Skateboarding is in the golden age of fatherly re-appropriation. The uncool tricks that were left behind in our adolescent years have all been the focal point of some resurgence: plain old noseslides, noseslide shoves, varial flips, and even the Union Square raver favorite heelflip body varial made an appearance in L. Puig’s latest novel.
Little kid tricks are being refined and rebranded as “dad tricks” for use by those approaching responsible child-rearing age. We reached adulthood and saw it was scary — there’s too much stress tucked behind the curtain of constant progression, so we reverted to the carefree days of middle school tricks. The problem is that we’re is running out of ugly ducklings to turn into swans. The rack of revivable lowbrow tricks looks like a Goodwill after ten Tumblr girls have come through to thrift.
But what is so “ugly,” so “hideous,” so “wrong,” yet so *new* of a standard that we couldn’t bear to think of it becoming…cool again? The switch mongo push.
Peruse the YouTube comments of old video parts, and you’ll see undereducated skate etiquette nazis questioning switch mongo in even the classics. Not learning how to push switch is becoming more of a faux pas with each passing day. Twenty years later, Ricky won and switch mongo is becoming extinct. Even pressure flips don’t summon ire quite the same way in 2016.
