The Sloanyard | Simply Ranked
Plus: Nike SB's "QuickStrike," Koston edgng, Dexter's parasite, 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.
The Sloanyard
Rank: 1
Mood: 🦴
There's a patch of matter somewhere in my amygdala that screeches and glows like a bad pull in a game of Operation when confronted with a certain style of stunt-based skateboarding. However, I should clarify that it is a screech and glow of pure excitement, not punishment for water remaining on the knee.
Watching Elliot Sloan fly, flip, spin, and grind over his and other Mega Ramps in his "Monster" video part was exactly what I had been missing; this an emptiness left unaddressed for far too long. And "The Sloanyard," as his backyard Mega situation goes by, plays host to some of the more absurd advancements in this increasingly narrow field of skateboarding.
That narrowness is what makes Sloan's efforts all the more appealing. Who even skates Mega anymore? Especially at this high a level. While it seems unlikely that anyone will ever match or exceed what Bob Burnquist accomplished in his Dreamland video part in 2013, Sloan certainly tries. From a frightening rainbow rail pole jam to a rail set into the downslope of the second leg of his Mega Ramp, Sloan works to innovate the practice.
But it's also more than that. You can tell that Sloan just loves this stuff — the act of doing it, its history, and the feeling it gives those watching at home. When The Prodigy-inspired soundtrack kicks in, we see a quick flash of Danish skateboarding legend Rune Glifberg, who skated to the band in Flip Skateboard's Sorry. Only during the credits do we learn Sloan himself made the song, aptly titled "Ode to Rune." He executes a one-footed-backside-smithgrind on Burnquirt's Mega Ramp rail in honour of the man whose rail he grinds.
Those are things you do if your mind has been poisoned by a lifetime of skateboarding. Does that mean Sloan is sick? In the sense of his on-board abilities, yes, but he is simply steeped in this. Water on the knee? No, Sloan is submerged.
Not so quick, but certainly striking
Rank: 1
Mood: 🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️
One of the boons of having a roster of skateboarders as large as Nike SB's is that you can film and edit a 45-minute-long video like Will Miles and Johnny Wilson's QuickStrike in just ten months, and all of those minutes will be high-quality thanks to the 55 different skateboarders featured in it. Per the QuickStrike YouTube video description:
Featuring in order of appearance: Antonio Durao, Max Palmer, Noah Mahieu, Hugo Boserup, Nick Mathews, Brian Anderson, Stefan Janoski, Oskar Rozenberg, Arin Lester, Nicole Hause, Eric Koston, Mason Silva, Carlos Ribeiro, Hayley Wilson, Donovon Piscopo, Dashawn Jordan, Sean Malto, Jack O’Grady, Cyrus Bennett, Jake Anderson, Vincent Huhta, Vilma Stal, Sarah Meurle, Ville Wester, Raph Langslow, Casper Brooker, Eetu Toropainen, Kyron Davis, Nils Matijas, Gus Gordon, Kevin Bradley, Blake Carpenter, Poe Pinson, Georgia Martin, Ishod Wair, Tanner Burzinski, Karsten Kleppan, Ben Lawrie, Dylan Jaeb, Noah Nayef, Korahn Gayle, Joe Campos, Troy Gipson, Seven Strong, John Fitzgerald, Vince Palmer, Daan Van Der Linden, Youness Amrani, Grant Taylor, Karim Callender, Elijah Odom, Andrew Wilson, Enzo Kurmaskie, Nik Stain, and Didrik Galasso.
There is no filler here. Antonio Durao kicks off the video and continues his current campaign of figuring out each and every way to gently remove his foot from his board in the middle of a trick. He also jumps higher, further, and with more grace than almost any skateboarder in living memory. If he were dubbed the year's best skateboarder, I would not protest.
After Durao, what is a person writing a newsletter entry about this video to do? There are so many names in this feature (yet none in text on the screen) that commenting on just a handful seems almost arbitrary and foolish — but let's try.
