©2010 Chocolate Skateboards

While waiting for an oil change today, I read the cover story “10 Skaters Who Changed The Decade” in the new Transworld Skateboarding today (which is pretty great, by the way. Though what the hell do they print it on? After looking at The Skateboard Mag and then Color, TWS feels like its printed on toilet paper.) at Barnes & Noble. It features interviews with pretty much exactly who you expect based on the title—Marc Johnson, Koston, Danny Way, Appleyard, P-Rod, Andrew Reynolds, etc. TWS seems really into these features on influential skaters, a move I’m all for.

The real highlight for me was the MJ interview where he talks about the development of the Fully Flared combo-ledge trick aesthetic. He mentions Mike Mo telling him that he had an “MJ” trick—the FS tailslide to FS bluntslide that became his Fully Flared ender (that is his ender, right?) and that him, Guy and Lucas Puig would throw tricks out at each other.* But the thing that caught my attention was MJ talking about tricks from early 90’s videos that never really caught on and mentions one of my personal favorite clips ever—Danny Way’s FS boardslide to FS noseblunt slide in Questionable (plus he gives Henry Sanchez props for the switch boardslide to FS boardslide). Its one of those things that makes you appreciate his skating that much more, that its aware of its own history and re-looking at stuff that was so ahead of its time that it disappeared. I’m reminded of Danny Way’s FS noseblunt slide to 360 shuv-it out (also from his Questionable part); who knew tricks done once on curbs in 1992 would come back so hard?

Habitat Footwear’s upcoming 2010 line has started to make the rounds and like the first line it looks sick. While a few of the initial offerings looked like typical skate shoes, at least they looked like really good typical skate shoes. I’m definitely digging the new designs for 2010 especially these boatshoe inspired Charters. (I’m backing this boatshoe thing for as long as it lasts…) The tonal black is beautiful.

©2010 Habitat Footwear (via You Will Soon)

The Timbo-inspired Alex Davis colorway of the new Vireo looks hot as well.

©2010 Habitat Footwear (via You Will Soon)

See the rest of the line at You Will Soon.

Omar Salazor, Melbourne, 2006. Photo ©Huntfilmwork LLC

Skate film legend (Mindfield, The DC Video, Sight Unseen to name a few) and OG Stereo rider (only one part in Tincan Folklore but oh what a part it is) has a new website collecting his film and photo work over the last 15 years. It clearly is meant to function more as a professional portfolio than an archive so its neither deep nor exhaustive but what is there makes it worth a trip—Heath’s “Mindfield” part, Danny Way’s Mega-ramp part from The DC Video and legend of legends John Cardiel from “Sight Unseen” are all there in Quicktime rather than stutter-y streaming video plus some other photo/graphic goodies.

Huntfilmwork.com

Hunt’s currently working on a video for Analog Clothing. Here’s a pretty cool little teaser they did earlier this year.

Click image to view large

I saw this a month or so ago as an animated gif and thought it was amazing, so I’m glad to see it as proper Krooked ad. Mike Anderson long-ass FS lipslide to nose-blunt slide. How fast do you have to be going to pull this off? I hope there’s footage of it in the next Krooked video. On a related note, other Krooked am of great potential Brad Cromer also had a web ad at this spot. I think he backlipped the whole thing? Someone should confirm in the comments. I think the world really needs another Krooked video—the ams are just too good to go much longer without new parts.

Subscribers: Can’t see video? Click here.

Flipping through last month’s Transworld reminded me of this video that I never really heard too much about. Which is wierd because it has footage from Dennis Busenitz and Silas Baxter-Neal, two guys who manage to make pushing look amazing. That’s in addition to comback trail rampager Pete Eldridge and ridiculous am Lem Villemin (I suspect he’ll be a full-on Chocolate am when the Chocolate video comes out. For his sake, I hope its not a protracted five-years-of-filming-Fully-Flared type deal.)

