit street, behind a warehouse somewhere, and they’re great. It takes a lot of confidence to be in front of a camera just rolling and pushing as well. You’ve really got to be okay with yourself. That’s something to be said for both [Nik and Shimizu] and for line skating as well. If I’m rolling down the street for more than a couple of beats, in front of a camera, I don’t really like it. I can’t just be going. Pushing or covering ground, keeping the vibe for a long time — it takes a special person to do that. That’s very rare. That’s what I like about all these people: I like when something feels rare.

Aidan Mackey — Fucking Awesome: “Randy Farkus” (2022)

I thought it would be important to think of something new that’s not necessarily some close personal friend or a niche thing. I’ve met him before and hung with him — he’s a great guy — but I think Benny Maglinao and Aidan Mackey made something that stood out in this modern world. It’s pretty individual.

These are all parts that I do go back and watch. I could have just said another old video part, but that’s redundant, I guess, because you can’t live in your past and talk about what video parts are important when you’re 16. You have to think, “Is there something that I care about now?” If there is, you should mention it. It didn’t take long for that to be Benny Maglinao’s stuff and this part is my favorite.

Maybe I’m just a big Danzig fan.

Honorable Mention: Heath Kirchart — Emerica: This Is Skateboarding

It’s the dumbest shit when you’re a kid: I got his shoe. I made it a thing to get his shoe and try to tailslide a handrail. Like, “Fuck, man. This is my guy.” I didn’t understand yet how he was this mysterious figure, but on a surface level, he was just so badass.

The song [“Shinda Shima” by Mellow] is almost uncomfortable. It was really confronting, maybe because I was young. It made it so full-on compared to, like, Spanky giggling about a bug. It seemed so adult.

Previously: Elissa Steamer, Casper Brooker, John Gardner, Bobshirt, Brandon Turner, Shari White, Nick Jensen, Tony Hawk, Naquan Rollings, Jack O’Grady, Josh Wilson, Maité Steenhoudt, Jahmir Brown, Una Farrar, Chris Jones, Mason Silva, Beatrice Domond, Mark Suciu, Justin Henry, Breana Geering, Sage Elsesser, Bobby Worrest, Nik Stain, Anthony Van Engelen, Dom Henry, Bing Liu, Andrew Reynolds, Cyrus Bennett, Jacob Harris, Jamal Smith, Paul Rodriguez, Gilbert Crockett, Ben Chadourne, Tom Knox, Louie Lopez, The Chrome Ball Incident, The Bunt, Lacey Baker, Andrew Allen, GX1000, Brian Anderson, Gino Iannucci, Josh Kalis, Sean Pablo, Wade Desarmo, Chris Milic, Chad Muska, Hjalte Halberg, Danny Brady, Bill Strobeck, Aaron Herrington, Jerry Hsu, Brad Cromer, Brandon Westgate, Jim Greco, Jake Johnson, Scott Johnston, Josh Stewart, Eric Koston, Karl Watson, Josh Friedberg, John Cardiel, Pontus Alv, Alex Olson, Jahmal Williams

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