A free associative review
Let the new Polar video wash over you, David Reyes has been doing this a long time, Dern Bros. merch is now available in select Zumiez stores, is this skateboarding? Vol. 57, and more.
The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other things online that I cannot stop consuming and how it makes me feel, personally.
A free associative review
Rank: 1
Mood: 🐻❄️🌊
Sometimes it's best to let it wash over you. Maybe there will be words for another time, observations worth sharing once a moment has been had to digest. Or not. You could allow it to remain a feeling, an embodied sort of experience, and do as Pontus Alv prompts at the beginning of Polar Skate Co.'s latest feature, You Got It My Boy Jamie:
"Take a moment, breathe deeply, and dedicate yourself to the next 28 minutes of epic endless stoke."
Once those 28 minutes have elapsed, you may find yourself with a throbbing tangle of thoughts. Let them nest, overgrow. Visions of Emile Laurent as a werecreature, both surfing and monstrous, invulnerable, and oddly beautiful. The lilting wonder of a choir's ensemble rendition of "Just Like Heaven" pressed against Nathan Clancy's concussed existence, by which I mean, in the absolute best way possible, an aesthetic and athletic sense formed by pure dare; Jackass with an even more pronounced genderfluidity. Shin Sanbongi. Shin Sanbongi. Just say his name into the room around you and soon a wave will crash and Shin Sanbongi will be backside tailsliding its crest. Jamie Platt, a willow, whisping across continents to earn his way into a poorly punctuated video title. The nollie-360-shove-it has never had such a stage, such use, or grace. And there are others, of course, but this knot of feeling, this reaction to the sensation of what you have just experienced, should not be held to any standard of rigour or accuracy — these are neurons playing catch. Synapses throwing heat, that thwomp deep in the mitt is satisfaction in its purest form. Some call it stoke, you can call it whatever you like, it's just great to know that it's still there.
Not for the faint of heart
Rank: 1
Mood: ❤️🔥
David Reyes has been doing this for a long time. The Zero Skateboards professional has been in and around the industry for over two decades, existing mostly on the periphery. Tucked into the background of the "friends" section in Foundation Skateboards' 2004 feature That's Life (after Angel Ramirez's backside-smith grind, you can spot Reyes sitting among the crowd on the concrete bleachers holding a cloth to his mouth, one assumes to stem the bleeding from a slam he took that was later featured in 303 Boards What Are You Doing? [2005]), then pulled a little closer to the fore in the "Flow Sandwich" DVD extra of Foundation's Cataclysmic Abyss (2007), and eventually brought along on a pair of Thrasher Magazine "King of the Road" excursions with Foundation and C1rca in 2007 and 2010, respectively.
Despite a clear well of talent, Reyes has consistently struggled to find a home, sponsorship-wise. Almost to the point of parody. As he tells it in a recent "Portraits" feature for The Platfrm, about half of his approximately eight-year tenure with Foundation was in flow purgatory. From there, he made the jump to Mystery Skateboards, had an introductory part in its Color Theory web series (2012), and then the company imploded soon after.
"Mystery [and] Blackbox as a whole was kind of in a shit spot. I get a phone call from Jamie [Thomas]. 'I'm sure this is a bit tough. You're the last guy on.' And then I was just like, what? Everyone quit." Reyes told The Platfrm.
Despite the professional setback, it was still a formative moment, as he'd note in the YouTube description of the part's reupload on his personal channel. "I noticed around this time I was becoming more confident in myself which gave me more confidence in the streets. I began to push my limits and do things I never thought I’d see myself do. I am proud of this part and I am grateful for the experiences and memories that came with it. #skateboarding #skateboard #skate #confidence #selfconfidence #love #music #mystery"
Reyes continued on, waffling in flow stasis with Plan B Skateboards for some time before joining Dog Skateboards — not Dogtown Skateboards, to be clear — where he released another intro part and was technically turned PRO before the company shuttered just months later. Dog's online presence seems to have been scrubbed save for a few product holdovers on collector websites. Reyes, who has been candid about his troubles finding a foothold in the industry, uploaded this intro section to YouTube with the following caption.
"So I was in limbo with a board sponsor for what felt like a decade. I was asked if I’d be into skating for Dog and of course I said yes! Antwuan Dixon and Jamie Tancowny! No brainer. I’m friends with these doodes. Antwuan took care of me when I was losing my mind from the symptoms of a post concussion I received during a kotr slam... I was getting plan b boards and I was told along with Jagger and Leticia that there’s nothing they can do for us and if we got an offer somewhere else they wouldn’t be bummed if we took it... At the end of filming we decided to go to the bar to celebrate. Jamie and Reno got into a fight which resulted in Jamie getting kicked off. This was off to a rocky start and I hadn’t even been announced yet. Few months later Antwuan was going through some shit and within 6 months the plug had been pulled [on the company]. Back to limbo I go."
Reyes eventually found a roster spot on Torey Pudwill and Daewon Song's Thank You Skateboards, where he released a video part in 2021 that notably ended with a 360-flip-noseblunt on the famed Clipper hubba, an eye-opening reminder of not just Reyes' ability but his potential — that confidence and willingness to push at his perceived limits to see if they'll give way.