Max Palmer noseslides a bush. Hugo Boserup is a pure force. Nick Mathews is focused, purely. Janoski does a Janoski and it's fantastic. Dashawn Jordan is a gleaming freak of nature, soaring and sliding up handrails that should not, by all measures, be possible. Cyrus Bennett is one of the most talented and productive professional skateboarders out there, and he'll always give us at least one fucked up kickflip. Jake Anderson and Bennett have similar legs. Sarah Meurle has style. Eetu Toropainen, Eetu Toropainen, Eetu Toropainen. Poe Pinson has been putting clips away! Ishod Wair, what else do you need to say? Tanner Burzinski makes questionable technical skating look like declarative technical skateboarding. Dylan Jaeb looks different away from Primitive's gaze, but in a good way, and boy, is he good, eh? Joe Campos is not concerned with risk or reward. Daan Van Der Linden is perhaps the planet's best skateboarder. Karim Callender is perhaps the planet's coolest skateboarder. Nik Stain fast. How much lacquer does Didrik Galasso use to get those presumably centuries-old ledges to grind?
To "recap" QuickStrike is to detail a loose catalogue of thoughts and feelings. That isn't a slight; it's just the reality of digesting a chasmic montage. If I do have a criticism, it's more of a comment. Admittedly, it's one of a spoiled brat whose brain has been tempered and tampered with by years of algorithmic abuse: there is simply too much skateboarding in this skateboarding video. All of it is good; I can't remember most of it. What sticks is the memory of yelling at my screen over and over again — a good problem to have, if you can even call it that. Eeetu rolling into that tree? Van Der Linden's unbelievable (even to himself) ender? How is a person supposed to hold on to all of this?
What stayed with me most were the surroundings. Many of the spots were unique or known but approached in a different manner. It makes the viewing experience more exciting when you don't have hard-wired context for the time-worn stairs, ledges, rails, etc., we've all spent a lifetime watching skateboarders make their names on. To that end, it was slightly jarring (and funny) for the video to climax with Galasso navigating all sorts of untouched European architecture before ending with a trick in a well-trodden Californian drainage ditch.
The intention of QuickStrike, a very good video, appears to be to flood the zone, overwhelm the senses, and give you as much as you can handle with little reprieve. What feeling beyond pleasure can you experience when gorging at such a clip? While I wouldn't call it quick, in totality, it is certainly striking.
EDGNG
Rank: 850
Mood: 👹
At this point, I've yet to have a fully formed opinion on EDGLRD, edglrd, or perhaps even Edgelord, the creative project of filmmaker Harmony Korrine. EDGLRD releases full-length films like the infrared AGRRO DR1FT starring Travis Scott, has done fashion spots for SSENSE featuring The Weeknd, and has produced music videos for artists like Bladee.
EDGLRD is also a skateboard company. As a board brand, so far, their art direction is about as inspired as you'd expect from a company that brands itself "edge lord" to be. They do sell a limited edition "Photopolymer 1nv45ion" deck for $850 USD, so that's something.
EDGLRD also has a team, and it's a good one at that. Sean Pablo, Elijah Odom, Mike Arnold, Vincent Touzery, Rezza Honarvar, Josh Wolff — those are some legit names. While it's still unclear what their offerings as a "skateboarding brand" will look like beyond their, uh, edgy Instagram videos, what they are doing so far is different, so that's interesting, at least. What is also interesting to see is the little fanfare given to the latest addition to the EDGLRD team, skateboarding legend Eric Koston, who was announced(?) via a fleeting Instagram Story on Monday.
Is that disrespectful? Detached? Just a different way to handle personnel changes than we're used to? Will Koston get a pro-model board? When EDGRS get a box in the mail, does it include a demon mask? Do they go on team outings to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's place? Time will tell.
A loose comparison of feelings
Rank: 1
Mood: 🥇
What, if anything, does it mean that I experience the same level of joy and satisfaction from watching Canadian breaker "Phil Wizard" claim Olympic gold that I do from cleaning the bathtub? Please bear with me here. On Saturday, stationed on the couch and away from the afternoon heat, I witnessed Vancouver's Wizard style on a succession of opponents with a panache and certainty that seemed perfectly tailored for a layman to his sport like myself.
For Wizard, who appeared nonplussed by the whole "competing in front of the entire world" thing, it looked routine. Not his performances, mind you. Those, from my understanding, are something like a semi-structured freestyle since the breakers do not know what songs they'll be battling to. Competitors have moves floating in the ether, some saved for big finale moments, that they pluck and deploy when needed. To the trained eye, it must seem more rigid, especially for those like Wizard, who, in a dramatic moment, predicted and performed the finishing move of his semi-final competitor.
