📷 Photo by Zach Baker
After two parts in Q4 of last year (the opener in You Deserve It + the second-to-last in Rascal), we figured was now was a good time to tap Miami’s Elijah Odom for a list of his favorites.
Darren Harper – Famous Stars and Straps Part (2009?)
It’s the one with 11k views on YouTube — that’s what I know it as. I’ve watched it so many times myself that it’s crazy it’s still at 11k views.
This is the hardest intro to a video part ever: just him talking about how he grew up and what he’s about. But also he wants to be good as fuck at skating, even though he is one foot in, one foot out.
Will Marshall put me onto this part a couple of years ago. We were going to D.C. a bunch and he showed me this part, and I just fell in love with it. There are a lot of videos I haven’t seen because I started skating pretty late, so I never really went back much to watch old videos. I don’t think I’ve even seen this whole video, just this part on YouTube.
I like how in this part, he just has flatground clips: a big ass switch front shove on flat and then it cuts to another clip, then a big ass nollie flip on flat. Once Will showed me this, I was like “I love this guy.” I just really love D.C. too, and watching this part, I feel like he skates D.C. the best.
Jake Johnson — Alien Workshop: Mind Field (2009)
This is my favorite one of all time. I know a lot of people have probably mentioned it. It was also one of the first videos I ever saw. It’s impossible to hear this song and not think of this part.
A lot of the tricks I wanted to learn were because of this part and it has the most influence on the type of spots I like to skate. Like the big switch back fifty on the bench, skating a bump to bar into a grind, the neck high front tail, or the best wallride of all time — he has the best trick selection you could ever have. He does the trick you want to do at the spot you want to skate. They need to put that wall [from the backside wallride] in a museum.
It’s not really much to say about it. He’s the goat.
Brandon Westgate — Emerica: Stay Gold (2010)
[Part begins @ 4:17]
Stay Gold was the first actual skate video I ever bought. I’d have it on my iPod touch and be in classes watching it every day. Brandon Westgate’s part in that — he had first part — but it was like, the one, you know? It really stuck with me.
I started skating in 2009, and this video came out in 2010. I didn’t really watch skate videos in my first year of skating. I was just skating in front of my crib on flatground and this box I built. I don’t even know how I found out about this video, I just remember seeing it on iTunes.
Brandon Westgate skates so fast and he would hit all these bump to bars. One of my favorite parts is when he does the tre flip on flat in Nashville, and starts pushing so fast so he could to that gap lipslide. When he ollies over that one gate in San Francisco — it’s pretty much an entire driveway in front of someone’s house and he runs into the whip right after. I’ve watched this so many times, so after going out [traveling] for skating and seeing these spots up close, it’s just like “holy shit.” I already thought they were big when I didn’t know that much about skateboarding, but seeing them [in person] is crazy.
Gilbert Crockett — Quasi: “Salt Life” (2015)
I used to watch this part around when I was graduating high school, and I was figuring out how I wanted to film street tricks. It became my idea of what I want a part to be like. It felt like it was really thought-out in terms of the spots, and the tricks he wanted to do on them.
I think it’s sick when skaters drop a part and it’s mainly the city where they’re from or where they grew up, and a lot of this is just Richmond and east coast spots. He’ll skate like two trash cans and then next trick, he just kickflips over a barricade; they’re not really even spots, but the pop makes the clips look sick, and I just like skaters with pop.
He does a good job of skating everything: mannys, rails, switch, the Suntrust lines around the pillar. That’s why when I think of a “part,” I think of this, because it has everything. I realized you don’t have to go to all these famous crazy spots. It’s sicker to see someone go through where they’re from and pick some sick cutty spots.
Cyrus Bennett — John’s Vid by Johnny Wilson (2020)
I watched this video a lot. This came out right during COVID, when everybody was skating a bunch. Seeing this come out in the middle of it hyped me up so much. Everything was shut down, and you could pretty much skate any spot. The streets are completely empty in some parts of the video. Seeing all these clips now is so sick, like “Oh shit, they were able to skate that?” Like those manny pads by World Trade, there’s no one there. They got to skate an empty city, which is so crazy. I think they even took a trip down to Miami for this, and I feel like he skated Miami spots different than most people.
That front blunt backside flip he does is the best front blunt backside flip ever done. And he fucked up that red manny pad that he back tail backside flips; that thing seems so hard to skate off the narrow curb.
Previously: Greg Hunt, Zered Bassett, Neil Herrick, Trung Nguyen, Nick Boserio, Elissa Steamer, Casper Brooker, John Gardner, Bobshirt, Brandon Turner, Shari White, Nick Jensen, Tony Hawk, Naquan Rollings, Jack O’Grady, Josh Wilson, MaitĂ© 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