When you look back at the skaters who feel like they clocked the most footage in the 2010s, the first wave candidates are obvious: Bobby, Ishod, Tiago.
Jake Johnson, on the other hand, has always felt like an elusive anomaly; the secretive lead-up to both his Static IV and Purple parts played into this mythological place Jake holds in the footage canon. Ben Chadourne once said, “If you get something out of Jake, it’s a piece of gold.”
But what if that wasn’t the case? What if we lived in a footage economy where Jake Johnson clips were every bit as accessible as the most visible skaters of the past decade?
…and, what if that actually is where we’ve been all along?
In an effort to prove a friend who said, “loved his Mind Field part but he hasn’t really done much since” wrong, Zach Moore — you might remember his Transplants video from 2015 — set out on a mission to compile the ultimate post-Mind Field Jake Johnson super mix. Assuming he’d land at ten or fifteen minutes of footage, Zach soon found himself with a feature-length Jake Johnson video sourced from Cons trip edits, GX clips, Bill’s edits, Instagram, etc. and edited it into something that feels dynamic and unlike the IG dump vibe we come to expect of remix videos in 2020.
Jake Johnson’s “first” part (which wasn’t even his first part…) looms large over the past eleven years of skateboarding. It is the most-mentioned section of the 2000s in our “Five Favorite Parts” series — yes, more than P.J’s WHL closer. Hearing skaters talk about its stature is like listening to old dudes talk about Nas; like, here’s someone’s first body of work, and it is so influential and perfect that it inadvertently skews your palette to everything they produce after. (Orson Welles faced a similar dilemma.)
But as you will see above, it’s our fault, not Jake’s. Thank you to Zach for helping re-route the narrative a bit with this edit — can’t imagine how tedious re-dubbing all those skate sounds was.
no one better
haha , as literally EVERY dude will tell you (even if no one had asked) Jake is clearly a ripper of the highest order. Even more entertaining than his footage tho, is his fanbase. I’ve never experienced a skater who’s so elusive yet has this rock solid fan base who will shrug off even a huge gap in footage or appearances in clips.
I also have to wonder, like, what exactly is Jake hiding from? Why doesn’t he put out more footage? Not that he needs to swing the entire other end of the spectrum, in terms of visibility. He’s one of the best skaters…but I can’t help but notice alot of the other best skaters do things like, yknow, film. and shoot photos.
solid. this is what I needed.
I think the devil himself went to Central PA around the year 00 and said “come to LA, I’ll give it all, fame, money, a 6’3 athletic frame, Monster sponsorship….” and Chris Cole took him up on it, re-branded as “Cobra” while Jake Johnson opted to stay on the East Coast, enjoying a humble country life of cheap PA rent and friends who work as carpenters
That editing was actually amazing- despite all the different video textures, filming styles, and locations that video flowed really well. Like, better than most videos where people have complete control over the whole thing (clapping emoji, clapping emoji, 100, 1st place emoji)