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Although it wasn’t so long ago that I posted up my first Ode to Heath Kirchart, I’m afraid the unkindness of time has mandated my next one go up regrettably soon. The skateboarding Internets are all atwitter about the announcement that Heath will retire after his part in Emerica’s much anticipated Stay Gold. It just came out today and I have yet to see it for myself, but if Heath goes out at all like his part in the last Emerica video, This Is Skateboarding or better yet, his most recent part in Mindfield, it’s going to be a hell of an exit.

Unfortunately, from the sounds of it, he’s only got a handful of tricks — fortunately, a handful of Heath Kirchart tricks go a long way.

I seriously think this is one of the best video parts I’ve ever seen. But Heath Kirchart full parts tends to have that effect on a viewer.

From his last (ever?) interview in Thrasher about his decision to leave the pro ranks:

I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of hating skateboarding, and that’s what all this filming was coming down to. I couldn’t do it at the level I wanted to anymore. I’d just be out there struggling. You don’t skate as much ’cause you’re constantly sore. And then you’re not as good, ’cause you don’t skate as much, meanwhile the tricks get harder and harder. It’s a vicious cycle downward as you start getting older and older. At some point it’s got to end. You either lose your fucking mind or you walk away. 

Skateboarding could learn a few things from Heath’s approach to skating — sticking below the radar and then every few years, suddenly coming out with a savage assault that leaves jaws all over the industry decorating the floor. But skateboarding can learn a lot from his retirement as well. Not content to milk dry the spoils of skate victory won from so many brutal battles, he’s choosing instead to etch his legend status in the concrete forever. I picture him riding off into the sunset on a Harley, like a mysterious skateboarding cowboy in search of that next adventure… and that’s probably exactly what he’s going to do.

Peter Ramondetta is one of those veteran pros who keeps a bit of a low profile and lets his skating do all the talking — I respect that in a skateboarder. Nothing against the loud mouths out there, after all, huge personalities are one of the most entertaining things in this culture. Not to mention, the kind of wild, outlaw in the streets nature of skating creates and attracts those types of personalities anyway. But quiet dudes who handle their shit in a huge way, like Peter Ramondetta, are a perfect contrast to the Rob Dyrdeks, the Brandon Biebels, the Brad Stabas. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Staba, but lately it’s been for everything he’s doing but his skating, and that, like Brad himself, says a whole lot.

Peter’s greatness has been solidified long before his latest interview in Thrasher, but the sequences and throwaway footage they posted along with it did good things to stoke the flames of my burning man crush on one of San Francisco’s most cherished satanists. Gnarly with a heaping side dish of technical skill, what’s there to complain about?

All sequences and video courtesy of Thrasher.

Real seems to attract these quiet killers, with an impressive lineup of super-talented silent cowboys like Ramondetta, Dennis Busenitz, and Max Schaaf — even Justin Brock and HUF to a lesser extent. So you know the full video’s going to be gnarly with a heaping side dish of technical skill. Yup. Nothing to complain about there.

Skateboarding sure loves fire. The Girl camp in particular has formed a bit of a pyrotechnic legacy at this point, between the board-on-fire skit in Hot Chocolate, the explosive intro to Fully Flared, and now this, Lakai’s blazing inferno of an entry for this year’s Transworld Skate & Create contest.

The part has the level of quality you would expect from a Girl Films production with Ty Evans at the helm, and god damn if the 50-50 on the rainbow rail wasn’t impressive, but I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed with the concept. And god, it’s dark. Like, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem dark.

Compared with DVS’ entries from years prior, which had a different look and feel from your typical skate film, this is all just a bit too familiar. Considering this is a contest that’s supposed to promote creative skateboarding video projects, I just wish it had been a little more, well, creative. Sure, Lakai’s team has talent leaking out of their vulcanized insoles, and setting shit on fire is always at least pretty cool, but I’ve gotta say, doing something we’ve never seen before would have been a lot cooler.

Am I just a jaded grump? Probably.

