In search of GLORY | Simply Ranked
Plus: Zach Harris on SK8MAFIA's magic, Shari White and Angelo Fajardo on "Antisocial Summer," Christmas collabs gone wrong, can you be SOTY if you don't bomb the hill switch, and more.
The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other things online that I cannot stop consuming and how it makes me feel, personally.
San Diego the world over
A special correspondence by Zach Harris
There are a lot of skateboard companies with silly names but SK8MAFIA is probably the silliest.
It has the word “skate” in the name, “skate” is spelled with the number 8, and then, maybe the silliest part, the word “mafia.” Like an airbrushed Tony Montana t-shirt, y’know? It rolls off the tongue like an AOL Instant Messenger screen name and fits the signature block letter logo like an oversized fitted with a flat bill and the sticker reflecting in the sunshine.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time we also recognize that SK8MAFIA is the coolest skateboard company we’ve got.
The industry is at its best when it’s painting a hyper-local picture for a global audience. It’s why skate shops make the only good graphic t-shirts and homie videos are always better than corporate endeavors. It’s a harder feat for established board brands, but when done well — see GX1000, Hardbody, etc — it creates cohesion, even if the skaters are usually transplants. SK8MAFIA doesn’t do transplants. SK8MAFIA is San Diego like Tony Gwynn or The Zoo. SK8MAFIA is french fries in the burrito.
Few places contain the perfect storm of local aesthetic, skate talent, and small-town vibe that SD is blessed with. San Diego isn’t concerned with the worlds of fashion or celebrity; San Diego is focused on lift kits, waves, and perfecting the microbrewed Modelo. In modern skateboarding terms that means tons of transition gods, a bunch of contest jocks, and The Mafia.
SK8MAFIA doesn’t just represent San Diego, they export it. The crew’s latest video, SK8MAFIA PROMO 2024, starts on a trip to Japan where beer is the only translator Japanese team rider Masaki Hongo needs, before coming back to SD where he ends his part with mirrored heelflips on a taqueria roof gap with a quick drop and a switch hardflip that immediately gives way to Brandon Turner’s own signature switch hard. It doesn’t get better than that.
SK8MAFIA turned 20 this year and Wes Kremer and Tyler Surrey — the left and right ventricles of the Mafia’s beating heart — have been down with the brand since it became a brand. That’s two years less than Koston spent on Girl. Everything you’re nostalgic for in skateboarding still exists at the Mafia. Wes is still doing SOTY level skating without Instagram and Surrey is still a jaw-dropping tech wizard who’s gone the expat route and set up life in Barcelona. Stephen Lawyer also shipped the SD vibes to Barcy, trading the tri-colour camos for the kind of neck tattoos that keep the pickpockets away. We’re also treated to perhaps the last footage from SD legend Alex Willms, who recently announced that he’s stepping away from skating due to struggles with Persistent Post Concussion Syndrome suffered from years of heavy slams. Respect, Alex. They’ve all got clips in the 2024 Promo that make you rewind and say “damn, sick” out loud.
The three non-San Diego locals in the video, Hongo, Javier Sarmiento, and TJ Rogers, are from other countries, not states or cities. The best of Rogers’ part comes when a cop writing him a ticket asks, “...and you’re from… Canada?” The white tees are the same size in SD and T Dot, though, and TJ has already assimilated, stepping up to the mound for SK8MAFIA’s most endearing right of passage — the ceremonial first pitch at a Padres game.
Finally, like everything the Mafia does lately, and rightfully so, the latest video is mostly a vehicle to spotlight Alexis Ramirez. Alexis is the best. He can do all the tricks. Tech shit, big shit, big tech shit, dork shit, switch shit. He’s got great trick selection and it’s all executed with the same sublime permastoned nonchalance the Mafia is famous for. He has so much footage. Give him SOTY and send him to Street League. Alexis is your favorite skater’s favorite skater just like SK8MAFIA is your favorite skater’s favorite brand.
From the music to the hijinks to the best video naming motif in the industry, SK8MAFIA PROMO 2024, like the brand itself, is all silly smiles and earnest stoke. It’s hard for a brand to stay true to itself and the industry for two decades straight, but the Mafia is nothing if not reliable. Skaters who would never wear shoes or clothes from a non-sponsor are hyped to get clips skating SK8MAFIA microboards. When Birdhouse PRO and Paris silver medalist Tom Schaar visited the White House with the rest of America’s 2024 Summer Olympians, he used the opportunity to throw up the SK8MAFIA hand sign behind Joe Biden. If that doesn’t make you smile about the state of skateboarding, I don’t know what will.
The skateboard industry is pretty kooky these days, but SK8MAFIA is always something to smile about.
Zach Harris is a writer based in Philadelphia. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone, High Times, and more.
Summer in December
Rank: 1
Mood: 🌧️
A healthy skateboarding scene most often has a skateboard shop sitting at its centre. I've written previously that "the skateboard shop is at its best when it becomes a clubhouse, a command centre, a muster station after a late night or before the day of skateboarding begins. A place that instigates and nurtures, that’s waiting for you to spend your time in it — as well as your money."
