Transworld
Transworld Videos
Free Your Mind (2003)
Subtleties (2004)
Cinematographer Project (2012)
Free Your Mind
Not the first Transworld video I saw, but the first one I had heard of. There were commercials for skate companies in the bonus features of Tony Hawk’s Underground, one of them being specifically for this video. I would watch the commercials all the time, and I have no idea why, they weren’t even good. It wasn’t until like the summer of 2005, like a year and a half later, when I was at my friend Caleb’s house and I saw Free Your Mind on his DVD shelf. I asked if I could borrow it and he told me I could just have it. Most of my friends weren’t so precious about this stuff, but for most of my teenage years I treated this physical media like gold.
One way in which this video stands out from the rest of them is that there are only three actual parts. Most of the videos have at least five, and some of them, like Uno, have like, 15 or 20 parts. Here we have three parts from Dan Drehobl, Rob Welsh, and Darrell Stanton. All three parts are really good, and they are all so unlike one another; this is I feel like what Transworld videos should feel like. Sometimes you’ll have one that will have an Anthony Pappalardo part followed by a Diego Buchierri one, and you’re sitting there thinking, “But why?” I think one reason it works here is that a large chunk of the footage seems to be in SF, which doesn’t often seem like a place that I associate with Transworld, but Thrasher wasn’t exactly making waves video-wise in the Bay Area at the time (nothing wrong with Playing In Traffic, but it isn’t as good as probably any of the Transworld videos from 1999-2006). At this time, Transworld seemed like the much larger magazine, and I mean that literally, too. Go through a copy of a TWS from the first Bush run, they’re easily twice as thick as a Thrasher from that time, and you’ll see ads from some bubblegum company to some thing telling you to join the Air Force. It isn’t a compliment, but it is a bit of an indicator that there was a lot more money circulating within the skateboard industry. Or maybe it was just more money within print media/ad world.
It opens with a montage, which I think is a really cool way to open a video, generally, kind of like how Ty did with Modus a few years earlier (and besides for nostalgia, really, I’m not a fan of the raver Muskabeats ass instrumentals that he would use, so it’s nice to see it getting phased out). The Holland/Bowman/Hernandez crew decides go open it with one of their 16MM montages, though; normally I detest these, but it’s kind of cool here. We get mostly bowl/pool footage to a very intro-to-the-video kind of rock song. Sprinkled in is TWS video alum John Cardiel, some Al Partanen-like guys (maybe it’s just Al Partanen) and then like a minute of Alex Chalmers, almost kind of a mini-part. I have no idea why but I was a huge fan of Alex Chalmers as a kid. He skated like the best skater in your crew when you first start skating at any skatepark in the midwest in 2001.
Dan Drehobl opens the video—another thing to mention are these taxi cab skits that introduce all the parts, they’re kind of like the cassette tapes in Cash Money Vagrant, but maybe a little more scripted, a little more Transworld-y than Thrasher-y (not to say Thrasher didn’t do horrible skits before… Look up Donut Duty for proof). They aren’t bad IMO, I think it helps give the video a little extra personality, especially with it all taking place in SF, I find it kind pretty cool. Tony Trujillo drives Cancer Dan to a miniramp and they sesh it together for a little mini-section before going into the Dan Drehobl part. Man, this part kicks ass. Transworld liked to start off videos with a bit of a “comeback” or “older” guy part, like Cardiel, Shiloh, Duffy, but I feel like starting off around this period when Krooked started was really when the Drehobl effect took off. There is footage of the guy in some of the first Thrasher videos in like 1993, he’s been around for a long ass time, but I think most people think of him from this time period; pivot fakies, some vans, flannels, and I’m gonna go ahead and make the claim that Drehobl was the first guy, or at least the first guy I saw, to do the orange beanie. During the Obama admin, you couldn’t watch a video without one, be it a Bones Wheels video or a Quartersnacks montage. I haven’t even gotten started on the actual skating, which is a lean mix of 60/40 skating (60 skateparks 40 street), something that seemed legal for only an old guy at the time to do in like, an ATM or 1984 video (Drehobl was probably 29 at this time? Old guy for 2003, though, easily). The lip trick stuff was so influential to me, and I think it got even better showcased in his first Krooked part; here he is still going in on the streets some, and at the time it looked so cool to see some old looking dude with a cigarette. I like his Kronicles part more, but I think Transworld made him look really good here, especially considering he was so heavily featured in Thrasher media (pretty much mascot for every P-Stone DVD release). The Zombies song works so well, and the 360 stale fish on the hip, specifically the second angle, is beautiful. Such a sick ass skater.