Anyway, this HD video tracks the Adidas team as they hit different cities for premiers of the Adidas euro video Diagonal. Tour videos are usually a nice diversion for 5–8 minutes, but these guys actually stack legit clips (with very little park footage) from Silas’ backtail on a waist-high Barcelona rail (just before the 4 minute mark) to Lem’s general willingness to throw huge flip tricks wherever, Pete Eldridge just doing his switch ollie thing and Dennis’ inability to not catch a legit clip regardless of trick or spot. Oh, and there’s actual footage of Tim O’Connor on a skateboard, plus some other Adidas cats catch wreck. I can’t find the credits but the filming and production are up to the standards of everything that Adidas has been doing lately. My guess is the creative direction is by Matt Irving and Juice Design and Eric Noren is on filming detail.

All said, a good way to spend the next 5 minutes.

You can also download the video here.

Following up on our last post, here’s a quick interview Seu Trinh of Transworld did with Debacle director Jason Hernandez on naming, filming and uh, yeah, that’s about it. Oh, and how to avoid getting tickets.

Nike SB’s HD video project Debacle (watch it after the jump) is clearly in the running as 2009’s best video for pretty much for all the reasons that its not their 2007 video Nothing But The Truth (the reviled SB debut that was so bogged down in ambitious but ultimately irritating sketches that the actual skateboarding seems to have been stricken from the collective memory of skateboarding even though you had sick parts from Omar Salazar, Todd Jordan, Lewis Marnell, Chet Childress and Stefan Jonaski amongst others. Considering that the packaging was pretty beautiful, maybe they just need a re-issue minus the sketches…). Lean and mean clocking in at just 23 minutes with full-parts from Nike ams David Clark, Daryl Angel,  Shane O’Neill, Grant Taylor, Justin Brock (the last two since been made pro) and a Theotis Beasley cameo, its all high-energy gnarliness with no clear stand-out—definitely a good thing.

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A couple of months ago, Nike unleashed the first extras footage (check it out after the jump and actually better than the newer batch) and now they’ve dropped another 4 minutes worth and its great stuff. First off, they’re properly edited pieces and not just a bunch of clips collaged together and second, it shows just how hard these guys went after footage. Justin Brock just stacks footage—that smith grind to gap out at 00:48 is killer; Daryl Angel continues to prove why he’s so talked about (and its clearly more than the oft-cited “he’s a d**k”), I love the jersey barrier line at 1:39, and Grant Taylor is just ill—he’s up there with Alex Olson for having a bag of tricks and a style that puts him more in league with Julien Stranger than Sean Malto (whom we also love over here at jnhdotcom, albeit for different reasons.)

Bonus footage #1 and full Debacle vid after the jump.

Nike Debacle: bonus footage #1

Nike Debacle feature

Nike Debacle from mike on Vimeo.

I haven’t been to Providence since Donny Barley moved to town and opened Fountain of Youth, the first skate shop in Providence since Lunasea closed in the mid-90s (I think that was the last one) but watching this video makes me want to move back to Rhode Island. You can just see that crisp Fall air in this footage.

In all honesty, its not terribly exciting, just a competently filmed bro-tage with a few highlights like Grandison Taber’s (sp?) over-all steez and the step-hop wallride, any Donny Barley footage, my homie from wayback (and Solstice skate shop proprietor) Jay Vasconcellos (looking a bit like this guy) with that chain ollie to manual and Kevin Lynch’s lipslide. But the real money is on this:

Yeah, you read that right. Eric Pupecki. Two clips at about the half-way point. Judging from the huge and fast wallride dude still has it. Can we get this guy on Chocolate and back on a skateboard-related payroll or what?

Fountain of Youth: Fall Fun montage.

After rumors of a retirement and the kind of depressing Epicly Later’ds + WESC Calendar, it seemed like Gino Iannucci might be out of the game for the forseeable future, even if there was the glimpse of excitement in his eyes during the interviews for Guy’s Epicly Later’ds. But, then all of the sudden there are Crailtap + Berrics sightings and it seems like Gino is in LA as much as his probation allows and the assumption is he’s filming for the Chocolate video.

And now this. He’s back in classic form. Kickflip 5-0 to fakie. I can already see the footage in my head. Good to have you back, sir.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

DVS always bring heat when it comes to video projects and after winning last year’s Skate & Create they created another stunning piece. But, that’s not what we’re talking about today. Here’s a behind-the-scenes edit showing what it took to make this thing happen replete with nerdy info-graphics and what it looks like when Andrew Brophy is skating 100mph behind you. (via Club Mumble)