Five Favorite Parts With Jordan Trahan

📷 Photo by Josh Stewart

We’ve all been fans of Jordan’s skateboarding for a long time now. Whether he’s squeezing five-trick lines out of seemingly not-much or sliding into your timeline to do some shit you’ve never seen before, he’s always working in the realm of the unexpected. Here is where he gets his inspo from :)

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Tim O’Connor — Eastern Exposure 3 (1996)

I had to go through this video multiple times. I couldn’t decide if it was the New York section — because I watched that so much when I moved to the city. Then you get hung up on Jahmal’s part, then you go back to Ricky Oyola’s part, but I think Tim O’s part is the one that I watched the most.

It has great cameo clips, like that Quim line where he does the switch flip over the saw horse and switch back 5050s the blue bar. It’s Tim’s longest part to date, but it could’ve been with the help of all those other guys chipping into it. It’s when him and Ricky were both Zoo and it’s all Philadelphia footy. There’s a varial flip in this part that’s so photogenic and filmed from a little bit in front. It wraps right in front of your face and makes you want to learn how to varial flip like that. It ends on the bigspin up the stairs that he doesn’t make — what a great way to end it. Enders didn’t really matter back then and it was cool.

Once I met Tim, he was actually a rad dude. When you think about people whose video parts you rewatch a bunch, it’s because they were super fucking cool: you’re more hyped to talk about [the parts].

Keith Hufnagel — Real Skateboards: Non-Fiction (1997)

I was going to say Gonz, but I replayed both of their parts. They both feel good to watch for certain reasons, but [Huf’s] feels like one moving line even though it’s chopped up into bits. It’s super entertaining; I’ve watched it thousands of times. He’s a goofy-footed inspiration, this was an easy one to say.

Half of this part is S.F., and there’s a good bit of New York at the end. When I moved to New York, I was digging through old heads’ footage to see what the city used to look like.

The way it feels as opposed to what Real videos might feel like nowadays — this is what they used to feel like and why we still watch them. I like Quim’s song, Gonz’s song — his is the same three little guitar riffs throughout the entire section where it’s the same song three times. It feels like they didn’t have to stress here, they were just having fun.

Jack Sabback — Traffic: Moving in Traffic (2006)

Part begins @ 6:20

Sabback’s part in this is so different and thought out. He wasn’t skating like people at the time and Traffic as a whole was different than the skateboarding that was being shown to people in the mid-2000s. Everything else was Zero and crazy videos; this was a free video. When a video came out then and it was a free promo, people freaked out. I remember there was this whole era of free DVDs like Rock Adio, Osiris’ Feed the Need, éSpecial.

I watched this so much when I finally moved to New York from Louisiana. A lot of these spots still run, so it’s a trip to stumble on shit by accident. He does a front nosegrind nollie backside 360 out, and the spot is right by Union Square but nobody knows how to skate it.

He was tying together shit that nobody was thinking of. It’s another video part that just ends on a missed flatground trick, and it just cuts to the end. None of it is about competing with anybody, it’s about showing what the fuck you got going on.

Rich Adler did a good job with this video [Ed. note: Adler edited the video] — I wanted to put in his part in Via, too, but I guess this is a way to put in a Rich Adler shout-out either way.

Nate Broussard — Static 3 (2007)

When this video came out, we were about to go on this big skate trip for the skate shop down where I’m from [Lafayette, Louisiana]. I was 16 years old and it was my first real road trip with skaters. We were waiting for these dudes from Baton Rouge to pick us up and they were so late getting off of work, then they had an hour to drive to us, and three more hours to Houston. After, they all made us sit down and watch this entire video at midnight because they were trying to decompress.

I had already heard of Nate Broussard. Broussard is a really common name where I’m from and he’s from Louisiana, so it all stuck in my head. It was a few years before I saw the video again, and I remembered why it was glued in my head. I put it together later, that Josh Stewart made this video, and that he also made One Step Beyond, which was my first-ever video, and Nate is in that as well. It was cool watching Josh’s progression from there to there, even as a kid in Louisiana.

For years, I always thought if there was anyone I’d love to film a part with, it’s with somebody like Josh because he really knows how to frame everybody and put them in places where they can shine. All this footage is overseas in Israel, France and other places. Josh took him out of his element, which was probably between Houston and L.A. at the time. If you stay in one place, you get pretty over it.

I remember going around London for a New Balance trip when we were visiting Tom Knox, and we came across three or four of the spots that Nate skates in this part. They were all like a block away from each other and I was so giddy to try and piece all of that together in my head. Following his footsteps decades later was pretty cool.

Jimmy Lannon — Last of the Mohicans (2008)

There’s probably a lot of kids skating nowadays who have probably not even seen Last of the Mohicans, or any of those Westside videos, which have such a good feel. Jimmy’s parts always have a feeling of having a good time and cruising. You can see whoever’s filming him is even having a good time, too.

Mohicans was an epic video for the time. You had a Freddy part mixed with Joel, Ed Selego, a Habitat section, a Ross Norman part — which, everybody should know by now.

I skated with Jimmy a few times, and it was enough to realize why I’ve been watching this dude’s footy. He’s so fucking cool. He’s just bouncing, dude — not worrying about how many nollie flips he’s doing. If you put all his parts back to back, it almost looks like he never got off his board.

Honorable Mention: Anthony Correa in Mixtape (1997), Bobby Puleo in Laz Luz (2001)

Previously: Ariana Spencer, Elijah Odom, 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, 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