Amidst all the exclusivity contracts, million-dollar bonuses, and other generally jockish shit infiltrating the industry, this Roger Skateboards part featuring the Wiskate dudes is exactly what skateboarding needs right now — a fucking dose of reality.

This is just solid, down-to-earth skating, with all the stuff that made skateboarding so attractive in the first place — camaraderie, creativity, and that little thing called fun. Sure, this type of skating might not land you a whirlwind affair with a coked-out supermodel or make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, but it probably will make you happy, and for a second there, I kind of thought that was the point? Anyway, it certainly looks more enjoyable that competing in the contest circuit, at least as far as Nyjah Huston’s tears over his loss at the Maloof Money Cup are concerned.

Remember when skateboarding was just something fun to do in the parking lot with your friends instead of going to class? These dudes never forgot. And clips like these make me feel good inside, not just because I can live vicariously through them and experience what having friends might actually be like, but also because it’s reassuring that not everybody who steps on a board these days is so single-minded about getting sponsored and learning how to backside 360 kickflip first try. Skateboarding is alive and well.

In 2000, Danny Wainwright set the current high ollie record, at 44.5″ off flat. Monstrous pop can get you far in the skate game, just ask Mr. Hufnagel’s new shoe company, but you need more than height to be a stand out these days. That’s not a problem for Danny Wainwright, and one viewing of this video of him skating in Barcelona for Clan, filmed and edited by Rich Smith, should dispel any opinions to the contrary.

Dude skates fast, picks creative lines, and he’s kind of got a British Rob Welsh thing going on, so that’s obviously pretty sick too. In case you were still trying to figure out the math, that’s really all you need to be a great skater (trade Rob Welsh for your stylemaster of choice, it doesn’t particularly matter) — should be easy, right?

Kenny Anderson’s one of those pros who’s been killing it for years, and yet it still feels like he doesn’t get quite as much credit as he deserves. Not to say that Kenny doesn’t get plenty of recognition; what I mean is that he deserves even more, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe his quiet, no gimmicks, down-to-business style is to blame. But that part about him killing it for years? Well, his incredible style on a skateboard is to blame for that.

Plus, dude drives a car that runs on used vegetable oil. So he’s not only a great skateboarder, but he’s also a great citizen of Spaceship Earth. And this Elwood promo featuring Kenny cruising around is immensely entertaining, which is to say, equally great.

Here’s a nicely put-together little video featuring some of Australia’s local rippers, shot and edited by Riley Blakeway. Names you don’t know aside, it’s a quality clip, completely devoid of any industry connection, but still boasting professional-quality production values. No logos, no advertisements, yet plenty of sweet skateboarding anyway — I think that’s what the industry types are calling a “free ride” these days. Kind of like the free ride you could be having if you got off the computer and went skateboarding right now… but wholeheartedly suggesting such an idea would be disadvantageous to me, considering I like it when people actually read my website.

The true power of this video is that it feels like a skate session with your friends, except everybody lands their tricks and the spot isn’t a bust in five seconds. So, it’s basically what skateboarding is like in my dreams, only without the part when you wake up and realize it was all just a bunch of brain lies.

Lovin’ the grip tape artistry on that banana board as well. A jealousy-inducing ride is somewhat rare in this culture, where skaters have been known to break a healthy deck just so they had an excuse not to try a trick that was giving them trouble anymore. Treat your board well, and … actually, it won’t do anything differently at all since it’s an inanimate object… but you’ll have more fun, anyway.

One of my favorite things about skateboarding when I was growing up was that even the commercials were still pretty fucking entertaining. Granted, now that I’ve turned into a jaded old man, I’ve found many better things to like about skateboarding, like how it makes you seem cool and scary to people who don’t know any better. All the same, skate commercials are still better than paying to listen to the Aflac duck’s blood-curdling cries on TV. Take this this extended version of the DVS promo found in Transworld’s latest video opus, Hallelujah, for example.