Then Thank You shut down at the end of 2025, once again leaving Reyes without a home.
"I feel like what was so difficult for me to get on a board brand — and this is all an assumption — I feel like [it was] whoever the [team manager] was. It all comes down to who's behind the fucking door and what relationships you build along the way," Reyes told The Platfrm.
It would be surprising if Reyes weren't jaded at this point, but he appears to be at peace with this lifetime of professional uncertainty. When recalling his next move, an invitation to join another Jamie Thomas-helmed company in Zero Skateboards, he told The Platfrm, "Damn, here we go again."
And Reyes does do it again, perhaps better than he ever has. At 36 years old, with over twenty years spent toiling in the charnel house that is the professional skateboarding industry, his Wild Heart video part, produced under Zero's banner and published by Thrasher on Monday, is far and away the best effort of his career. It is, at turns, technical, burly, and all the way through a demonstration of just how far Reyes is willing to take his skateboarding. His tight, compact style has not wavered with age, only refined. From every takeoff to each landing, he's poised, those decades of experience on display. It takes a certain constitution to stick around this long, to put so much into a thing that gives so little back, at least outwardly.
"It's never too late. I mean, I don't feel old. I'm definitely a little sore these days, you know, but it all comes down to the heart. If I knew I couldn't do more or push myself more, I would have just bowed out. But I have more in the tank. And now I can turn the burners up. This is the fucking the final cut."
Dern Bros. merch is now available in select Zumiez stores
Rank: 36.95
Mood: 👕👚
"Our merch is now available in select Zumiez stores," says Destin Dern at the end of the latest Dern Bros. "Spot History" video. It's true, it is. Type those keywords into your search bar and the swag will pop right up on your screen: a series of five Dern Bros.-branded t-shirts, each running at the somewhat surprising price of $36.95 on the Zumiez webstore.
This has to be something, right? Like a new way of breaking through in the skateboarding industry. Has a niche YouTubing collective ever had its signature product sold at a Zumiez before? Or in a skate shop ever? What would you even categorize this as, from an achievement perspective, besides rank commercialization? (No hate there, my Bros.)
Is this akin to a local brand elbowing its way into the market? Or someone turning PRO? Two-thirds of the Bros. are actual professionals, and they are more of an entertainment property than a soft-goods concern, so neither quite hits it. The universe of skateboarding experiences might be too small a reference base for this seemingly unprecedented happening. They're not quite influencers but they certainly hawk products. The Dern Bros. might be closer to a musical act than anything else — a band of people with a distinct look and consistent creative output who work tirelessly to monetize it.
Whatever this is, they deserve it. Whether or not the Dern Bros. content is for you, it can't be denied that they put in the work. The video above is nearly a half-hour-long variety show centred around a series of handrails. There's the spot history angle, interviews with two notable skateboarders with experience at the spot, a side story with a local who tries a trick with the Derns in attendance and suffers a gruesome injury, and, in what might be a new "Spot History" record, the episode features shoutouts to at least three different former professional skateboarders who have been accused of some range of sexual misconduct within the last six years. History is messy, I guess!
However you slice it, the Dern Bros. have earned their space on the Zumiez rack.
Is this skateboarding? Vol. 57
Rank: 3
Mood: 🥉
This week, after years of schlepping around to rodeos all over Canada and the United States (including Hawaii) to test his skills and mettle, my younger cousin got the call-up to the big show: the novice saddle bronc event at the Calgary Stampede.
He rose to the moment and over the course of three days and three rounds, finished in third place. With no point of reference for anything rodeo-related, I had only one place to turn when trying to contextualize his performance, which obviously made me wonder: Is the Calgary Stampede the Tampa Am/Pro of riding riled-up horses? Will my cousin's placement give him a Felipe Gustavo-style jolt to his career? Open doors to new sponsorship opportunities? Do bronco riders film video parts, too? I'm not sure. What I do know is that my cousin is also constantly getting hurt doing the sport that he loves, one that requires the riding of a secondary partner, whose procurement and treatment aren't kind to the natural world.
Following that logic, it's not unfair to ask...
IS THIS SKATEBOARDING?: Yeehaw!
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Emile Laurent in You Got It My Boy Jamie...
Some things to consider: "Man in viral D.C. Metro photo says he was ‘terrified’ as masked white nationalists surrounded him" by Christopher Wiggins in Advocate.
"Seeds of War" by Marianne Dhenin in The Baffler.
Good thing:
Good pod round-up:
Village Psychic
Posted by
Templeton
Tasty thing:
Noah McManus
Good goodbye thing:
Katie Heindl
Until next week… it's ice cream weather. Get yourself a cone or a cup and a scoop or a few.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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A collection of essays that I think you might like. The Edmonton Journal called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024," The CBC said it's "quirky yet insightful" (lol), and it won Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards.
Book cover by Hiller Goodspeed.
Right, Down + Circle
ECW PRESS
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I wrote a book about the history and cultural impact of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that you can find at your local bookshop or order online now. I think you might like this one, too.
Photo via The Palomino.