To the untrained eye, like mine, there were some nervous-making moments as Japan's Shigekix displayed acrobatics unmatched by any other in the field. However, with Wizard, it was simply another moment on his way to ascension. Success seemingly predetermined. Competition something to wipe away with the sheer force of his existence. It was satisfying to watch in the way rewatching a movie can be — those feelings you first felt are still there but anticipated.
On Sunday, while doing my regular household chores, I scrubbed the bathtub. While this is generally understood as a tedious task, watching the grime wash away to give a full view of the tub's gleaming surface is a pleasure, like leaving a perfect crosshatch pattern on a mowed lawn. A familiar feeling that is as replicable as it is comforting. Watching Wizard felt like that — a predictable pleasure.
Unfortunately for Wizard, this was the first and, as of now, last appearance for breaking at the Olympics. His routine clean-up of this stage a one-time thing. Fortunately for me, that feeling will remain as long as there is a basin to scrub.
"Zaslav, get out of my laboratory!"
Rank: ugh
Mood: 🪱
Nitish Pahwa
Ah, yes, here we are again. Similar to Paramount's removal of the Comedy Central and MTV online archives a few months back and the countless other websites unplugged from the internet as new corporate owners decided decades and generations' worth of artistic endeavour to be mere extraneous expenses instead of parts of our shared cultural fabric, Cartoon Network's website and its archive are now gone.
This is thanks to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav, who is, once again, cutting costs after being particularly bad at business and assuming, like most major conglomerates do, that mergers and acquisitions and market dominance are how they win. However, that doesn't often prove true, particularly here, as Nitish Pahwa details in Slate.
Lest you be inclined to defend all this as just a hard-nosed boss making tough-but-fair decisions, consider that Zaslav continues to be very, very bad at making money and managing a media conglomerate—just ask the investors who depressed WBD’s stock value to a near-all-time-low valuation of $6.62 per share on Monday. Or look to the company’s loss of its long-held NBA broadcast rights to Amazon, the $9 billion write-down of its other TV assets, and its nonstop waves of steep layoffs. Or even its wildly unpopular move to shutter Cartoon Network’s iconic 26-year-old website, scrubbing an almost historical archive of clips, show episodes, and digital games in order to direct young viewers to sign up for the clunky streaming platform known these days as “Max.”
Cool. Business geniuses like this have contributed to and exacerbated our current media woes. They are more beholden to investors, stockholders, and earnings targets than making a good product. That in itself is a death cycle. If you don't care about making a good product, people won't watch, read, or subscribe to it, meaning you'll keep missing those earnings projections.
This isn't anything new. It's the animating force of our corpo-feudal state and the reason everything you love becomes a shell of itself when it's twisted into a money-making endeavour. These suits are parasites, sapping the life force from a body until it can't go any further, killing its host and itself in the process. The host, in this case, young Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory.
Something to consider:
Omer Bartov
Good thing: Sanders Hölsgens and Brian Glenney have a new book available for preorder on August 21.
From the description:
Skateboarding and the Senses traces how skaters use their skilled bodies to bring vitality to contested spaces. Building on sensory anthropology, the book draws connections between the diverse ways skaters move and their boundless drive for social action – from rebellious interventionism to a critical engagement with sportification and the Olympics.
Another good thing(s): Jenkem edition.
Ben Komins
You thought there wouldn't be another good thing?
Village Psychic
A... Washington Post thing: Tim Pool's Martinsburg DIY idiocy made the Washington Post.
But Pool’s critics made at least one more addition to the park. Amid the usual skate park graffiti, nestled above a drawing of Garfield the cat smoking a joint, someone spray-painted a message implying that Pool can’t pull off a skateboarding trick called the “slappy grind.” Their message: “Tim Pool can’t slappy.”
lol
A... Bloomberg thing:
Alexandra Lange
A good Ted Barrow in The San Francisco Standard thing:
Ted Barrow
Until next week… if you come across a neighbourhood cat holding court on its yard fence, do say hello. If it starts to lovingly ram its head into your hand with an audible impact, do provide it scritches in return. If you bring your face close to ask how its day is and it slams its face into yours and purrs, do stay there, forehead to forehead, for as long as it wishes. This is communion.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS, available April 1, 2024
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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.
