All (Yuto) wants, baby, is everything | Simply Ranked

The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other online things that I cannot stop consuming and how they make me feel, personally.

Sickos

Rank: ?
Mood: 👀

YES…

HA HA HA…

YES!

The familiar magic of Antonio Durao

Rank: 1
Mood: ✨✨✨

Across the street and one house to the left of the home I grew up in lived my childhood best friend, Dylan. After school, I would pad over the asphalt to play N64 in his basement and sip at the much too sweet powdered iced tea we’d mix like mad scientists, daring each other to add another scoop.

Dylan was quiet. Shy. Too modest to boast about his freakish preteen athletic abilities. He was the fastest runner in our grade, he easily outwrestled our entire friend group, every time his foot touched the soccer ball it’d wind up in the net, and he could leap over the gate to his backyard before I’d even reached the latch. It seemed like Dylan could do anything he wanted, whenever he wanted, and it was all just a lark.

Antonio Durao gives off that same feeling—freakish talent, creativity unbound by the physical limitations of us mortals (why else would you willy grind nosegrab that out ledge?) and a seemingly carefree approach that only compounds the absurdity of whatever giant thing he’s just jumped down or vaulted over.

As life goes sometimes, I haven’t seen or spoken to Dylan in almost two decades. Hopefully, he’s still out there, deking office clerks and hip tossing everyone in his department. If hindsight has taught me anything here, it’s that we need to appreciate a special talent while we’re fortunate enough to witness it.

Monica Torres (nearly) wins all of the letters

Rank: Runner-up
Mood: 🔤

Monica Torres was potentially a defensive kickflip away from becoming the lineal champion of all H.O.R.S.E.-inspired skateboarding competitions. She won the Women’s Battle at The Berrics back in 2019 and almost clinched the title of “Queen of MACBA” this week, losing a great back and forth game to Marina Gabriela. Torres was devastatingly close to owning both S.K.A.T.E. and M.A.C.B.A.

Curious about what one could do with such a substantial cache of letters, I plugged them into an anagram creation app and picked some favourites.

SKATE MACBA anagrams:

Aback Mates
Bake Scat Ma
Smack A Beta
Ace Bat Mask
Make Cat Abs

C’mon, leave something for everyone else

Rank: 4
Mood: 😈

Yuto, I love you, but is a Thrasher cover, a couple of stunning video parts, an Olympic gold medal, and a nollie 270 back lip down the Hollywood High sixteen (in a balaclava, no less) not enough for you? You’ve done nearly everything there is to do in a year. You’ve gone bigger, got more technical and competed harder than almost every other skateboarder rolling around this slowly rotting orb. Sure, you might be trying to yoink that Skater of The Year trophy from Mark Suciu’s hands à la Milton Martinez circa 2019, that’s fine. Expected even. But can you leave Andrew Allen out of this, please?

Allen has been doing his damnedest to make that manual-pad-into-giant-sketchy-bank spot his own. It wrecked him in Hockey III, and he went back at it (backwards) for more as the ender to his AA for Vans part.

In your recent Spitfire offering, you decided to 180 into a fakie manny there, which is amazing and I’m sure a thoroughly frightening experience. And honestly, I feel like I’ve become a better person just for having seen it. But, couldn’t you have let AA have this one? Isn’t a nollie heelflip noseslide bigspin out on Clipper sufficient? I know you want SOTY, but if you don’t win Rusty, it’s not as if your Snorlax will be lonely.

Programming injection

Rank: Low, very low
Mood: 💉

Seeing a group of current and former professional skateboarders railing incoherently against vaccine mandates meant to protect their colleagues, loved ones, and the community at large can really suck the air out of whatever room you’re scrolling Instagram in. Thankfully, just a few clicks and scrolls away, you’ll likely find someone who understands the gravity of our current reality.

These apps have whatever message we, their loyal pawns, want to consume. Any actual truth or backwards bias can be confirmed. They help minds flourish and rot en masse. What power. All in exchange for our data that’s used to help create the perfect customer profile. This is an unfortunate truth we’ll have to confront if we ever want to—wait, have you seen this goddamn shit???

Haha, wow. Man, I do love it here.

Something to consider: “The tyranny of the task is no different than the tyranny of the clock.” Pal Josh Gabert-Doyon for The Baffler.

Good things: new series from Michif (Metis) visual artist and author Christi Belcourt and Colonialism Skateboards.

Until next week… when’s the last time you had a smoothie? They’re pretty great. Maybe make one of those if you’re feeling it. With blueberries.