Before getting to Rob Welsh, we get our second 16MM montage, this one is much worse. Why was Transworld so insistent on making us watch any of the Lamberts? Are they related? None of them look like the kind of skater you want to see in some 16 millimeter footage. But then fortunately we get to watch Rob Welsh skate for several minutes, in what is his best part of all time, set to Cellski, another great song/skater pairing. FUCK I love Rob Welsh. What I always think of with him, and I know people love to bring up the photo of him at Tampa with the sweatpants, but I love how big his shoes look with his little ass board. It’s most noticeable when he’s doing manual tricks at Pier 7. Most of his part takes place here and amongst other famous spots as seen in the San Francisco level of THPS4. He does an awesome G Pivot on a Sacramento barrier spot (any fresh skater who does this trick is automatically the shit) and wears gloves with a t-shirt, which puts him in the list of legends who have done this in the Bay Area along with Dennis Busenitz. His best friend, or at least that’s how I’ve always seen him, Joey Pepper, gets some runtime in here; I love when they have clips together, their styles are not alike at all but it yin-yangs in a certain way, I mean they both look so steezy and do good ass tricks on the LA High lil rail. One of the notable tricks is the bigspin backside tail slide, which is one of the first ones I recall—Kalis had one in the DC video extras from the same year—but what I find really underrated about it is doing it in a line with a regular-assed nollie noseslide. Of course every regular Welsh noseslide pop-out has been instagrammed to the point of it losing a bit of it’s iconography, but something about a nollie noseslide on a regular ledge in a line is so of this time… I feel like it’s just some shit you’d see Marcus McBride do at the beginning of a line. I would say that I’d like to see a return, but I also said that about Noseslide-To-Crooks combinations, and I wished that I had never felt that way now. Anyways, this is a perfect section. There are so many Pier 7-centric parts from this era, and I feel like that era ended around when this part dropped. I guess it got skate stopped afterwards (as discussed in the taxi skit intro with Henry Sanchez) and then all the local guys just ended up filming all of their stuff at MACBA or the Sants benches or some shit. It’d be a decade later that you’d see Wu Welsh doing pivot fakies in a flannel, more like a Drehobl type. Kind of funny.
We get a pretty standard Transworld montage after, although at least this one is a regular, non-16MM montage. Opens with the second stupidest thing Ragdoll ever did (the first was trying to monetize his Youtube-ass part a few years ago). There are some incredible tricks on Clipper in here: Van Wastell, Frontside Tailslide Shuv, Jack Curtain, Nollie Frontside Noseblunt, and Cale Nuske, Kickflip Crooked. Darrell wasn’t the first to do a good trick, but he really set it off as a mile marker with his Thrasher cover Backside Noseblunt a year before. Speaking of Cale Nuske, though…He had so much juice at this time. Appleyard-like tech-gnar skills with a bit of a stronger build. I feel like he got hurt around his first trip to America or something and never recovered. And speaking of Appleyard…! This was right around his SOTY nomination, he just had insane skills at this time. It’d be a few years before every single one of his tricks was a nollie backside bigspin variation. He really seemed like the best skater during this era. He closes the section with a couple good ass nollie flip noseslides and kickflip crooked grinds, all while wearing the most Appleyard clothes ever. That C1 denim looks so clean.
Darrell Stanton closes the video with a feel-good part set to Cymande—again, every music choice is great here. I definitely downloaded the entire soundtrack onto my iPod after seeing this. I still don’t understand Stanton’s falloff, but it makes me sad. A lot of the personality seemed to have gotten lost once he made the jump to Element (with a random Plan B thing for maybe like five months). I don’t often think of Real as a place for skaters with personality in their skating—but Darrell made it a company worth keeping track of. As a kid flipping through the magazines during the handrail tech-gnar boom, it was pretty obvious to me that he was one of the best at that style, along with Scott Kane (they were both on a really stacked Vans team at that time, I mean god, how could you not want to skate some XLT’s after seeing one of these guys Nollie into a blue handrail). This is his first full video part and it still remains his best. He stepped up his shit a couple years later in Chicagof and Roll Forever but this one captures him so well, especially his Gumby-like style. Damn, his arms just look so long. Sometimes this can work against you (nothing against Roger Mancha but I used to laugh out loud at his Street Cinema part) but Stanton looks so proper. His trick selection is so clean too, amazing brand-new stuff for the time (Nollie heel flip back lips, Nollie front blunts, the handrail route), but he doesn’t hesitate to do dorky stuff from time to time, like all the cannonballs, and the forward flips—a 90’s skater will relate this trick with Ronnie Creager but if you’re a millennial like me you will attribute this trick entirely to Darrell. One prevalent trend at this time was the “Zero lines,” defined as any two-trick line that starts with a flat ground trick, and generally ends with a handrail or stair set, often done by a guy in a Zero video to fill in some hammer skating. Stanton does it here but it always looks natural. This trend is still something that exists now, but it’s more in the long-lens perspective, face-to-shoe-to-face filming, you know what I’m talking about. Anyways, he closes the part with a very random trick down Clipper, at least for the time, an Ollie over to front blunt (wrong side), somewhat of a tribute to his Real teammate JT Aultz. At the time, it seemed unfathomable to me. In retrospect I still prefer the backside noseblunt (and I LOVE the Nollie backside noseblunt—this would still be a completely fucked up trick twenty+ years later), but it was cool to see what kind of stuff he would come up on it. He also does a Nollie frontside 180 to switch 5-0 down it in the middle of his part. Wild shit. Awesome closing part. Like I said, every video is un-rankable for me, but there was no way he couldn’t have last part.
