Wow — Liam McCabe’s ‘HSS 3’ Part

Halloween Stickers Skateboards just dropped their latest full-length video, HSS 3 — the formal follow-up to The HSS Video, which you may remember running on here exactly two years ago.

If you remember that, you certainly remember Liam McCabe’s green sweater day, where he skated the best possible set of stairs in Manhattan [at the time …it’s now skateblocked] and then proceeded to tre flip the worst possible set of stairs in Manhattan a few blocks away wearing the same St. Patrick’s Day garb.

Today, we are proud to present to you the sequel to the green sweater part, in the form of Liam’s HSS 3 curtains section. There’s no definining ~garment~ to follow in the footage, but yeah — holy fucking shit. Love how he manages to hit so many deep Jersey spots that date back to the Wenning days to tick off NBDs, and subsequently upends all expectations on the Brooklyn spots that everybody passes by twenty times a week at the same time (Monument, Williamsburg Bus Depot, Verizon Banks…)

HSS 3 is playing in full on YouTube, which includes stellar tech from the crew’s resident tall-guy, Ryan Handel + an excellent shared section from Chris Anderson and Neil Herrick + Sam Cardelfe smith grinding a brick ledge + so much more to love.

Since this is our second presentation of an HSS video, we asked the video creator, Dylan Holderness, for some background on the mysterious company:

Background info is that we traveled a bit for this one, did a trip to Portland, then Europe (Copenhagen > Berlin > Paris), then all the in between New York footage, and Reed Kanter in L.A. We all work full-time jobs, so this is mostly weekend and night missions after work throughout the year. Sam Cardelfe and Zack Fashouer run the “company” — they don’t like to call it that. Sam is an absolute maniac, full of energy, and has a million quotable fried sayings, one of which is that “HSS is not the big guy or the little guy but something else…” No one ever really knows what he means. It’s mostly art projects turned brand and I try to make videos that tie it all together in some capacity. For this video, Zack made a HSS Puppet which he named “Egrin” — it’s the size of a small child — and he also created the entire living room furniture in the opening skit all made from felt (The TV, TV Stand, Chair, Remote, Cig, Thrasher Mag, Ashtray, Beer, Coffee Table, VHS’s, VHS Player.) He also did all the titles in cut out felt with leftover scrap and Sam digitized them. And then Egrin became a board graphic in the latest run of boards.

Ryan is the new guy on HSS and the youngest, he’s just a classic 25 year old, always the most hammered yet able to film tricks. Chris and Neil — love them as a combo, plus they are both 5Boro but the homies so had to put them together. The video has Colin Bialek’s first full part and I just really like his approach to skating, barely any regular tricks. The band he skates to is also homies of his that live in Ridgewood, Queens.

Reed runs a record label in LA (Danger Collective Records), and he’s been our resident L.A. curb ghoul. First time we all met him in person was our trip to Portland, and it was mindblowing to see how good he is in person. The first song he skates to is from an artist off his label. He’s always wearing a Flipper shirt and loves collecting their 7″ records, so it was fitting to have that second song in there. His skating is super refreshing and he’s always having fun. He’s got some more spooky footage coming soon in an L.A. video that his homie has been working on.

Chris Zack is one my favorite people to go on missions with. He’s always down for whatever, especially if we get coffee or hit a diner. For that last trick, we went for on three different occasions crossing that highway in Brooklyn, timing traffic, hopping the fence etc. You feel like you are going crazy there, sandwiched between traffic, just buzzing especially at night. That last trick of his was the last one filmed for the video less than a week before the premiere. Then we hit The Commodore to celebrate.

Liam, where to begin. No green sweater day this time, but always wild sessions with this dude. I’d say probably 80% of the tricks in this part were also done 3-4 times because he never thinks he’s done the trick well enough and they are all fine. The routine for him is that he drives to my apartment every weekend throughout the year and then we go film. He never has spots in mind, so I just kind of think about what he might want to skate or what everyone else wants to skate, then he just tries pretty crazy stuff or has some mid-session idea. Outside of that, I took a few trips to NJ, we went to Richmond. In Paris, he met up for 5 days and got all of those tricks. That frontside flip over the street gap in Paris was the first evening right after he dropped his stuff off straight from the flight. We got kicked out immediately, eyeing up the spot. Then we saw the guy leave, he had a coffee and went straight to the street gap. That was pretty amazing to watch. He pretty much operates like that on every trick over our last 15 years or so of filming together. He’s not a warm-up or plan person; he doesn’t really have the patience. He’s just laser focused on a trick once he decides on it and it happens or it doesn’t. I guess a funny thing about his ender is that it’s done on a broken board. He had to land pretty heavy on the bolts or that thing was going to explode. No idea how he could even spot the landing with that trick, let alone land pretty bolts first stick, but that’s pretty much what happened. I think he only stuck one other attempt which was when he broke the board. It was also 85 degrees and he skated that set for hours in that flannel, just drenching himself in sweat for what I thought was no reason. But after he landed it he goes “HSS is a Fall company, I had to get a flannel clip.” — Dylan Holderness

Filmed and Edited: Dylan Holderness
Additional filming: Evan Pacheco
Additional editing: Mick Robbins, Evan Pacheco, and Sachi Bahra
Titles and Animation: Sam Cardelfe & Zack Fashouer
Puppet: Egrin