That's a tricky balance to strike. It demands some semblance of business acumen, a natural understanding of what is "cool," what is "wack," and, most importantly, genuine care. Care for the skaters, the scene they comprise, and its future. That requires work and lots of it.
One of the best rallying posts the skateboard shop can offer the community they cater to — besides the shop itself — is the shop video. It's self-promotion, sure, but also a window into that scene's world. A showcase of who and what that community is and represents. My local, Antisocial Skateboard Shop, released its first video in 2004, and now, twenty years on, its third major project, Antisocial Summer, is set to premiere tonight.
Shari White and Angelo Fajardo are behind the production, which White said started germinating in January of this year while on a trip with Breana Geering, Ryan Bjorgan, and Johnny Tassopoulos. The crew was on the road and getting clips but had no specific projects in mind. Around the same time, Fajardo released his excellent independent video take me with you, which features Bjorgan, Connor Belvis, and Alexandre Poulin.
Soon after, Antisocial co-founder Rick McCrank invited the trio from take me with you to join the shop team, and with White already sitting on a healthy amount of footage from Geering and Bjorgan, that kickstarted conversations about a new Antisocial video. White would ask Fajardo if he wanted to work together on the project, and now, here we are.
The last Antisocial video came in 2016 with Jake Kuyzyk's The Antisocial Video, which introduced a new generation of team riders like Dustin Henry, Ben Blundell, Landon Avramovic, Jacob Lavelle, and Ryan Witt, much in the way 2004's Antisocial Video showcased a mix of established and up-and-coming names like Mitch Charron, Mike Christie, Jesse Booi, Mike McDermott, Keegan Sauder, Wade Fyfe, McCrank, and more.
If the shop video is a window, it's also a snapshot. Each of the last three decades has seen an Antisocial video and an evolution of its roster. Antisocial Summer is no different. Over its 18-or-so-minute runtime, we'll see friends and mainstays like McCrank and Henry, as well as sections from more recent additions like Bjorgan, Belvis, Geering, Hasumi Iida, Una Farrar, and Amadou Diallo. Most of those newer names were just entering grade school when Antisocial Video premiered. Diallo hadn't yet been born.
For the younger riders, Fajardo says, "It's cool to put them on a different side of skating because they come from a generation that videos aren't as important as they once were (in comparison to Instagram), so it's exciting to show them this side of skating and hopefully inspire them to make their own videos."
White and Fajardo also made a point to thank Vans Footwear, who helped the team pay for filming trips to Seattle and Calgary. As much of the skateboarding industry continues to struggle and the cost of living balloons, travel opportunities become rarer for skateboarders who aren't backed by energy drinks and other corporate entities.
For the skaters, those experiences become life-long memories, even if they're not always ones you wish you had, like when the crew found a bedbug at their Airbnb in Calgary, noticed that some of them had been bit, and had to hightail it to a hotel. After some anxious cleaning and disinfecting, they managed to have a nice time in Kelowna the next day while "...all wearing matching Joe Fresh outfits from Superstore." Says White.
That mess is all part of the experience. In a less itchy sense, making a shop video gives one more freedom to mess around. "It feels a lot more organic and genuine when you go film with people for a community project. You’re not trying to sell anything; [you're] just showing people your community." The duo said.
They're also aware and appreciative of the history they're now contributing to, one that spans decades. "We feel very blessed that Michelle [Pezel, co-founder of Antisocial] and Rick were so down for us to make this for the shop and let us introduce new faces along with the OG crew. It’s pretty unbelievable how quickly this little project came together. We are really proud of it and all the skaters who put in the effort."
Antisocial Summer will be available online on Monday or Tuesday next week, but if you can make the premiere at the shop, White and Fajardo would love to see you there.
"It’s gonna be a party!"
(Holiday) seasonal depression
Rank: $40
Mood: 🎅🤢
Over the weekend, while heading home after having a few drinks "out" on "the town," we stopped at a corner store for snacks. As I struggled to find something to eat at such an hour — something not too filling, but not too light, that would absorb the toxins imbibed but not leave one holding onto a roiling excess of mass during resting hours — I came across a product that made me shudder: "Turkey Dinner" flavoured potato chips.
Part of what appears to be a "Holiday Table" series, these presumably turkey, mashed potato, and stuffing-flavoured crisps are among the most bizarre and off-putting collaborations I've seen yet. This snack food is collaborating with... the holiday season.
Surprisingly, this wasn't the worst holiday collab to come out in recent weeks. Primitive Skateboards, perhaps the champion of horrid collabs in the skateboarding space, teamed up with the sort-of-beloved Christmas flick Elf, starring Will Ferrell. The series features some of the most distasteful design work I've ever been unlucky enough to click through on.
The only logical response is to ask if this is real. Is Primitive being a troll with Elf?
Where would you even wear that outside of the living room on Christmas morning after you disappointedly pull it from your stocking? You'll get more use out of the Toblerone you pluck out of there next. If seeing that makes your heart shrivel up two sizes too small at the state of things, just wait.