Near perfect Transworld video. Even with the best ones, there’s stuff in there you wish they cut, of course; when a video is presented in such a variety-pack manner, it’s hard to keep it consistent. Like in what other video would a montage need to have both Shiloh Greathouse and Gareth Stehr (since there was never a Dekline video from this time)? Here the video has a pretty consistent tone throughout. I’d cut the useless 16MM montage in the middle and most of if not all of the “homeless/crazy” people hijinx thrown throughout, a random thing for the Transworld crew to do, IMO. It wasn’t even that common of a thing to exist in videos at this time, and it’d be over a decade before every Trip To New York video on Youtube would have this kind of stuff. I feel like TWS was just trying to steal more of The Bible’s juice, using more notes from the 18 book, making it SF centric, the Drehobl addition, and for the most part they did a pretty good job. Their run of videos at this time was unreal, I mean, undoubtedly better than pretty much every Thrasher video of this time. Could never have predicted that twelveish years later Transworld would essentially not exist and Thrasher would be on the body of every youth.
Subtleties
Having Subtleties as your first Transworld video is a pretty high bar to set. An obvious Holland/Hernandez video, not the first one to feature the staple voiceover intro’s (something that I know a lot of people soured on by the end of the 00’s, maybe me included, but I look back on them with fondness, the way things go) but it feels like the first one to have a certain style that would be replicated for at least a few years. This was well past the Ty phase of TWS videos, and this one just feels very indie, not just in music, but also in editing, like yes of course Stefan Janoski skates to Modest Mouse, but the whole thing just has a mellow feel to it. Even Pat Duffy opening the video with this comeback-ish part (this was during his Think era, which, I guess he probably had some footage somewhere, but I can’t think of a part between this and his Revolution part, which was at least five, six years prior) skating to a crappy Duane Peters song fits the vibe. He does 360 flip noseslides, a trick we saw him doing a decade earlier in Virtual Reality, in a similar backwards hat. Duffy may be the king of wearing a backwards hat right at eyebrow level. The Think era of Pat Duffy feels incredibly random between both of his stints on Plan B, but he also isn’t the only person to do this (Jesse Paez also rode for Think between Consolidated sponsorship). His part is good. There are a few guest clips from Hewitt and Gonz, yet none from any of his Think teammates. Perhaps Jason Masse didn’t have any footage to contribute at this time. A quick part, but along with Sight Unseen and First Love, I feel like TWS was trying to open their video with a comeback part of sorts. Following this is a really good traditional Transworld montage following set to Trans Am, a band (or musician?) I only know from other Transworld videos. A pattern I’ve always noticed in these videos; whoever seems to have a largess of footage in these montages have a good chance of having a part in the next video. Here we have lots of Omar Salazar, around his transition from Foundation rail kid to full-on Omar Salazar, some Ryan Gallant, Shiloh, Leo, I mean, yes, Transworld montages normally have a stacked roster anyways. Lots of Long Beach/Popwar adjacent guys from the time like TimTim, Molinar, and then the little Expedition section with Angelides (who would also be in the next video). The montages are often as exciting as the actual parts, and once I was able to recognize most of the skaters, it became more rewarding. Like being able to recognize Bryan Herman and Leo Romero felt good for some reason. Brian Wenning and Brandon Biebel share a part next, and it tries to portray this friendliness between them, which is still weird to me. Was there ever a timeframe where they hung out or were they just lumped in as ledge skaters in the video? There is no camaraderie evident, but their skating does pair together. Let’s Go Brandon goes the hell in at Pier 7, and wears as many sports jerseys as humanly possible. I recall Transworld having a sweepstakes regarding this; if you could correctly name the team and athlete for every jersey he wore in the part, you’d win a free hoodie or something. Brian Wenning probably fills a quarter of the part, but has some really strong stuff. His last line with the switch back tail 270 shove it is all time (and the first time that trick has been done, I THINK). Biebel’s last trick at the pier is also unbelievably all time, and although he had already done this trick in Yeah Right!, it is much nicer to see at an actual street manual pad, scratch that, THE street manual pad. The song is horrible though, only in that it has a woman moaning throughout, which I recall having to turn down out of embarrassment. There is another goddamn montage, this one is one of those 16MM ones that were in a few of the TWS videos from this time, I feel no way about it. I think the montages give these videos a fullness to them, generally, but the artsy shit fits perfectly in the intros to the parts and in the credits. I don’t need to see Chris Lambert doing a kick flip with an old ass camera. Kyle Leeper is second-to-last, and we get a voiceover from Let’s Go Brandon about how he don’t skate like no one else, and looking back a couple decades later, I’d agree. I don’t think he set off the trend of skating the insides of ledges, but I do think he was ahead of the curve (lol) in doing so. I wasn’t a huge fan of his surfer vibe at this time, but again it did seem ahead of the curve somewhat, and his flow-y-ness doesn’t feel forced. Besides the obvious inside ledge stuff and the obvious cab flip backside nose blunt that couldn’t NOT be mentioned, he has some memorable