📝 Words by Ian Browning
📷 Headline Photo by Morgan Rindengan Courtesy of HUF
If you count everything in the Thrasher Junk Drawer, ten full-length videos, plus another handful of solo parts and edits came out in August 2023. We’ve come to expect that sort of programming when marketing teams try to get a thumb on the scale during the S.O.T.Y. race, but the end of summer has traditionally been a much less productive time of year for skateboarding.
At least until this year.
Lakai’s Bubble, Pass~Port’s “Trinket,” and Johnny’s Vid all came out in the same week. Palace’s Beta Blockers and WKND’s Rumble Pack came out on the same day, creating a nineties skater version of the meme about how eating a bag of Takis would overwhelm and kill a child from the 19th century.
What are the chances? How did it happen? And did anybody realize what was coming down the pipeline? I called a handful of skaters and filmers who worked on the projects that were released that month to find out why it was so stacked, and how it felt to navigate the spotlight.