I feel like it’s an understandable obsession. You know, since he’s The Best. THE BEST I SAY:

As the story goes, Heath’s face was numb for three months after that infamous slam at the beginning of his section which, while unfortunate… isn’t that shocking. This is old news, but slightly more shocking… or perhaps amusing would be a better word. They’re not always the same thing, just usually.

Seriously though, I mean…

Heath Kirchart - photo by Mike O’Meally

I’m just gonna say it: total man-crush material.

Edit: D’oh… totally missed this and now I just look like an content-starved copycat, but whatevs. The hardest working skate blog out there, The Chrome Ball Incident, posted up a gang of vintage Heath flicks yesterday. Sheesh… they’ve got their own custom Nike Dunks, they beat me to the punch on retrospective Heath Kirchart coverage…

I think that’s supposed to be an impossible, but I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m less concerned with the actual trick than I am with the fact that The Joker is riding for Tracker. Dude really is deranged.

Hey Lee, if you like wallrides so much, why don’t you just fucking marry one already?

Annnd YouTube never fails to entertain:

Damn right. Sure beats the go-to, good-vibes, iPod-commercial soundtrack choices of late, at the very least.

Nonetheless, it’s really hard to go wrong with a combination of beer and jump ramps. Even the most unproductive of sessions are still practically destined to be a good time… unless someone ends up in the hospital. But that’s a condition that can be tacked onto the end of pretty much anything good to spoil the fun, kind of like “Yes, you can see the movie, but your parents have to come along and sit behind you the entire time.”

Make special note of the hill bomb at 1:50. Allow me to explain: FUCKIN CRAZY. Recovering from those speed wobbles with an incredibly clutch powerslide… well done, sir.

Palace is another foreign import, this time a British company, proving that it is indeed possible to get sick with the skateboardings even in a country where it rains 500% of the year. Following their loyalist brethren on Blueprint, their tantalizing output of late has reinforced my opinion that European companies are producing some of the most interesting skateboarding today. And hey, their boards are cool too!

Selected decks - photo via palaceskateboards.com

In New York skate photos, the backdrop of the city often becomes as much of a focal point as the trick itself. And rightly so.

Anthony Pappalardo - photo via chromeballincident.com

Frank Natielle - photo via chromeballincident.com

Alex Olson - photo by Mike O’Meally

NYC spots, even ones that aren’t slathered in a history of graffiti, always look good. And it doesn’t hurt if you’ve got a hunk like young Olson kickflipping over them.

However, I don’t know if it’s a just an HD thing, or a Ty Evans editing-style world takeover, but admittedly, it gets a little old when most clips coming out of the big camps these days are all super-slo-mo and seemingly cull their soundtracks exclusively from Pitchfork.com favorites. Granted, Lakai is more entitled to this type of editing than anyone else, seeing as they basically pioneered it with Fully Flared. And it’s not like this isn’t a beautifully put-together little piece… but it’s kind of weird when a short Internet video’s even shorter bonus section is moodier than Guy’s entire epic, two-song-tale-of-redemption part in FF.

I guess the whole treatment just seemed a little misplaced — what’s there to be so melancholy and sentimental about? Are these kids not in the prime of their lives, charging ahead into a dream career, getting paid to do the very thing they love and stay a teenager forever? They’re professional Lost Boys and this is sad because…? Sad because we’re not among them? Shit, actually, that is a pretty huge bummer. Well then

Click the image to play video

Click here to watch the video because they’re still on some 2001 shit over there and you can’t embed most of their videos.

They also recently put this weirdness out. And I guess weird is a pretty relative term, especially when considering these are the guys who came up with the Beez videos, but this shit made my teeth feel like they were vibrating long after it was over. And that can’t be a good sign. Or maybe it’s a very good sign.

Just another fine example of some raw street skating — which should come as no surprise considering Traffic’s dedication to that classic East Coast approach. It’s hard not to basically have it written in your mission statement when Ricky Oyola and Bobby Puleo are on your roster.

I am most pleased to see companies and skaters still putting out this type of footage. It was hot in the early nineties, and it’s still hot today. The East Coast style of skating is as enduring as style in skating itself. There’s a reason it will never completely fade from view, no matter how lost the industry gets along the way, and that’s because, fundamentally, this is what wild skateboarding is supposed to look like in its natural habitat.

In case you missed it as well…

A couple weeks ago, DVS put out this pretty insane tribute/promotional video for Daewon Song’s new DVS x Almost collaboration sneaker. Pink shoes aside, if I had to pick one pair of legs in the wide world of skateboarding to cybernetically fuse to the bottom of my torso, I’d have to go with Daewon Song’s. Now, I don’t know precisely the condition his thighs are in, and whether or not he suffers from “cottage cheese butt”. I understand this is a condition a significant portion of the population spends some time agonizing over. However, it’s a risk I’m willing to take for the gift of being able to do whatever the fuck I ever wanted to on a skateboard, frankly.

The video starts with Daewon attempting to recreate his legendary part in World Industries’ 1992 video, Love Child — famous for containing the first hardflip ever documented… and in those pants! Daewon screws up at the end of the second mega-line, but it’s alright, because he spends the rest of the video making up for his shortcomings by splitting the very fabric of skateboarding in two.

The amount of truly obscene tricks that occur in this video is just mind boggling. But the appropriate response would not be to cover your eyes or those of your children — indeed, don’t dare blink, for each second of this clip contains staggering levels of skateboarding proficiency that will require multiple, complete viewings to fully understand. In fact, my retinas were so severely seared by the acrobatics herein, that smoke is still pouring out of my eye sockets. For real, smoke is actually coming out of my eyes right now. Leave it to Daewon Song to attempt to recreate an epic video part, “fail” in doing so, and end up with something entirely new AND STILL epic.