stuff; I love the nollie 360 over the barrier, and I think the pointless Ollie-over-trashcan-to-BS-nose blunt a ledge is so sick. Song is pretty bad—(“good” or “bad” at this timeframe meant; did I download the mp3 on Limewire and put it on my iPod? In this case, no) but within the part I find that it works. Stefan “The Man” Janoski closes out the video; much of the time I think Transworld videos close out with a hammer-style skater, and, not that he doesn’t lay down some shit, but I hesitate to classify Janoski as a hammer guy. Ending the vid with a total style legend is a clean move, though. It’s crazy that he came out with both this and his Mosiac part in roughly the same year. I wouldn’t compare it to the Mike Carroll 1992-1993 era of video parts, but I have a similar feeling in that I can’t really say which part I like more. His Mosiac is a very Habitat-y part, but he also fits great in the Holland/Hernandez style of editing. The Modest Mouse song is iconic at this point in terms of skate video music supervision, definitely “good” based on my prior rules for that kind of thing. Easily best part of the video. One thing I have always loved about Stefan Janoski is how he would wear the sleeves of his sweaters past his hands, so you could only see the ends of his fingertips poking out of the ends. Any time I’m wearing a sweater, even 20 years later, I find I both subconsciously and intentionally do this now. His tech/switch stuff was always ahead, but never so far that it was too hard to differentiate. Some things that have always stuck in my head are the flushing line (SWEATER), and the switch nosegrind to forward at the blue hubba in Florida, both blue spots, and mixed with his frequent earth tones, just look so damn good together. Of course his style is good to look at, but it’s also the choices of spots that are wonderful on the eyes. I’m no mini DV purist, but I find here, and throughout much of the video, it’s a perfect showcase on how good it can look. Great video. My parents bought this for me immediately after I got a tonsillectomy; I had a short period of home recovery, and watched this every day for that week. It isn’t as heavy as a showcase as In Bloom or Sight Unseen, but it’s still a super clean encapsulation of the little time frame before MySpace and Youtube.
Cinematographer Project
Everyone remembers where they were during JFK… 9-11… the moment they first saw that Casey Frey videos where he’s like “What’s popping… UGH!” I have a specific moment like this the first time I ever saw the Benny/Alien Workshop section for the Cinematographer Project. It was on the last day of my first ever trip to New York City. My friend Isaac and I were staying in this hostel-like thing called Pod in midtown for $100 a night. A friend’s couch wasn’t an option at the time, as I knew virtually zero people that lived in New York, or really the east coast at that time. We were chilling one night in the Pod (me on the top bunk) and I was on the Slap forums, and somebody had posted the AWS section from this video, somehow before the thing was even released on DVD. We both watched it on my iPhone 4 in the little ass room. I was wearing woodland-camo pants with Half Cabs and a Palace t-shirt and probably a Supreme hat, and he was wearing some random Vans with Altamont jeans and an OMIT hoodie. There isn’t much else to expand on here… But it was a pretty eye-opening trip for me. Also I downloaded Instagram for the first time on this trip, which is amazing too.
I got home and downloaded the entire Cinematographer Project video off of iTunes, straight onto my iPhone, and watched it mostly dissapointed-ly. It’s more or less a 15-years-later sequel to the fifth Transworld video, simply titled “Cinematographer,” which was separated by the filmer rather than the skater; a novel-ass idea, and it works in both videos, but again the AWS section is by far the best in the video, a showcase of Benny’s skills as a video guy, the kind of skills that would shoot him to fame in the following decade plus.
Oh! And Bill Strobeck too. But let’s be real that AWS section is the greatest.
On with the shit. Welcome to 2012 bitches…
Torsten Frank
Pretty much a micro-sequel to the 2009 Adidas video Diagonal minus the Busenitz stuff (which will come later in a big ass way), we have to sit through some Gonz ramblings… look, I’m about as big of a fucking fan of the guy as they come, it’s more the people that seem to think we want to hear him talking about having fun as an important thing… He was already cemented as a legendary figure by the time I was even aware of who he was, but during this period of time I feel like the media always wanted to get him talking about some shit that nobody cared about. And AGAIN, I really just like the fucking guy. It’s all good though. We get some cool clips of him, some HEATED ass lines from Chewy Cannon who has always been authentic as can be—I sometimes wonder just how many Nollie 360’s on flat he’s filmed in his lifetime. The stuff he chooses to do feels limited sometimes, but he always does crap in a Chewy-like fashion. I'm always bringing up Satva Leung when I don't need to, but it reminds me of him...Work within the stuff you think's cool and it'll probably turn out cool. We get some Lem Villemin, somebody I really didn’t appreciate during the time, and lumped him with Daniel Espinoza, but Lem was so damn good, and looked cool as hell in Adidas. The three stripes had been in the game for pretty long at this point (Gonz has been riding for them since like 2000? Maybe earlier?) but they really stacked the team up around the time of Fully Flared. We also get some Fairfax, another Palace connect along with Chewy. I don’t have much to say about him, his skating never hit for me that much. Good section, but the tone and 2012 ass slow-motion kind of stuff makes it feel dated. Plus there’s some Willow clips which makes it feel even more dated.
