John Clodfelter and co. — the crew behind Zen Prone and Meta 5 — have a new one out called Paper…View.
From the moment the Jefferson Avenue L Train bank [recently eulogized by @solojazz] gets liberated, you enter this hallucinatory world that has been crystalizing throughout the past two videos, where tricks are almost secondary. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of great skating in Paper.. View, just that the tricks continue the last two videos’ mission of world-building, where it’s ok if someone’s nighttime ollie lands into a black, pixely abyss.
The video is the longest of the trilogy, yet maintains the tract of finding New York spots that nobody bothers to skate, or wants to spend the time of figuring out how to skate. Even the shit they hit in the Financial District doesn’t exactly register on the radar of the last hundred crews to scour below Chambers Street for clips.
At a time when it’s so obvious where many other independent videos draw their inspirations from, it’s fun to watch something on its own wave. It is an almost dreamlike rendition of a New York homie video: one that kinda sorta feels familiar, but things feel curiously out of place — like Mambo Bar being a canvas for a Natas spin, rather than for the sort of things that you swore otherwise always went down on it.
And wait, is that dude doing switch flips on a longboard?
Features Anthony Battistini, Maclyn Milsark, Seth Valestrand, Nate Grzechowiak, James Wells, Josh Paynter, Jourdyn Sherman, Marcos Hidalgo, Steve Appolonia, Devin Sweat, Johnny Cumaoglu, Zak Anders, Scotty Cave, Joseph Jaquez, Brooks Morrow, Joseph Camposano, Andy Conte, Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Fusco, Ian Wright, Anthony Savillo, Elias Meyers, BWREN, Sam Espert, Callem McConomy, and Caleb Michaloski.