SkateRadio

This is the Lakai Shoes Fully Flared Video Review. Lakai’s  latest full-length DVD with footage of the whole Lakai Team.  Features the likes of Eric Koston, Brandon Biebel, Cairo Foster, Guy Mariano, Marc Johnson, Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Scott Johnston, Jeff Lenoce, Rob Welsh, Danny Garcia, Anthony Pappalardo and others.

The DVD Cover

I’m gonna go out on a limb here. I don’t feel there are enough trees left to rehash why this video won. That horse has been taken out to pasture, beaten into oblivion, shot, incinerated, sailed down the Ganges, and sold to Pakistan for a small piece of cashmere.

Eric Koston

So I’ll just get this out of the way up front to spare us all the culture-Guy, MJ, Ty, Eric Koston, Guy, Carroll, Judas Priest, Spike Jonze, Puig, Jesus, Guy, Pops, Mo, JB, explosions, Guy, combos, Brady, innovation, Guy, Olson, the new Questionable, Biebel, Cairo, Jensen, Guy, Bird, Band Of Horses, Lenoce, JJ, Welsh, S.O.T.Y., Guy, King Diamond, SJ, Feds, Milan, three-song part, Guy, Mercado, Lazarus, MJ, Guy, Guy, Guy, MJ, and onward. If you’re lost, go grab a fixie and roll up a pant leg. If not, bear with me I may actually succeed in writing something about the Lakai video you may not have already read.

Rick Howard

My favorite part in Fully Flared goes to Rick Howard. And after you get done re-reading that sentence, I’ll tell you why. First off, he’s been my dude since Adventures In Cheese (’90) when he unveiled the Rick flip and convinced me that short-sleeve button-ups were my ticket to fakie mannys (they weren’t). He was my dude through Questionable (’92) and Virtual (’93) even over Carroll, Way, Duffy, and most shockingly Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. He was most definitely my dude in Goldfish (’93) the second he tre flipped off that curb cut to Otis Redding. His Lockwood line in Paco (’95) made me want to get those twisty little hair deals. He held it down for an injured MC in their joint parts in Mouse (’96) and Penal Code 700A (’96), even becoming one of the first humans on Earth to roll grind a tree and shred-a-late a forest (sorry, Element). His front nose down the church rail in Modus (’00) stands as one of Ty’s all-time favorite tricks he’s filmed. I’ll even give him Yeah Right! (’03), which he shared with a bunch of dudes’ “retirement parts,” although Gino clearly eclipsed his frontside 180 fakie five-0 frontside half-Cab kickflip to board splinteration. I’m stupid, see. I’m that big a fan.

 
Mike Carroll

With that off my chest, allow me to return to my initial argument. The full part he put out for FF, along with about two-thirds of the aforementioned ones from years passed, were filmed while dude was knee-deep running a company scratch that, companies. He is also the dude, along with Johannes Gamble, who, regardless of what you may have read in the credits after said videos, has pretty much conceptualized every Girl Films production since the dawn of SHT Sound.

In ‘07, seventeen years after having made his bones with Blockhead, by all earthly accounts, Rick could easily have sat this one out and just thrown a few tricks in for parity. But he didn’t. Switch crooks flip in at 7th Street-solid. Fullpipe gap action-funtastic. Bluntslide the Girona three-stair to pop out over the gap straight-hell yeah. Switch nose manny fakie flip switch manny the Inglewood up banks-f-k. The dork poses-still got ‘em. Hurricane to fakie at the Pink Motel Guy says yes. Nine-stair-wallride-yep. Fakie five-0 fakie manny to fakie flip the Sants three stair-Goddamn. Skating to Echo & The Bunnymen-priceless. The ditch gap ollie with the oversized hands-the clincher. Did you want to read about HD technology? Blame Canada.

Since the first video tape recorder was sold in 1951, reality has appeared directly on screens, first in grainy black-and-white, later in color. Today, with digital cameras as common as wristwatches, as websites such as MySpace and YouTube featuring user-contributed and controlled content, just about anyone with a laptop or cell-phone can upload clips from their lives to share with the entire world within minutes.

The art and science of skateboarding was forever revolutionized with the popularity of the home VCR. Released in 1965 “Skater Dater” is thought to be the first movie ever released which focused solely on skaters doing tricks. This revolutionary look at a relatively unknown sport was nominated for an Oscar in 1966 and also won the Golden Palm Award for the Best Short Film category in the same year.