Bill Strobeck
Immediately after the release of Fully Flared, Strobeck released some black-and-white edits on his Youtube with footage of Alex Parker-Olson, Anthony Pappalardo, and some others set to Charles Mansion and shit like that. This kind of stuff was my entire world at 16 years of age; I had never visited New York, but seeing footage of these younger guys skating in Chinatown was so aspirational to me at that time. This section feels like a bit of a sequel to that, a couple years later, a couple extra skaters, and a few Quiksilver online edits under his belt; along with Alex, we get prime cut Dylan Rieder, some Austin G, David Clark and Jake Johnson (Quiksilver alum; Dylan is too but idk if we was still skating for them at this time) and a Jason Dill Nollie 360 over a picnic table, which I could pick apart for at least five minutes. Ok, I’ll do it. He does a Nollie 360 over a table (assisted by bump) in Trilogy. Here, it’s on flat, and he’s in the 2011-ass Dill outfit (I approve of this outfit only for Jason Dill in this time frame). We get a lot of Tincan Folklore-esque lines from AO, probably in his prime, I mean he did seem to get better on a technical level, but he seems like he’s having at least some kind of fun here, for once. We also get, already our second section in, Gonz being crazy!!! This time he’s rollerskating around lower Manhattan. Yawn mode. Besides that, though, it’s one of the best sections in the video. This section was a bit of a precursor to Cherry in tone and style, and after that I feel like Bill Strobeck became Bill Strobeck. Great standalone section.
Mike Manzoori
Mundane edit with time lapses of skylines and traffic. Fucking 2012 bullshit! It’s funny now but I definitely was watching this on my phone and yelling “HURRY UP” when I first saw this. What does it do for anybody, the footage of cars and shit? I’m not one for homeless/crazy people footage within edits, but at the very least it makes some kind of sense within the footage. Why do I need to see a drone shot from above an interstate? The gimmick here is that it’s filmed entirely at NIGHT… The problem with that is that it’s a MIKE MANZOORI edit. It’s mostly Sole Tech skaters from that time. We get Kyle Leeper in some crappy ass khaki cutoffs, some lines from Josh Matthews and Jose Rojo—two skaters who I find wildly underrated, who never got quite where they should have, some Kellen James and Jimmy Carlin, some Mike Anderson and Willy Akers—it’s all over the fucking place, and it’s just some straight-up 2012 shit. The all-night thing would have been cute in 2008, and I think there’s a version of this that can exist and be cool, but nothing feels cool about lighting up a Philly step in San Diego for Kellen James to do a fakie trick on. Kelly Hart has a couple of bad ass tricks in here though, talk about underrated… His sparse output was pretty smart in retrospect, cause maybe if he had a largess of footage it wouldn’t be as special, but when he’d have one thing in a montage, it’d make you go, damn he is pretty good. Otherwise a forgettable section. One thing to note in this time period; there were not very many pairs of jeans circulating in the skate industry, and if they were, they were probably narrow and gray. We were mostly rocking with chinos.
Chris Ray (Evan Smith)
An Evan Smith part, filmed and directed by Chris Ray. The only solo-skater part in the video, and one of the most skip-able for me. I can’t find it in me to be a fan of Evan Smith and have always found it to be difficult. The Pittsburg upbringing, the lanky style, and the sweater sleeves beyond the fingertips should be right up my alley, but it doesn’t align for me. It’s the shots of him playing guitar, and him skating to his own music and the fake “creative eye” stuff… It’s more of a “vibe” problem for me. His stuff is all over the place, and I think the idea, or how I read it, is that he wants to be all over the place; he wants to be a cutty-spot skater, he wants to do tech ledge tricks, he wants to Nollie heel flip 10-stairs and do kick flip backside smith grinds down handrails… you can't have it all man... OK, let’s go back to Chewy Cannon in section 1, and study just what makes him so special for a second. Chewy Cannon doesn’t come off as somebody who has a note on his phone for tricks he wants to do in Barcelona. He probably goes skating and does a frontside noseslide, and that’s about it, and then it makes me want to go buy a Palace t-shirt in 2012. Evan Smith is a special and talented skater, but it always seemed to be thought out way too much. Kind of a Suicu/Knox type, also skaters I don’t really like. I’d probably watch Evan Smith over them. But I’d watch Chewy Cannon do a front board on a ledge over all of them. Mike Manzoori should have just filmed a clip of Smith in San Diego and given Chris Ray the day off from editing this part, but I know there are people that like this, so, OK.
