Vintage

Avid LIVE Skateboard Media readers should remember the noise around the latest Traffic Skateboards (East coast pioneer Ricky Oyola's board company) full-length video release: "Look Left", as it wasn't without causing quite some waves amid the underground scene last year and we also jumped on the opportunity to interview team riders Mark Wetzel and Joe Yates. For the past few years now, Theories of Atlantis' Josh Stewart (of "Static" independent series fame) and Pat Stiener have had a hand in the image and distribution of the company, something in the name of which they just put up its first ever full-length offering from 2006: "Via", on their YouTube channel, in its entirety. Along with Josh's "Static II", that film is a true pearl of culture in that it helped shine some more light towards an East coast scene that really had never slowed down since Dan Wolfe's "Eastern Exposure" saga ten years back, or the Zoo York "Mixtape" video from a few years prior. Of course, Ricky's direction for Traffic had to be pure street only, straight from some of its best East coast representatives with a visionary eye for trick and spot aesthetics - something that's become a standard since, but those guys were part of setting that whole imagery! Namely Mark Wetzel, Ricky Oyola, Pat Stiener, the incredible Rich Adler, Henry Panza, Andy Bautista, Brannon John, Shaun Williams and some guests of choice along the likes of Bobby Puleo all make appearances. The twenty-minute format makes "Via" a perfect pre-skate watch, oh and the soundtrack is as incredible as the skating. Homework of a pleasurable kind!

Good ol' "New Spot" was the inspired, original local nickname of the location that later blossomed in terms of worldwide popularity under the other alias of "Pier 7", located barely a two-minute skate away from a then declining Embarcadero.

From then on, the most intense skate sessions would ensue at that place, gathering a community of die-hard locals taking their self-assigned duty to push the limits of tech and style simultaneously very seriously. Whoever got in the way of said craft mid-line would get his board thrown into the sea (Embarcadero wasn't far, remember), but the iconic skateboarding that went down at that spot in that era really is what the most memorable should be.

TransWorld SKATEboarding just dropped this recap of raw files featuring all the Kings of (that small chunk of) SF (among others): Henry Sanchez (of course), Karl Watson, Marcus and Lavar McBride, Rob Welsh, Mike York, JB Gillet, Pat Washington, Andy Honen, John Igei, Shamil Randle, Brad Johnson, Stevie Williams, Spencer Fujimoto... Most of the OG's are present and represent, under the form of slick, unaltered raw VX clips filmed and compiled by Victor Neyra, whose Instagram account you should follow!

All right, let's stir away from the "new new" to look back at a 10 years old part, that still look relevant in the skating it displays! So, back in 2007, one Masakazu Aiso was skating with more than proper style (one could mention JB Gillet and Shinpei Ueno without going overboard) and total class on the spots that are now attached to what has become worldly known as the "Japanese Style". With the ledge game getting back in style, have a look at how it should be done!

A reminder on one of our most intense character ever, and the occasion to watch once gain his part in the 1997 Time Code. A classic, if there ever was one… And if you are interested in learning more about Lennie's story, his old friend Dennis McGrath recently published the Heaven book.