🔑 Interview by Farran Golding
📷 Photo by Kyle Seidler
We got one of the stars of Sci-Fi’s Endless Beauty to chime in on the videos that help inform what he does, which reminded us that there are two types of people in this world: those who want a part with immaculate vibes, and those who want a part that sends the skater teetering on the verge of a mental breakdown. It’s either one or the other.
Matt Field — Real Skateboards: REAL to Reel (2001)
Matt and Kenny were big reasons why I wanted to move to San Francisco to go to college when I was 18. I became friends with Matt while living there. I watched this part around the same era from age 13 to 16.
Going into REAL to Reel, I had preconceptions of what I thought a video part looked like, what I thought style looked like and what skating should be. His footage, similar to Quim Cardona at an early age, was almost off-putting at first, but the older I got, there was something I was attracted to. You could equate it to a fermented food, a strong wine, cheese, or dark chocolate in that it doesn’t taste the way you’re expecting it to, but there’s something you can’t quite let go of. Over the years, I came to appreciate just how special his skating is. Every trick is like this mini explosion where you have no idea what’s going to happen.
The way it opens, he does a switch backside 180 over a pothole and you never see that as a single trick in a line. It’s huge! It’s straight-legged, his clothes are big, billowing and flowing; it’s pure energy. A lot of people will say that about all sorts of skaters, like John Cardiel, but I really felt that about Matt Field. This is a capsule of a skater who probably didn’t care that much about filming a video part. There’s a lot of honor in that. The way he films his lines, like that first line: he does a backside heelflip then one of those half-cab [revert] thrusters and he’s pushing off into the distance. It’s as if the filming is incidental.
The nollie over the street gap is one of my single favorite skate clips ever. Sickest full speed nollie shifty landing with wild style. The next trick is the nollie 180 over the Bay Block and both of those tricks have so much power, it’s awesome. You get some air foot, but it doesn’t even matter. It’s almost like he’s riding a bull with the way that he skates. He’s not fully in control of it, but when it works, it’s like magic. That nollie easily could have been the last trick, but I love that they have this shot of him kicking a kickball fisheye in a S.F. playground. It’s such a good quick hit to watch before you go skating.
Rob Welsh — Aesthetics: Ryde or Die Vol. 1
I watched this a shitload as a little kid and thought, “Damn, this guy looks cool.” I think I even wore sweatpants afterwards. Sickest fits, amazing song [“I Declare War” by Shyheim], he made S.F. look so cool. It’s funny, Welsh lived in Arizona for a period when he was filming for Fully Flared, but I didn’t get to skate with him much.
His footage looks like a big guy with big shoes and a tiny skateboard, which I always thought was such a sick look. His flip tricks look so tight, like he’s skating a 7.5″. I loved this specific era of skating in San Francisco as a kid. Outside of the Arto [Saari] parts that everyone watched and loved, Field, Kenny and Welsh showed me a different layer of skateboarding that was a little more niche.
Arto Saari — Flip Skateboards: Sorry (2002)
I’m going to say this is my all-time favorite part. Arto in Sorry shaped my entire childhood, how I thought about skateboarding and what I thought you should give to a video part if you’re capable. This is the best skater of the era putting his heart and soul into it, packaged in a video that everyone wanted to see with great filming and editing. The top [YouTube] comment is “this shit right here will make grown skaters cry,” which is basically how I feel. There’s a lot of nostalgia at play. I was maybe 13 or 14 when [Sorry] came out.
Arto was quite young at the time too. He looks effortlessly cool, but also very skaterly. He was an era-defining skater, but never leaned into a schtick too hard. He has every fucking trick done exactly how you’d want to see it done on probably the biggest thing. There are lots of tricks in here that I think are the best ones ever done. The switch flip [down the Santa Monica Triple set]. The white [éS] Accels for the switch tre down the double set is such an iconic fit and line. He’s got the classic skater hat: we used to call it “the cocker spaniel” with the long flowing hair out of it.
The two-song part for our internet-addled brain feels like we’ve moved very quickly into everyone having a two-song part. Which is how Endless Beauty is edited, but [in the 2000s] you knew you were in for something when the second song starts. Especially the second song that he skates to [“Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide” by David Bowie]. Very few people get to skate to a song like that without looking like an asshole. I’ve had songs like that in mind for projects and I felt like the footage just isn’t there.
