Friday, July 30, 2010

Best Video Parts by Shawn Kilmer

In the words of my friend Shawn Kilmer:

These are the top five skate parts that shaped my ideals of skateboarding. These are the parts that every time I was skating I was trying to live up to. Yes, this is one of those “back in my day” stories. Read on if that doesn’t bore you:

I stopped watching new videos, and I think its because a good deal of innovation is gone. Some no name kid who has been skating for 2 ½ years is kickflip backlipping handrails and shit. In every video. Its respectable, its hard, but it’s not new anymore. The video parts I grew up on in the nineties were literally a new experience for skateboarding with each video part. Almost every trick was a new innovation, a new contribution to the greater good of skateboarding as we all found out what was possible together.

The world wasn’t as connected before fast internet video, so everyone was so original in their different parts of the country and world. You rarely knew what exactly had been going down in the San Francisco scene or New York scene until the next video came out from the areas. You didn’t have as big of a problem of “fad tricks” as nowadays (though the one footed backside ollies and pressure flips were almost totally headed out when I started skating).

So kids are good, they are really good. And I cant wait to see what they are going to be innovating in their later 20s, but so much of it doesn’t hold my attention the way it did when it was all so creative.

These parts have all been written about for their historical value and nostalgia at length by many others, so I will keep my captions brief about what they mean to me.

#5 - Andrew Reynolds Union Wheels Video:


The Union Wheels video was the first skate video I ever bought, on VHS. I couldn’t really ever afford videos, so I watched this one a ridiculous amount. I'd say for a year I watched it 2-5 times a day. Lots of days the tape would just stay on Andrew Reynolds part as I would just rewind it and re-watch it over and over.

What stood out instantly was the cajj factor. This little buck in this clip is showing the future of what street skateboarding had in store… major shift of emphasis all to style. Its about looking casual when you push, looking casual when you attack things. What also stood out to me was these lines of endless at-will switch flip tricks. A switch anything was a novelty trick at the time, but here this kid was just lofting switch tricks over real things, like the little set of stairs he switch heels in his opener, that was new. Then of course the wall-dodge to self-props at 20 seconds into this video is so awesome. I get stoked on seeing dudes stoked, because that’s what skateboarding is, it is just playing. That’s what it should be.

#4 - Pat Duffy Questionable Video:


Now actually, I didn’t start watching this til 97, when I met someone old enough that skated that knew about the old Plan B stuff and had copies of it. I got like an 8th generation copy onto VHS, and like the last video I mentioned, I watched the whole video maybe 100 times, but I watched this Duffy part like 300.

This has been said elsewhere, but let me weigh in: NOBODY was skating handrails and proper ledges with these modern street tricks at that time. NOBODY. Nobody was grinding these types of huge handrails for years to come. I’m not aware of seeing another Backside Lipslide on a legitimate handrail any earlier in history than the one he does IN THE RAIN. But of course one of my favorite tricks of the whole part is the harsh kink Backsmith at 2:00 in. that would be a clip in any skate video to come out this day.

#3 - Pat Duffy Virtual Reality:


When I copied the Questionable video I also got Virtual Reality on the same tape. While the Questionable video had pat doing incredible mind-blowing stuff for the time, for me his part in Virtual Reality fully blew the doors down from the older type of skating we used to have to the “new school” that started then and is pretty much unchanged to this day, except with more corporate sponsorship.

I mean from the first time I saw this part, it was like I had seen a changing point in the history of the activity of skateboarding. I mean, you would never even see Kickflip Front Boardslides come into skating until like 98, 99, and on that little handrail he does Treflip Lipslide!! The style, the magnitude of the tricks! This part from 93 could come out today with updated boards and clothes, and it would still stand against modern stuff, it could be an ender part.

When some pros were just barely catching up to his earlier handrail work, he was already a huge step beyond, like on that back tail Shuvit on the chrome handrail or the pure balls Lipslide on the white high kinked rail into the street. Again, I can’t remember seeing any back tails take place on any handrails before that.
Then, the last thing I have to say about it is Kickflip noseslide hubba hideout. Take one clip of anyone skateboarding from my entire lifespan to symbolize what skateboarding is/was for me, and its that clip. In San Francisco, the dream of skateboarding, wearing baggy clothes and backwards hat because you don’t give a fuck, you just skate, skating the hottest spot where everyone knows the ABDs, and pulling out a fully modern first-time-of-its-kind kickflip noseslide. Sick. That’s the whole dream, right there. 5 bucks if anyone under 18 knows which ledge in this clip is called “the Duffy ledge”.

#2 - Cairo Foster The Reason


This part really sealed the idea for me when I was 17 or so that speed is awesome. If you go fast and do your shit, you are a badass and it looks awesome. Cairo goes pretty fucking fast. Look at that haul-ass confidence stair section at 2:00 to 2:15.
This part ushered in the whole era of new-school nollie skating. Sure you would see the occasional stairset nollie flip, or a big nollie into a grind or manual, But I just cannot remember seeing anyone do these kind of man-size nollie tricks as part of a regular trick bag. He is nollie heeling entire SF pier blocks and its not even in his main footage, its an artsy opener!

This video and part also set the tone for the insurgence of “indie-emo-art-clips” style of skate video editing, as you would notice if you could hear the beautiful built to spill soundtrack, over generous helping of 16mm art clips. I joke about it now because of how the style was cookie cutter cloned to this day, but that had a big influence on me for editing videos.

This part Cairo has is also partly responsible for me striving to learn switch Frontside Flips. His banger of a Switch F/S Flip at the end of this remains to this day one of my fav tricks I've seen on tape in history. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to SWITCH ollie up that pier block going like 40mph, then powering out that switch F/S Flip through speed wobbles while you bend down? That shits great.

#1 - Andrew Reynolds The End:


Pretty much the sole reason I was doing kickflip melons around the Visalia, California skatepark in the last two years of the 90s was from watching this part. I didn’t realize it at the time, but a huge reason I have a pretty strong frontside flip and fakie cab are from this video part alone. In 98 or so, this was only the third skate video I ever got after Welcome To Hell, so this one ended up seeing lots of plays as well. Again, I didn’t have time after school to watch the whole thing before skating every day, so the tape just stayed on Reynolds’ part. The opening cab… holy…. Fucking shit. This is 11 years later, and if someone did that same trick today it would still be holy fucking shit. And again, the casual element. He just lands that little piece of history and just rides out of there stoked and bouncy, doesn’t give a fuck. What a great trick. And with that slo-mo, you just feel what it must feel like.

The part is pretty cool, but to me the part would be just as strong if it consisted of only the opening cab and then cut out everything up until 2:30 at the front blunt kickflip. From there on out it is just utter mayhem. When I saw the 14 stair rail fs flip for the first time on a Transworld cover I thought it had to be unreal. Then I stared at the full-page photo sequence of it, razored it out, and I have it to this day in a plastic sheet inside of a binder. I’ve probably spent over an hour of my life looking at that photo sequence just in respectful awe. That Frontside Flip was it for me, anything was possible once that happened. Anything was possible. -Shawn Kilmer 2010

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