SK8MAFIA 4 LIFE

SK8MAFIA released there new full length video free online yesterday and it's up on youtube today. Shit is extra ill!! I'm a subscriber of the school of thought that if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all. So I try to keep this blog focused on shit in skating that I'm stoked on. There is enough internet hate out there, and enough lame shit in skating to warrant the hate, but on this blog I'm down for only wasting my time on the good shit (which there actually is just as much of). Sk8mafia is the good shit!

I grew up in a small town in Canada, far removed from the do's and do not's of the oh so judgemental skate industry, so as a kid my perception of what was cool came directly from the magazines and few videos I could get my hands on. There was suprisingly a lot of kids in my town obsessed with skating (as it should be) and for about a year we were all obsessed with Shorty's Fulfill the Dream. That video and Toy Machine's Welcome to Hell and Jump Off a Building pretty much shaped my early skating (and for better or worse, fashion sense). It's only natural then that I am and always have been super psyched on SK8Mafia. Two of my favorite parts in Fulfill the Dream and quite possibly to the this day were products of the San Diego duo Smolik and Turner. These dudes are both the backbone behind the Mafia and I will always love their skating and anything they release. When I saw that they had put out their new video free online I was so hyped and couldn't wait to check it out. Once again these dudes come through!

The video opens with a tribute to the fallen soldier Cantrell. I'm not too sure who he is, but his passing is definitely tragic and saddening and as I'm sure he was important to the Mafia dudes, the addition of the tribute part was touching. Plus he really really ripped and had some awesome footy! RIP

After that, the next part comes at the hands (and feet) of the ginger ninja Jamie Palamore. Palamore is a sick skater and always has rad footage in the SK8Mafia Saturdays and in the AM video. Being a huge hip hop head myself I always love the music selection in Mafia productions, and Palamore's part set the stage for another awesome soundtrack endeavour. He skates to a Raekwon song and a classic blacksheep song and does some rad tricks. The back 5050 to sw fs overcrook in the opening little line thing is insane to the point I can't quite wrap my head around it. That's only the beginning however and he goes on to slay the rest of his part with crazy tricks like loooong front blunt on the up ledge into the pyramid bank and the back 3 into the yellow bank. The front 270 tailslide was probably my favorite trick in the part, sooo proper. He does lots of bluntslides and tons of ledge combos, but dude is legit and his part sets the bar high for the rest of the vid.

Lil B, the man, Fulfill the Dream alumni, Brandon Turner gets next part and it is straight up crispy. In my opinion it is his best part to date and has some of the gnarliest footage of him I have ever seen. I hate the word buttery but this dudes style really is buttery. His tricks are executed with such finesse and the way he catches everything is so sick to watch. One of the few dudes in skating who can actually pull of the white wife beater and not look like a jock. His opening trick the kickflip nosemanny to manny to huge drop off of the roof was nuts and definitely not something I'd expect from Turner. He doesn't land it but just watching his attempt elicits nothing but fear and admiration. His first line is straight Turner steeze and some of the most classic footy in the video. Treflip over the dirt gap, backside flip over dirt gap then switch tre flip grass gap, amazing! He has lots of tricks in this part I really wouldn't expect from Brandon, like his ender, the taildrop into the super steep bank, variety is the spice of life and it's rad to see people do something different.

Larelle Grey skates to Wacka Flocka and is super good. Jimmy Cao is a technician and does an insane amount of lines, all with crazy tricks and skates to sould man and CCR, two awesome song choices.

One of the few let downs of the video was the lack of AlkaSmolik footy. He only has a few tricks in the montage section but they are all classic Smolik and probably could of been released in any of his video parts without anyone really noticing. He loves the noselide shuv noseslide combos and loves the shorts, tall sock combo even more. It's Smolik tho so anything he puts out is rad!

Javier Sarmiento is super Brazilian, skates to a Brazilian sounding song and does a ton of crazy tricks on ledges that I couldn't even begin to keep up with.

With the exception of Turner, who gets best part based solely on his OG status, the next two best parts in the video in my opinion obviously go to Wes Kremer and Tyler Surrey. Kremer has been gettin a ton of footage over the last two years or so, and deservingly so. I think he has one of the raddest and most unique styles in skating, does everything with power and lots steeze and always has awesome music in all his footage. Dude has shit on lock. This part shares in the radness of his previous ones, and his skating is nuts. Hippie jump heelflip was crazy, late front shuv the wheelchair ramp even crazier. He shows he can literally skate anything with his huge gap out to nollie back crook down two part handrail and the amazing switch back heel over the blue fence. My favorite trick in his part, which really is super cool, is the fs 180 5-0 tap on the round statue, I rewound it like 5 times, classic!