Brennan Conroy
Video edit of essentially Habitat Skateboards post-gentrification era. Inhabitants is on the cusp of the gentrification era, and Origin is after, FYI. We get a few clips each from all the riders, it’s pretty evenly spaced out; some Delatorre fire, Stevie Janowski with a god damn Nollie Backside 180 to Switch Nosegrind down a hubba, AKA the most awesome ledge trick one can do, Fred Gall, cancelled Daryl Angel, some clips from Silas Baxter-Neal, the world’s most random SOTY choice; it’s a middle-of-the-road post-gentrification Habitat edit. But let’s be real, have you ever heard anyone be like, “Dude remember that clip in the Brennan Conroy section in Cinematographer Project?” It does have a unique enough color palette that it looks very identifiably Habitat, so I’ll give it that… I just have not cared much about a Habitat without a Kerry Getz, for some reason. But the skating is quite good, actually.
Dan Wolfe
Been a big fat fuckin fan of Dan Wolfe since I can remember. It’s crazy that the same guy who did Eastern Exposure 0 is the guy who made Real’s Since Day One (a video that I’ve heard a lot of people complain about but in terms of how much hype it received before it’s release, I think it was a really strong effort. And I like the soundtrack, so sue me). This section is kind of like a sequel to that Real video, which came out a year before. It’s also kind of like a full Dennis Busenitz part with the rest of the team sprinkled in there. We get some skating from Ramondetta, one of the most underrated dudes from Oklahoma of all time, and Kyle Walker, one of the most overrated dudes from Oklahoma of all time (mostly kidding; I used to not like his stuff but looking back it’s pretty good). There’s Justin Brock and Slap Magazine One In A Million Winner Jake Donelly who absolutely had the best part in Since Day One; we also get some young five-panel Ishod, who would be SOTY in a couple years, but for now was THE hot am at the time; but the real meat here is Busenitz, at the peak of his popularity, which it feels weird to call him “popular” as it implies it was some kind of trend… He really just went in for a few years and organically became one of the most important skaters of the era. Dan Wolfe’s post-Closure video style is objectively kind of boring looking, but he is fortunate enough to film exciting skaters like Dennis Busenitz, who carry both of them. He 360 flips over a motherfucking dumpster. Second Wu-Tang adjacent song in the video, though, and I don’t think that’s the end of that… 2012 was a big time for early 90’s hip hop-ish stuff. Makes me think soon we will see Odd Future and A$AP Rocky songs come back into fashion in skate videos.
RB Umali
Well past Zoo’s coolness, and the Action Bronson song just does not work at all. Zered Bassett skating with Bronson in the background talking about getting his ass licked is just disgusting. But I guess it’s also kind of reminiscent of the original Mixtape video with that dude rapping about fucking his sister or whatever, so I suppose Zoo in a way is staying true to their roots here. Most of the footage just looks bad to me, it has that DSLR style that is so 2012. I mean, in a way it looks so bad that I like it all these years later, but it certainly dates it, not to mention all of the five panel hats that Black Dave and Kevin Tierney wear (love Kevin Tierney’s lip slide to fakie on the top step at Monument). Standouts are Eli Reed pre-Becky Factory (which I saw somebody call the TEMU Bianco Chandon recently which completely murdered me into a million pieces) and Ron Deily, who is so fucking underrated that it’s bullshit. I first heard of him through this Red Bull skate contest thing that sucked ass, but he was in it. I thought he was a dickhead for being in it, but then it turns out he was just a pretty cool guy from NJ who had a really tasteful eye. Eli too, I’m a fan for life. I am not a fan of Travis Glover or Chaz Ortiz, though. Even Westgate, at least within the context of a Zoo York video, I never thought worked that well, even being from Cape Cod. Always seemed like he was portrayed better in any Emerica thing he was featured in. During that Emerica Stay Gold period of hesh colored sock guys, he was the one guy making Emerica feel like it probably did during the Yellow video. Either way, this section kind of sucks in terms of a Zoo York thing, but in 2012 nothing else was expected. 5Boro at this time was way better.