For the past few years, DVS has been putting out some really great edits, and par for the course, this one’s got a nice selection of tricks from most of DVS’ celebrated (and less than celebrated) riders. For instance, I haven’t paid much attention to Jimmy Cao yet, but the pushing in his second line was so proper I nearly held my hat over my chest for its duration. Attention will officially be paid from this point forward. But on the “celebrated” note, Daewon does an insanely sick tailslide on a fucking natural quarter pipe carved out of limestone or some shit, which is awesome, but somehow not even that surprising? You’ve worked too hard, Song, and in this life hard work only equals more hard work. Next time let’s see a kickflip in, slacker.

And speaking of favorites, Torey Pudwill is one of my most favoritest of skateboarding’s young bucks, so given the enormity of his last trick here, my ability to ignore Transworld’s latest release (which happens to contain a T-Puds full part) has been swiftly defeated. Although to be honest, what this clip really makes me want is another DVS full length — where’s that at, circus monkeys? Your job is to keep us entertained — the more entertained you keep us, the less likely we are to be out skateboarding, and therefore threatening your careers. Okay, that was a stretch — I could skate eight hours every day for the rest of my life and the only career it would threaten would be mine, since I’m pretty sure being a paraplegic by 26 would really limit my options.

This is a pretty great little video put together by Rob Harris, starring New York City’s secretive Slappy Cove. If there’s one thing I always thought skateboarding needed more of, it’s pirate references, so on that basis alone this clip scores some major points. But I guess it would be pretty hard to kickflip with a peg leg. Slappies might be a different story though, as the wise Eric Koston once said, “Slappies… it’s 95% attitude, you know, 5% ability.” Which I think means I have about 5% ability, and hey, that’s better than nothing!

In reality, this video could also be called “The Essence of Skating in New York City” — where low to the ground street ollies, slappies, and no complys still reign, uh, supreme. Now, obviously a lot of incredibly high level skating goes on in NYC too, considering it’s one of the East Coast’s primary strongholds of skate culture. However, when it comes to the daily experience of riding your skateboard within the city limits, this video is a far more realistic depiction than whatever Manhattan-based banger is in the mags this month. And that is a decidedly good thing.

The dictionaries of the future will be quite different from today’s. Due to advances in technology and simultaneously dwindling literacy rates, Merriam-Webster’s 2030 edition will include only this video clip of Levi Hawken bombing hills in Auckland, New Zealand next to its definition of “raw”:

He’s also probably the scariest looking human I’ve seen, ever. Which seems appropriate considering you’d have to be some kind of beast to handle those hills with such brazen ferocity. The last hill, complete with BMX torso armor, is kind of like Mad Max meets everything good about skateboarding ever, which has really always been the zenith I was hoping this sport would achieve. This degree of intensity is a marvel to behold — there wasn’t a single kick flip in this video, hell, there was only one ollie, but that doesn’t diminish the purity of Levi Hawken’s skateboarding by even the smallest percentage. You’d have to be a real prick to debate how hardcore this is, yet somehow I have a feeling that prick exists out there… probably in great numbers in fact. In which case, it’s a good thing that Levi’s trapped on an island in the Pacific Ocean. It just feels safer that way.

Time and time again I’ve noted the ongoing European invasion in the skateboarding industry. All those weird-talking, elven-looking smelly guys who wear shorts too much, coming over here and doing all kinds of mind-blowing whirly flips right in our faces, and taking advantage of our dying currency while they’re at it. I imagine it’s kind of how they felt about things when American companies started exporting tours to Europe en masse back in the 90s.

See how I dropped that improperly used French phrase? We’re mad worldly over here at Dedleg HQ, make no mistake. Cliché Skateboards is mad worldly too, with a team split between France and America, and a tour video documenting their recent trip through blissful España. That’s “Spain” in Spainish, for any of the ignorant ‘Merican dolts out there.

Although, I must admit, I’m not such a fan of Flamenco music. But that’s probably just because I’m an ignorant ‘Merican dolt.