We’re at that annoying part of the spring where everyone just complains about how the weather can go from February to July in the matter of hours. As we approach a 100% rainy weekend, some of us have sports (!) to look forward to (been around this franchise’s shit too long to confidently echo the “Knicks in 6” prediction being floated by internet pundits), but for the rest, how about a fun skate part?
Broth is a new video out of New Orleans, and it features an ender section from Jordan Trahan filmed over the past two-and-half years. A lot of Jordan’s video output since 2015’s 5BNY feels like it has come via NB# vids, most of which are filmed on skate trips abroad. There’s a special charm to established pros filming hometown parts — think Gilbert’s Bust Crew sections, or Jake’s bro cam outing in last year’s Zeta Cacti video. Watching Jordan skate Louisiana porches, do bayou-side wallies, and string together lines at whatever that rusty pier Philly and them always skate carries the same feeling. (Yes, Jordan is from Lafayette, not New Orleans, but you get the idea.)
We’ve found a particular secondhand joy in recent edits from seaside towns. Free‘s “Jacky Biarritz” still transports you to a place with friends you’ve never met before, in a way that seems especially important during these times of diminished travel.
While the “Whoa! New dude outta Jersey! …wait, different Jersey”-reaction remains the default string of thoughts to the roll-out of Luca Pinto’s Pandora’s Box video, it doesn’t mean we just X out of the window a few seconds in like some fucking psychopaths. Every single part in the Old Jersey-based Pandora’s Box has felt unlike anything else out there. And you have to give an extra kudos to rolling out a video by having each part appear on a different independent outlet’s website: Luca’s on Free, Eduardo’s on Live, and Dillon’s on Grey.
The more accurate translation of “there are no spots in New York anymore” is “we’re just sick of the spots we have.” I remember having a conversation with someone — I forget who — from a plaza-abundant city, and expressing jealousy over their ability to skate a Straight Fucking Ledge™ in an unconfined city space. The response? “Yeah, but at least there are slappy curbs everywhere you go…I wish we had that.” The grass is always greener on the other side, but one or two bust-free ledge spots for miles of metal curbs seems like a pretty no-brainer trade on our end.
For us, this devolution into “crust” happened in the early 2000s because all the “normal” spots became busts (part due to post-9/11 security, part due to more skaters skating them.) And now, with reinvigorated Midtown Manhattan coverage and footage of people charging in security’s faces, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way. Rather than navigating sixteen cracks and a seven-foot sandpaper roll-up, people are going back to the same front desk facing office building spots three times in one hour, just hoping to crack the code. And it’s understandable: most of us over trying to figure out how to skate Mambo Bar in its third generation of skatestopping attempts.
The greener grass convo came to mind watching Yardsale‘s new east coast tour video. Now, London is by all means a crusty skate city, but being based there, these guys are an hour or two-hour flight to any marble European plaza you can name. Instead, they’re electing to fly across an ocean to skate the stoops of abandoned rowhouses, and courtyards of Jersey City project buildings. Their video is the antithesis of a “six-state east coast trip” in that they could not be less interested in skating Muni, that spot in Princeton, or Pulaski. (I saw the shot of the Capitol Building and thought, here it comes. But nah.)