Beagle
Probably the worst era of Baker was this Bake & Destroy time period. Well to be real, the Supremification of the Baker 4 video to now is pretty bad, too. The Bake & Destroy period is objectively shitty, but it was very much a Baker-branded shitty-ness, so I will give it it’s flowers in terms of authenticity. And I was actually a huge fan of Dee Ostrander from when he skated for Tim Upson’s good ass company Hard Times, which was like an east coast AH from a guy who was previously on AH. But Dee was also like the most wild offender, along with Cyril too, of doing that thing where you land a trick, and then for no reason jump into the middle of the board. It’s called Dee Ostrander’ing, and it was a way to look nonchalant after a large trick, and then I think for a lot of skaters it became accidental muscle memory. And you know what, then I had to always notice it and get pissed off about it! This edit is a majorly ugly one from Beagle, who I also am actually a fan of, but it seemed like he not only used b-roll skating from Bake and Destroy, but also b-roll hijinks—sorry, hijinx. It’s footage from most of the Baker-adjacent guys who you don’t even want to see footage of in the first place, set to Shane Heyl’s band, the name of which I forget, and I honestly wish to forget, forever. This song sucks so bad. I’m not often the complainer about a bad song in a part—I legit thought Eli Reed skating to “Takin’ Care Of Business” was cool—but this song pisses me off. Lowest of the low Baker edit here. They’d save it in a few years with the addition of Rowan and Funkhouser, using a Baker-3-like rebrand, but then would go back to copying somebody else’s style entirely. Yeah, I’m a J Strickland truther! Speaking of, future L.E. rider Tony Tave has a great switch flip into an embanked pool, and that’s one of the only good things I have to say. Theotis Beasley doing a Backside 5-0 with green wheels off of the edge of a rubber picnic table seat is just fucking horrible to look at.
Lee DuPont
Fucking terrible montage set to shitty stoner rock music with Chris Gregson/Cody Lockwood types doing lip tricks at Washington Street. Some useful names to help carry the section like Peter Hewitt and I notice now Chris Cope’s presence, someone I was not familiar with yet; such a cheese ball section. Ugly sepia tones with a weird burn-y filter throughout. Ramped slow-mo should never be used in a skatepark, unless it’s just some kid’s parktage on Youtube. Again, fucking horrible. Worse than even the Beagle section, although I’d probably listen to this dickhead stoner track over the Goatmouf song. Not sure if Lee ever made videos after this, if so I didn't notice, and at worst I completely forgot. Hopefully he was able to add this to his portfolio and got a job at a production agency doing drone shots or something. UPDATE: It turns out he made the second Bones Wheels video, "New Ground," so yay, that's something.
Christopher MiddleBrook
Australian-assed montage set to a Total Control song; a band I told myself I liked based on this section for like a year until I came to my senses and realized it was a pain in my ass. The skating is good as hell, though. We get a Lewis Marvell switch 360 flip to open the shit; some heat from Nugget, who would go on to become Shane O’Neil, one of the greatest skaters on the planet, I swear he was just pretty damn good at this time and then he bossed the hell up minutes later. Same with Tommy Fynn, who is present; he was kindof a random Santa Cruz am and then decided to get really fucking good? Not that I recall anything happening too much with his career, but he was sick as a bitch. Same with Jake Duncombe, who has a pretty good chunk of footage here. He looks so much like Jake Duncombe that it’s crazy. Same with Nick Boserio, who never at any time stopped being Nick Boserio. He’s amassed a fuckton of parts since this, of course, but at this time he was in the spotlight, especially coming off of his AWS Youtube part, the best part of 2011, arguably. Another guy in this section who I really liked is Alex Campbell, who I don’t know if he ever did much after this period but I definitely was looking for his footage at this time. He has a certain swag with his knee style that I like, kind of feels like a proto-Cyrus at times, especially with the 360 flip he does. Good section, didn’t need the Dane Burman but he’s a necessary evil, I guess. Don’t mind him, could care less.
Jon Holland
Mundane Skate Mafia/SD section with a song that should be in a Happy Medium video. Can’t lie Skate Mafia videos never really did anything for me, although Jimmy CAO can get it. Surrey’s tall guy style I always liked, and Brandon Westgate in this time period seems like the guy who’s going buck at the skatepark but you’d never hang out with outside of that—this is entirely complimentary btw. Most of the night footage at ditch spots is an easy skip for me, but once in awhile Jamie Palmore will do something of note. Besides that, it’s not far off from the Manzoori section for me, fortunately no bullshit timelapse. Nothing really to say, I think I’ve now watched this part twice in my entire life.
