🔑 Words by Adam Abada
📷 Photos by Matty Hilzenrath & Yusef Dwider
It is easy to imagine the title of this video uttered from a driver’s window to a gas station attendant. Twenty bucks can get you a lot of places in the only state where the law requires someone to pump your gas for you. In A 20 of Regular, the ground covered situates it in the echelon of great New Jersey videos. Its textures and rhythm call to mind great independent videos like the Grains series and Rust Belt Trap, but features enough of its creator Matty Hilzenrath’s personal touches to herald a skate videographer coming into his own. The 40-minute video lives and breathes its crusty spots, with extended time given to run-ups, landings, and the in-betweens of filming.
The fisheye in Derek Patterson’s first line, for example, starts classically enough. It follows him through a bank blessed with three polejams before settling on the ground for a final flat-ground switch hard flip. Instead of cutting after it’s stomped, he allows Derek to step off his board and pop it up as a car rolls into the shot, the fisheye erratically losing its composure as the filmer drops his focus. Another filmmaker may have cut these shaky frames, but Hilzenrath bucks the norm, some clips seemingly edited-in from the moment the red button is pressed.
There are a full five seconds before Garret Boozer rolls into the static frame of his wild ender — inviting us to take in the spot — and another few seconds before Kevin Barthold rolls back into a shot for a flatground tre flip after his ender. Matty lets us feel these moments without ever letting the result approach stagnancy — a strong world-building technique that opposes the runup-trick-landing of modern-day skate videos full of “good editing.” Matty reminds us that good editing can actually contain hallmarks of what many may consider “bad editing” when used with intention.
The use of classic indie video post-industrial Super-8 footage blends seamlessly with the amount of time we spend on the ludicrous crunch of some of these spot. It gives us a fuller picture of what it is like to skate in New Jersey. All the cellar doors, Philly steps, and bank-to-curbs you’ve never seen or skated get connected to North Jersey staples like the pillar banks off Route 17, or a trick down the Stale Cheese Double-Set (famously skated by Ron Kniggie in Children of the Sun.) It’s a harmony not often achieved when stitching together a collection of clips.
And then there’s the best and most footage at Peachies I’ve ever seen. I suspect a whole new generation of skaters who have never been to New Jersey will wonder where that awesome tan-maroon ledge spot is before deciding Blue Park is actually way closer. Even so, A 20 of Regular is a poignant, thoughtfully-rendered reminder of what’s out there — just a river and a tank of gas away.