The poetry of your index and ring fingers meeting | 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.

Goodbye, Georgia Banks

Rank: 1978-2022
Mood: 🥺

Let’s take a moment to say goodbye to a beloved fixture of our community. Stretching for nearly a city block, the brick embankment that once escalated in height going North-West along W. Georgia Street, between Nicola and Cardero Streets, in Vancouver, BC, is now gone. An icon, a tourist destination, a measuring stick of skill; we’ve lost another skate spot to the heartless churn of development.

Its tenure saw generations of smooth, calculated lines that weaved up and down its length, stuntpeople who launched from the bank to the cobbled fountain wall it supported and those who lept into its depths from a slender precipice above.

While it is a sad moment, and we should take time to mourn and watch some clips, we should also take heart in knowing that life, as it inevitably does, moves on. Perhaps even pressing forward in a new marble outfit.

#SK8MAFIA x Kylie

Rank: 1
Mood: 😎

We can only hope that the brand-building buzz Kim Kardashian caused after hard-posting herself wearing a Sci-Fi Fantasy hat extends to Sk8mafia after Kylie Jenner was captured throwing up the ‘mafia’s signature “SM” hand sign. If that virality translates, we could be seeing Scott Disick, Travis Scott, Travis Barker, Megan Fox, Machine Gun Kelly, and any number of Kardashians putting the tips of their fingers together for San Diego’s finest—a boon of some sort for the company, one would assume.

But what brought Sk8mafia lore to the highest tier of celebrity? Was it just an accidental placement of digits? Or would it be a stretch to think that Kylie is a Padres fan, that she was watching the game on 4/20, saw Wes Kremer connect those pads as he prepared to deliver the first pitch at Petco Park, and slowly began to learn the language herself—the poetry of your index and ring fingers meeting? We can only hope.

Simply Reviewed

Rank: 1
Mood: 🐎

Glue’s wick & spit features a fantastic full Leo Baker part, Cooper Winterson with a grip of high-speed technical moves, Akobi Williams flying and slamming in equal and entertaining measure, and a few great Evan Wasser cameo clips nestled amongst the rest of the Glue crews’. All of it capped off by a surprise ender by the Donovan Wildfong. Unfamiliar with their skating going in, Wildfong closes things out in impressive fashion. Speed, pop, creativity, fun fits, Placebo track—it’s all there. The model, musician and skater is a name to remember.

Ballad of the beefed-up big boys

Rank: 2 becomes 1
Mood: 💪💪💪💪

Through the music of Jeezy, a cosmic connection was forged. A mid-late 2000s Hulk Hogan, playing back the song “I Luv It” repeatedly in his bright yellow pick-up truck, would happen around the same time Brandon Biebel skated to “I Luv It” in Lakai’s Fully Flared. What followed this coincidental collision of tastes was the construction of a bridge across time. One defined by absurdly defined deltoids, spray tans and teeth so white one can’t help but be drawn into them like a moth to an artificially brightened flame.

In 2007, Biebel would unknowingly begin to make his way across this bridge towards total Hulksterism. In the years that followed, he’d come to resemble Hogan more and more—tanned, jacked, glimmering teeth—until the transformation reached its completion when Biebel moved to Hogan’s home state of Florida in 2021. Since then, Biebel has never seemed happier, no longer a pupa waiting for its wings. And now that he can fly, the words that set him on this journey are the ones that guide him still.

And I luv it, and I luv it, let's go.

Think of the untapped dowser demographic

Rank: 3
Mood: 🪄

Over recent years, decades and perhaps centuries, it's become clear that the products skateboarding brands sell to us are too one-dimensional. Being geared towards the utilitarian—the board and shoes for skating, clothes for covering the body dopely, etc.—makes sense, but we need something more. It’s time to consider products that point us toward the mystical.

Perhaps a skate tool that boasts not just an axle rethreader but also serves as a divining rod, guiding the owner towards unknown treasures (sticker packs stashed in the bushes). Maybe a set of mounting hardware whose heads, when arranged in the correct pattern on the board, decode a cypher for a 15% off coupon code on your next purchase. Or a set of Swiss bearings that dramatically increase your speed during a full moon. Is it magical thinking that those preternatural turns would drive consumer curiosity and subsequently increase profits? Can’t our never-ending hunger for capital make some regular forays into the fantastical to keep things interesting? It’d at least be better than stuff like this:

Something to consider:

Good thing:

Until next week… feel the rain on your skin.