Russe Houghton
Cornball behavior kind of editing that’s a little more pretentious feeling than Manzoori but not as straight cringe as DuPont maybe. But DuPont wasn’t necessarily trying to be artsy. I think this section would be what DuPont actually thinks of as artsy. There’s good skating in here, some really nice clips of Dylan, Arto, Goemann, but there’s so much cactus-in-front-of-stars bullshit and even a clip of a guy skating a skatepark quarterpipe at night… just WHY… I think that non-skating stuff can exist in some version of this, but you have to consider that there’s a good chance that I’ll be watching this with several friends on the couch. What the fuck do you think the banter’s going to be when there’s a shot of cars driving super fast via Timelapse? “Wow, those cars are going so fast…?” There’s a Jordan Taylor 50-50 frontside bigspin down a hub a which shouldn’t be cool, but in the context of Jordan Taylor, it’s cool.. It feels like another Ed Templeton tribute, his former boss, who does one in Welcome To Hell. There are some last minute Jake Johnson BANGERS in this bitch… It’s cool that both him and Dylan are in three of the parts in the video. I wasn’t necessarily a huge Dylan fan at this time—I loved his Rasa/Nike era, didn’t love the rolled up pants and no-collar t-shirt from this time, but his skating was just great. Jake Johnson, though, I was a big fat ass fucking fan of. Which brings us to
Alien Workshop
Some crazy Bernstein/Berenstain stuff here, but I was certain that this was credited more to Benny Magliano—kind of says a lot about the strong thing that AWS had going at this time. And this shit is hard as a BITCH. The company’s branding had gone through some shit throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s, but the actual team stayed pretty consistent in it’s last few years… Like even during the Burton era it was heavy as shit. This video came out around three years after Mindfield, and the Workshop was pretty quiet within those 3 years. But it gave a lot of the riders time to grow into full adult bodies (GT, Bledsoe), gave some other riders some time to think about shit (Rieder, Dill), and then some of the other guys were beasting the entire time, so this was just a victory lap for them (AVE, JJ, and not gonna lie, Salazar). Lifelong rider Dyrdek is now out, as is Berra; in their place, we have Gilbert Crocket, fresh off of the random Mystery/Fallen camp, and Kevin Terpening, who possibly was a flow guy via the Ohio connection before this? But they were both building quite a bit of hype at this time as well. The one glaring issue here is the missing Nick Boserio, who had what seemed to be a near perfect connection with Alien a year before. I still don’t get that shit at all, so he went to Zero and then in exchange Alien gets… A child-sized Donovan Piscopo? I guess maybe they got Gilbert as well, but still… Boserio getting added to the Polar roster a few years later was near ideal for the timeframe, but there is an alternate version of all of this where Boserio is in this piece instead of Piscopo. Besides that, however, this thing AWESOME, front to back. You can feel some real synthesis between all these guys here. You’ll see a schoolyard line from Terp—a bean plant nosemanual in 2012 was a nonexistent concept at this time, mind you—and then it it will cut to Dill with a switch nose grind to forward on the same table (more Trilogy-escapades). Omar will do some wacky grind-to-grind on some Daewon setups, and then Van Engelen will match it with a regular smith, and a Nollie flip on flat. There’s a section where they’re all skating this abandoned pool in Ohio that’s just so fucking sick—and a lot of the footage here is from that tour, as covered in an issue of Thrasher the previous year, the one with Dill’s nose grind tailgrab on the cover, some shit very reminiscent of his Blockhead days, or at least that’s how I felt about it. Oh my god, Dill’s stuff in this is so awesome. His Mindfield part is OK, it isn’t his worst part ever, it’s at least better than his Blockhead part (but I like the Blockhead part more). But here he’s sober and you can feel his motivation to put out some real ass shit, and there were few other guys in his age bracket doing it like that. I mean AVE of course, who ten years later was going harder than ever in Dancing On Thin Ice… But Dill came out so raw here. It’s got all the little artful stuff that’s existed within the AWS universe since it’s inception, definitely more in the Burton era of things, but it stays true to it’s core… I mean even Timecode, which feels like the least Alien Workshop video of all, still feels very much like an Alien Workshop video for these reasons. The song I still have no idea what it is, nor would I ever listen to it on it’s own, but it’s edited in perfectly. We close with a shared JJ/Gilbert section that rules. Gilbert already had a really good style as evidenced in his out-of-nowhere part in Mystery’s Black And White, but it feels like here he started skating more how he wanted to. Jake Johnson has pretty much always seemed to skate how he wants to, and it’s just more good ass shit from him. I first ever heard of him in the Chapman video “Short Ends” and in various Quartersnacks edits, and have been a huge fan since then. I would like to say somewhere around this time he was coming into his own, but to be real he seemed like he had a really good idea for how his skateboard worked early on. He does a switch backside 50-50 across-and-down this ledge in camo pants and it always reminded me of some old ass Lennie Kirk shit. Man… what an awesome ass section. It’s WILD as a bitch to me that this company would fold a year and a half later, out of fucking nowhere!!! This would be the ultimate swan song for a company, both fortunately and unfortunately—NO, I don’t consider the reboot of the brand to be the same thing in any way, for fucks sake. It did end up splintering off into two actually good brands; Mother, which would later be renamed Quasi, and of course the Fucking Awesome/Hockey camp which end up being 90’s World-like in it’s popularity (I may be getting my timeline messed a bit though, and FA may have started doing boards before Alien’s first initial death). It’d be cool to watch the 411 Industry section from 1999 and then this. Really great stuff. Fuck new Alien for life though.
This marks one of the last Transworld videos that I willingly went out of my way to watch. Even the few that came before this were a little iffy, but the ones that came after this were I don’t even know what the hell. Like, what the hell is Outliers? But this 2012 period of skate videos was so special to me. A lot of the stuff in here was from filmers and brands that already felt a little old, and with companies like Polar, Palace, Magenta, and for god’s sake, Welcome, coming out around that time, there was a lot of little brands to be excited about. I’d love to write another 10,000 words on that period itself. Maybe one day. For now we can bask in the thought that we probably will never have to hear another Goatmouf song in a skate video.
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