It's not like the Christmas season as we know it was ever anything other than a commercial opportunity, but this is some especially lazy garbage. It must be strange to be a company like Supreme, which carries, or at least carried, so much cultural cache and now defines itself by the brand names and intellectual property of others. Their creative direction looks to have devolved past the ironic detachment of attaching its logo to as many obscure items as possible into attaching its logo to as many items and IPs as possible in order to survive.
By all measures, the Turkey Dinner potato chips are a far better holiday collab than Primitive and Supreme's, because at least they're food first and shit second and not shit from the start.
Petty, righteous nitpicking
Rank: 180
Mood: ↪️
Hey, I've stood at the top of Mason Street in San Francisco, California, and looked at the rail Frank Gerwer frontside-boardslid two decades previous, the very same one that Miles Silvas frontside-crooked-grinded and kickflip-front-boarded to help secure his Skater of the Year victory in 2023, so I can say with confidence that it's a big fucking hill. It's so big that I would not ride down it on my skateboarding in my regular stance — but I'm also from the printer paper flat Albertan prairies, so cut me some slack.
What I'm trying to say is, I totally understand why someone would not want to ride down that hill on their skateboard backwards. There's not much that I imagine would be scarier — being dragged under the surface of a black, bottomless ocean by an angry sea lion, perhaps. This isn't something someone should submit to willingly, is what I mean.
Still — and, frankly, however — if Elijah Berle is going to end his clear and determined SOTY campaign, which appears to have some backing from the issuing magazine itself, with a trick on a spot from the video part that capped off and crowned last year's winner, then he has to go down the hill switch if he comes off of the rail switch.
I know that it's rich to say this as someone who struggled to walk down said hill, but you can't hope to build upon the legacy of the incumbent SOTY if you don't surpass their efforts by a significant margin. Silvas did two difficult tricks on the spot. Berle did one. If he had bombed its hill switch and ate shit at the bottom, that would've worked too. But he didn't. And now here I am, having to do this petty yet righteous nitpicking.
Thanks, Elijah. Besides that, great work.
In search of GLORY
Rank: 1
Mood: 🙏
As SOTY season trundles on and its purposeful or unwitting contenders commit and release more life-threatening stunts with the intent to win or simply imbue their lives with some sense of meaning, one word flutters to the top of the mind: glory.
Glory. Whether personal, professional, or both, what is this chase if not a pursuit of legacy? A desire for something enduring in a time when the ephemeral is all there is. This is probably where I should write about Jhancárlos González, who in the last four months has dropped upon us like an Acme anvil, two 1o+ minute video parts that are as impressive as they are frightening. While certainly an underdog, I'd contend he has a shot at doing what his Columbian countryman David González did back in 2012: winning the trophy in an upset that upset the skateboarding masses.
While this search for glory is admirable in how it pushes the skateboarder to progress the physical act of skateboarding, this ever-present seriousness can grow a bit tiresome as a viewer. Can't glory mean something more than the selfish pursuit? That tense two-step with disaster? Can it also mean turning your inside-joke-laden skate video series into a successful inside-joke-laden fashion label? One that puts skateboarding icons under contract and flies them to your hometown just so you can skate with them?
Can it mean giving a platform to a new generation of interesting, exciting skateboarders — some who might even struggle to keep their pants on — that asks only for them to do what they'd like to do to the best of their abilities while, most importantly, having a good time along the way? Can glory mean celebrating eccentricity and family and your one really buff friend?
If The Legend of Dime teaches us anything, it's that, yes, GLORY can mean all of that and more.
Something to consider:
Samer Kalaf
Good thing: 'sletter friends Wes Allen, Max Harrison-Caldwell, Tony Zhang, and more are ripping in Allen and Elliot Lockwood's Bending Corners.
Another good thing: "The U.S. is facing a youth mental health crisis. These skaters want to help" by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento for NPR.
An interesting thing:
UCL
A call for papers thing: Slow Impact has put out an open call to "scholars, artists, community activists, and others working within the broader landscape of skateboarding to submit paper proposals to present at Slow Impact 2025. Check it out! The deadline is December 31.
Until next week… you are beautiful, but you are also tired. Being so beautiful takes its toll. Take a nap. There's nothing wrong with resting your eyes. The sun will still be there when you wake.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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My new collection of essays is available now. I think you might like it. The Edmonton Journal thinks it's a "local book set to make a mark in 2024." The CBC called it "quirky yet insightful." lol.
Book cover by Hiller Goodspeed.
Right, Down + Circle
ECW PRESS
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I wrote a book about the history and cultural impact of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that you can find at your local bookshop or order online now. I think you might like this one, too.
Here’s what Michael Christie, Giller Prize-nominated author of the novels Greenwood and If I Fall, If I Die, had to say about the thing.
“With incisive and heartfelt writing, Cole Nowicki unlocks the source code of the massively influential cultural phenomenon that is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and finds wonderful Easter-eggs of meaning within. Even non-skaters will be wowed by this examination of youth, community, risk, and authenticity and gain a new appreciation of skateboarding’s massive influence upon our larger culture. This is my new favorite book about skateboarding, which isn’t really about skateboarding — it’s about everything.”
Photo via The Palomino.
