Bill Strobeck earlier this decade helped to save skate video by rejecting the prevailing model of yearslong filming campaigns, budget bloat and too-long productions prone to crumplling beneath impossibly hyped expectations. Instead he went straight to YouTube, dug up archival clips and let the VX roll liberally on lurkers for three-minute snapshots that got more burn than some clothing and shoe money-backed full lengths. A few years down the line and steering his own big video, Bill Strobeck’s ‘Blessed’ got caught up in a lot of the same excesses, from ponderous slow-mo to a near-90 minute runtime that its creator requests be consumed in full. He’s still among the best since Baker at fusing the traditional video part with the recent ‘raw files’ fixation, panning around a few seconds before and after to let atmospherics elevate the trick — an approach that in ‘Blessed’ functioned best for Tyshawn Jones, situating him taking his lumps in the gutters while ascending to the tip-toppiest of pro skating’s tiers, with perfect, incredible hard tricks at the gnarliest New York spots in pricey, limited-edition pants. Like a gold brick smashing an abandoned storefront window, Tyshawn Jones’s skating feels imperial and commanding, brazen and loud — he’s cracking tricks thigh-high in traffic, hopping handrails with a backpack on, skipping pushes between tables in California, looking for ways to make the fearsome NY courthouse drop harder to skate. There is the street gap fakie flip, the switch backside lipslide over top of the Columbus Park rail, the silky nollie backside flip over the black hubba in Garrett Hill pants, the shifty incorporation. But the switch backside heelflip interlude encapsulates the dude’s late-2018 moment, chopping a lock, tangling with security and stacking multiple times on the way to an immaculate catch and euphoric push-away, packing into the van for the escape, everybody screaming their heads off.
Tags: Adidas shoes, animal husbandry, Bill Strobeck, Blessed, fakie ollie shifty, Fucking Awesome WWE, pants price points, range life, Supreme, switch backside heelflips we have knowed, trash can power rankings, Tyshawn Jones, unique camo prints
boil the ocean 
December 31, 2018 at 2:35 pm |
Amazing video part and year. Loved his pick as SOTY. Cut from a different cloth than the previous years rail jockeys. I’ll take a hard pass on ever watching the entire 90 min feature again. Lifestyle footage is not better than skating footage…no matter what Strobeck wants us to think.
January 14, 2019 at 5:14 pm |
while i am a big fan of your curation and writing generally, i can’t help but notice the glaring omission that is Nick Michel’s World Peath part:
for me, apart from the Chris Jones 365 Days part, this is what i’d like to see skateboarding be going forward. but y’know, just another opinion.