And of course the ender goes to Tyler Surrey. I've known this dude was killer for a while now but I never really comprehended how killer. This part really does his skating justice and shows to everyone the insane skill level that this kid possesses. His part opens to the Senfield theme song which is hilarious and the tricks are mindblowing. His line with the fs 180 the decent size set of stairs and then quick switch flip the next set is awesome. He does a lot of ledge dancing, which although I can respect the difficulty of, I am normally not a huge fan of watching. This dude does it all so well and with such nice style that for once I can't help but find myself liking it. His line with the sw fs 180 up the curb then frontside noseblunt nollie flip out on the white ledge is silky and the back crook nollie bigspin flip out is the most flawless I have ever seen that trick done and by the far the best one I have ever seen, straight props! Like everyone else in this video Surrey does some really really cool lines, especially the long ass nose manny down the stairs up the bank and nollie flip the drop which is really original. My favorite trick in the video, which seriously made my heart race, I can't even begin to imagine how he felt while doing it, was the nollie front crook in the ditch while the train goes by, CRAZE!

This is video is exemplary of the direction I like to see skateboarders and skateboarding in general taking. No excessive party footage (party footage is good, but not a whole video of it, and the mafia seems to understand this) not a single energy drink logo hat in the entire thing, amazing tricks, awesome music, lots of laughs and a succinct communication that the dudes are actually having fun filming the thing. This video has it all and I'm backing it and the Mafia 100%! As winter approaches in Toronto its shit like this that is going to get me through a long long season

Kareem Campbell: Phantom Menace?

The highly anticipated first episode of the Epicly Later'd Menace series aired today and I have to say right off the bat I was a little dissapointed. That's not to say that the episode wasn't good however, my frustration stems entirely from the fact that there will be absolutely no Reemo appearance in these episodes. O'dell is no idiot and he obviously realized that the fans would be bummed about the absence of Kareem, thus he offers a disclaimer at the very beginning of the episode, wise choice or everyone would be anxiously awaiting the next episode hoping that Campbell would eventually arrive. There is still lots of Kareem footage in the episode though which is relatively redeeming (tre flip 50 the top of the picnic table was fucking crazy). In my opinion dude seriously had one of the best bs 180s in the history of skating. The illustrious absence aside however, the episode does not dissapoint. There is lots of previously unreleased footage of the Menace crew during their heyday when they were running shit in LA. The opening clip showing Fabian Alomar almost kicking the shit out of some random dude is classic and reinforces the fact that Alomar is and always has been a fucking beast. I love O'dell's analogy between NWA and Menace and how Menace was sort of the NWA of skating in the sense that they were the crew you didn't want your parents seeing. I was super young when Menace was actually in operation, but as a youthful hiphop head residing on the concrete streets of Toronto, Menace was very appealing. The popularity of Menace has never been based on the actual skill level or technical progression of the skaters skating, but rather it is rooted in the whole vibe of the Menace operation. They were obviously a super tight crew of dudes who had a ton of fun everyday skating and hanging out. At a time when skating was dominated by suburban white kids, Menace was a breath of fresh air into skateboarding's diversity. Consisting of a mixed bag of ethnicities, Menace was the embodiment of the the undeniable fact that skateboarding brings people from all walks of life, together in one place. Another influential selling point behind Menace was the insane level of thuggery possesed by each of the skater's, none of which was faked as the epicly later'd episode reveals. And although perhaps it was not the main focal point, the skating fucking ripped. The destruction of the gap to ledge at the First Interstate Bank were always my fav tricks in the video and that part has always stood out. The gap to sw back krooks was awesome. It was cool to hear the filmer Socrates talking about the spontaneity of the Menace clips and how nothing was ever really planned. A lot of the things mentioned in the episode were gone over on the Fabian Alomar episode of skatetalk, but it was extra cool to have the video footage playing over all the stories. Being the little guy in my own crew back home at the time, I was always a huge fan of Javier Nunez, especially after seeing him with the gun in the movie "KIDS" I thought it was so badass, and there was some cool footage of him in this episode.
The wait between Thursdays from now on is going to be a tough one. Good work O'dell!