These days it is a standard part of the promotion departments for many skate companies and shops to sponsor skateboarding teams and release skateboard videos of competitions and practice sessions. The availability of these videos represents a quantum leap in the art of skating instruction, making it possible for today’s skater to study directly under the tutelage of the finest athletes in the field. By watching these videos over and again, at different speeds and with the ability to pause those split-second movements, the 21st century skateboarding student can learn in a single afternoon skills which once took months to master.

Notable movie director Spike Jonze, cofounder of Girl Skateboards, has raised the stakes professional skateboard videos. Most well known for his role as co-creator of MTV’s Jackass, his Academy Award nominated film Adaptation, as well as the cult classic Being John Malkovich, Jonze directed Girl’s groundbreaking video Yeah Right! featuring trick skaters doing never-before documented moves captured on film by other skaters.

Famous original Zephyr team member Stacey Peralta has also tried his hand as a director of skateboard videos. Focusing on the history of the movement and evolution of styles more than specific technique tips, his documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, is one of the more significant entries in the field, covering the inside scoop on skateboarding’s key players and pioneering moments.

Vert skating legend Tony Hawk has risen to the edge of superstardom, flying under the sails (and sales) of his popular Trick Tips videos and Secret Skate Park Tour series. Though subject of controversy and fierce opinions, the world champ is undeniably one of the greatest names in the sport, and his DVD’s continue to be highly coveted as well as fiercely defended from critics.

Making skateboard videos is equally the province of amateurs and professionals, who capture with varying degrees of skill skateboard efforts which are also of different levels of skill. A truly compelling video will combine step-by-step instruction with gravity-defying courage and a little humor.

Skateboard videos are consistently among the most viewed entries on sharing sites such as Blip.tv and Vimeo. And no wonder; for action, drama and pure bellylaughs, few sights captured by camera can offer so much as footage of the skater in his natural habitat.

Skateboarders are known for many qualities-bravery, independence, a lack of concern for the laws of society and physics-but literacy is not necessarily one of them. While some skaters doubtless make a trick of speed-reading Moby Dick while grinding the library stair rails, the printed page is not always up to the nuts-and-bolts task of teaching the noob how to rock the next “ollie impossible.”

No mere description of suicidal insanity can make the jaw and stomach drop with amazement at how little some experts value intact bones. For the true visceral experience, skateboard video clips bring every sight and sound of a mind-blowing ordinary afternoon in the white-knuckle life of the celebrity skater.

At 30 frames per second, if a picture is worth a thousand words, each second of video is practically a book. Any expert, no matter how inarticulate in speech, can use a camera and a simple editor to convey at variable speeds exactly how they make the magic happen.

Skateboard video clips are able to show what words all too often fail to describe: the delicate nuances of timing and execution that make the difference between being slick and being slammed.

The first video recordings of skateboard teams appeared with the advent of the VCR in the 1980’s. The new medium revolutionized the sport, and also standardized it to a certain extent. Skate teams emerged to take advantage of the growing star power potential in what had previously been an underground, solo sport. The most important of these was the Bones Brigade, featuring such icons as Stacey Peralta and Mike McGill.

Skateboarding came into the sporting mainstream during the nineties, when cable TV companies began scrambling for content to fill the sudden programming gaps between standbys like auto racing and tennis. ESPN led the way, sponsoring the historic X-games in 1995, followed trendy stations like MTV.

A new phenomenon emerged: spectator-driven skateboarding, exposing the sport to armchair enthusiasts who didn’t know an ollie from a kickflip…but sat on the edge of their seats waiting for a fancy trick to go wrong.

The new celebrity skaters had a rougher road than conventional athletes, battling the volatile ride to stardom while executing never-before imagined flying feats and making tremendous personal sacrifices for the sport.

A generation of soon-to-be hardcore kids took to the streets, empowered with a repertoire of concrete-thumping moves hammered out by old-schoolers, at a high price in broken bones the young neophytes only had to wince at.

The vert skater in particular has been a perpetually endangered species, in a skateboard world increasingly dominated by the urban landscape crowd. Legends like Tony Hawk, who could sail the half-pipe with ease, have struggled personally as well as professionally with the shifting fortunes of a sport which had not yet found its destiny.

Today, video skating is finding a cozy home among some of the most popular titles on sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion. Predictably, the amateur wipeout variety consistently outperforms the instructional skateboard video clips. The future of skateboarding as a spectator sport may owe more to the hapless slam victim than the pro making it look all too easy.