This part is life or death. Opening with him on the stretcher you realize that Arto is giving his all for skateboarding. He had a pretty short-lived career. He didn’t last into his thirties like so many of his peers, but that’s because he gave so much for his early video parts. There’s a part of me that loves that. I know some people don’t want to see slams, but it gets me stoked to this day watching him eat shit.
I come from an era where the school of thought was that a video part is something you need to suffer through — thinking of people like Jerry [Hsu], Arto and [Andrew] Reynolds. We’ve moved into a “vibes-based” approach to skate videos, rightfully, and I like that too. People want to see camaraderie. But there’s a part of me that will always feel like: “A video part is something you should need therapy after.”
Kenny Reed — New Deal: 7 Year Glitch (2002)
I rode for iPath with Kenny and he was one of the first people I got to travel internationally with. He was someone I looked up to a lot. Kenny cracked the code on travelling as a pro skater. Not only was he doing that, but he was doing great skateboarding at the same time. It wasn’t phoned-in. He maintained a career [without being in the vicinity of the U.S. skate industry]. He did a really good job of the storytelling around it, which kind of convinced the people in charge of marketing budgets that it was a decent idea to send skaters all over the world. I don’t think we would have gotten that without Kenny.
There’s so much Barcelona footage. Now, it isn’t exciting to me because we’ve seen it so much, but at the time, it was extremely special. I don’t know what’s going on with the switch bigspin into the bank, he fully doesn’t land it, but I love it anyways. It’s almost like an offering of “Hey, appreciate the shape on this switch bigspin because you’re never going to see one like it.”
I like the early boyish eras where he wears a baseball cap and a t-shirt. I really like his 411 profile where he bombs a hill and eats shit at the end, but it’s not as complete as 7 Year Glitch. This came out at a formative time for me — when you don’t have a full frame of reference for what style is in skating, but you’re drawn to the way someone does, say, a frontside flip. You don’t know what that means or why you like it, but it feels more special than any you’ve seen before.
I’ve ripped off Kenny in all sorts of ways. A lot of this is subconscious. You don’t know you’re referencing it [in your own skating], but he does the ollie over to noseblunt, switch ollies, nollie backside 180s, lots of backside grinds. I’ve taken so much from his skating over the years. Kenny has this special way of doing a couple of tasteful flatground tricks before a single trick that most people would think to just film as a single. It sometimes can be a bit of a taboo because it feels like a “fake line,” but for anyone familiar with his skating, those are the bits you love the most.
Jordan Sanchez — Vic’s Market: “Some Things” (2014)
I was a fan of Jordan before we were ever teammates, and we were only teammates for a brief time — although we did turn pro together, which was cool. Jordan is a local scene renaissance man. I was a huge fan of the stuff he did with Vic’s Market. It seemed right at the tail-end of his career — before he checked out — that he had a ton of celebration, which was much deserved. I think Thrasher really got behind him, and he did that dumpster part. He filmed most of this within a five-mile radius of the town he lived in, Everett.
It’s challenging to film in your hometown over the years. It’s something I’ve struggled with a lot. Phoenix isn’t the most exciting place to skate in terms of architecture and the look of things, so it can be challenging to film video parts there year after year. Watching this part, it’s like the whole world is an endless possibility of street skating. I remember the first time being like: “How did he make that non-spot look good? What the hell happened there?” He was able to package it in such a way that makes you inspired to find even terrible stuff in your hometown to go skate.
He was such a visionary. I see lots of skaters today whose skating I like and I can’t help but think, “Jordan was doing this ten, eleven years ago.” It easily would have been a great part in the Sci-Fi video. He was ahead of his time and never seemed to be a cool guy about it. He did those Vic’s Market videos, got his homies in all of them, filmed them, edited them and did so much for his local scene.
The other important thing about Jordan is it doesn’t veer into the kitschy for me. He still has great form. There are a handful of moments, like he kickflips out of a bump to boardslide down a handrail, which is such a ridiculous trick to do. He has a serious level of wizardry and control while still keeping it tasteful.
Honorable Mention: San Francisco Montage in Closure by Dan Wolfe (2003)
Previously: Nikolai Piombo, Hayley Wilson, Frank Gerwer, Gus Gordon, Max Palmer, Etienne Gagne, Jacopo Carozzi, Nicole Hause, Matt Militano, Evan Wasser, Ryuhei Kitazumi, Sarah Meurle, Vitória Mendonça, Andrew Wilson, Ben Kadow, Chandler Burton, Pedro Delfino, Johnny Wilson, Nick Michel, Wes Kremer, Jordan Trahan, 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
Vics Market mentioned!!!