In Hollywood, power goes by the name of ‘franchise.’ Commercial might lies not in a mere hit movie or seminal ‘streaming series’ — empires are erected around multi-part, multi-character, multi-platform content factories that can multiply their output via sequel, prequel, spinoff and reboot, stretching investments and payouts over a period of decades. Like any self-respecting species, survival depends upon the ability to contort and evolve with the times; in this, the brave and spiny Year of the Alpaca, Star Wars is offering spinoffs of spinoffs, whilst Spider-Man is involved with a tail-chewing ‘metaverse’ concept that is advancing through sequeling machinations. Elsewhere, bets are laid on who will next assume the titular role in the 61-year-old James Bond series.
In the bushing- and pivot cup-flexing realm, the best analog probably is the vaunted 411 Video Magazine series, which persisted through multiple generations of pros, spawned numerous spinoffs, and an attempted reboot that couldn’t turn back the tide of the Big Video age; a more condensed version of the story played out with the Digital and Logic franchises, and the Zoo camp’s potent but short-lived EST series. Transworld and Thrasher mounted their own video franchises, populated by revolving casts of skaters, filmers and editors, as the mag wars waxed and waned before YouTube took hold.
Deck suppliers such as Baker and Sour have structured their video output via numerical sequencing (with occasional spinoffs and crossovers), but the purest form may lie in the videographer-led projects that tie sometimes disparate sets of skaters or locales into a cohesive body, like Dan Wolfe’s ‘Eastern Exposure’ series, Trevor Prescott’s excellent ‘Seasons’ vids, the scene-defining ‘Sabotage,’ the pumping, nocturnal ‘Lenz,’ the ‘Chomp on This’ heir ‘Boys of Summer,’ the promising ‘Genesis.’ Thrasher over the last few years has provided launchpads for GX1000, Atlantic Drift, Justin Albert’s ‘Flora’ and Naquan Rollings’ ‘Roadkill.’
Whether Josh Stewart’s ‘Static’ series is at this point the longest-running in skating at over two decades is a question for the archival spirits rumoured to still animate the SkimTheFat.com URL. Besides the daunting prospect of the project spanning around half its captain’s lifetime at this point, one of the signal achievements of this, the VI installment, is how of a piece it is with the preceding volumes. WKNDer Trevor Thompson early on hits the vid’s cellar door quota, making them into a sort of subgenre of manual skating, and alum Steve Brandi unloads a bunch of tricks on a gap to subway step that has gotta be one of the more ‘Static’ spots around. John Baragwath, bubbling within the Chrystie orbit for a while now, has a lank-to-smoothness equation on the backside tailslides and other tricks that approximates Jon Nguyen, and Kevin Taylor, PA institution and a quiet master-class in how to age gracefully in skating, has a killer 90s-length part with a lovely backside nosegrind up a mellow stair set and a lengthy line through Muni, which reminds you that he’s been working downtown Philly spots for even longer than Josh Stewart has been doing these vids.
One of ‘Static’s great strengths has been the way it applies an East Coast-style approach to skaters and tricks ranging from the desert Southwest to European side streets, and it is in effect again with Chicagoer Brett Weinstein, whose tricks and spots seem to have been destined for one of these vids, with deep-tech bench lines and a crust-gnawing, off-kilter 50-50 ender. Jordan Trahan’s curtain-closer further shifts the scene to New Orleans, rich with spots and vibes, where he flicks and crawls up the perspiring walls to a slowly building ‘Hey Jude’ rendition, blazing a noseslide pop-out way over some steps and twirling one of his trademark 360 flips up and over a bumpy brick volcano. Theories has the physical DVD up for sale here.
Provided Josh Stewart’s weathered frame permits him to consider a seventh go-round, wouldn’t it be cool to see a woman skater like Andrea Bethke in the mix? Does ‘Static,’ for all its influence and quality, possess the clout to make names in montages cool again? Ever wonder what the world would have been like if Kevin Taylor had wound up having a part in the TWS vid ‘Free Your Mind’ like he was at one point going to?
Tags: 360 flips, 411VM, bail bonds, Brett Weinstein, cellar doors, Dem Franchise Boyz, Eznorb, half-cab crooked grind shove-it out, John Baragwath, Jordan Trahan, Josh Stewart, Kevin Taylor, prequel, reboot, spinoff, Static VI, Steve Brandi, Theories of Atlantis, Trevor Thompson, where's Zeb
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