Endless fantasy
Ryan Lay on Sci-Fi Fantasy's "Endless Beauty," the TJ Rogers world tour, Nick Matthews is (finally) PRO, some rolled ankles, 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.
Endless fantasy
Rank: 1
Mood: ♾️💅
It may be difficult to imagine that something so many are eager to see, something with "beauty" in its name, could be such torturous viewing for the people involved.
"It's a certain type of punishment to have to watch a video you worked really hard on over and over and over... it's gnarly. I'm only two premieres in, and I'm already losing my mind a little bit." Ryan Lay told me over the phone late Monday night.
He and the Sci-Fi Fantasy team were in Chicago ahead of the third stop on their premiere tour for the company's debut full-length feature, Endless Beauty. The first showing was an invite-only affair at Brain Dead Studios in Los Angeles. Minneapolis' Familia skate shop would host the second, with stops at Orchard in Boston on Thursday, and visits to Austin, Tempe, and Portland to come.
The idea of a "premiere tour," let alone a seven-city showcase, is a rarity in skateboarding's contemporary media landscape, where most high-profile videos, if they're lucky, get one night on the big screen before being uploaded to the internet and lost in the ether. It was uncommon even in the days of yore, when hardgood brands still had budgets. Lay would note that this is the first premiere tour he has been on in a career that spans decades.
In fact, if it weren't for a generous benefactor, there would be no Endless Beauty tour. Wip, a self-described "innovative energy brand" that appears to be Zyn for the tired, and whose VP of Sales is former longtime Converse Cons strategy lead Will Campbell, stepped in to help out.
Knock the world's first and leading energy pouch brand if you must, but this is the reality of the state of things, and Wip's largesse has made a good thing possible. It also makes sense for Sci-Fi Fantasy to do what it takes to make the tour happen. Endless Beauty is one of the most anticipated releases in recent memory, and Sci-Fi Fantasy has managed its brand and hype exceedingly well, however casual or left field its approach seems at times.
From its early success as Jerry Hsu's keep-busy side project that his wife encouraged him to take up so he'd stop moping around the house, to making it through unscathed after getting the Kardashian rub, and Hsu finally deciding to put together a team after Arin Lester suggested he start producing boards and thus became Sci-Fi Fantasy's first official rider, it has not been an overly calculated evolution. The brand found its footing naturally, at Hsu's pace and direction, which has likely contributed to it resonating in the way it has.
People can tell when something is forced. That doesn't mean effort wasn't put in, mind you. For Lay, that's why he's "losing his mind": he can't not put his entire self into a project.
"I don't think you realize this until you're older, that you actually get very few opportunities to try really hard in a video that a lot of people want to see..."
"Working on a full-length video is such a fucking emotional thing for me now that I'm scared to do it again. I've been through a lot in life in the last couple of years, and it's been really challenging. I'm feeling all sorts of crazy catharsis from finishing this, even though it feels like a beginning of sorts for the brand."
One can imagine that fear comes from hard-earned experience, a lifetime of putting one's body on the line for clips and videos.
"[I] have worked on some projects that I was really excited about and some that I was less so. It's a weird thing, but I don't think you realize this until you're older, that you actually get very few opportunities to try really hard in a video that a lot of people want to see and that you think will meet expectations or at least approach expectations," said Lay.
For some of his fellow Sci-Fi Fantasy teammates, this is the first major video project they've been a part of. While Lay balked at the suggestion that he plays a leadership role for those younger members of the roster, he hopes that, ideally, he leads by example.
"If there's a takeaway, [it's showing] people that working hard is important if you want to do things that you're proud of... I took filming for [this] video really seriously and tried to instill in people what it feels like to be a part of something that people will talk about a few years from now. I don't know if that will happen with [Endless Beauty], but it's a really special thing to be a part of a full-length video. If you grew up in the internet generation, the social media generation, I don't know if that still carries weight."
It does for at least one member of the social media generation.
"[One of] the people I filmed with most intimately is Joa [Field, a.k.a Gifted Hater]. I'm really proud of Joa for really, really trying hard. I watched him go back to spots three, four times. He filmed several clips in the last week, jumping down stuff, even though he doesn't feel comfortable doing that."
And if there's anyone who understands the importance of a full-length video, it's Jerry Hsu.
"Jerry did not phone in the shit that he filmed. I've watched him eat so much shit and battle things. He pulled through hard over the summer when we were finishing the video."
Endless Beauty is a project that has been two and a half years in the making. Lay says filming probably started, unofficially, during the first iteration of Slow Impact, the skateboarding conference he organizes in his home base of Tempe, Arizona. He remembers sitting in an Airbnb with the slowly forming Sci-Fi team and watching Corey Glick's Foundation Skateboards video parts with the crew, debating whether they should put him on (spoiler: they did).
Now, Sci-Fi Fantasy is comprised of Hsu, Lay, Lester, Field, Glick, Max Garson, Akwasí Owusu, Zak Anders, Gabbe Eliassen, plus filming and editing duo Luke Murphy and Matt King.
If that many people and that much time, effort, and care go into a project, you want people to see it, to connect with it, and hopefully remember and return to it. In our current media environment, nothing tends to stick for long. It takes work to make memories.
During the first few stops of the tour, fans brought copies of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon and a VHS cassette of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris for the Sci-Fi Fantasy team to sign. One person forgot to bring something that the team could put pen to, so they got them to sign their pants, writing afterwards in a social media post:
"So hyped on tn ❤️🔥 Thank you @sci.fi.fantasy for coming thru & leaving inspiration."
Nick Matthews is PRO AF
Rank: 1
Mood: ⌚👈
Finally, Jesus Christ.
The TJ Rogers world tour
Rank: 1
Mood: 🫶 🌐
It's been a big week for honest-to-goodness in-the-flesh promotion. From the Sci-Fi Fantasy's Endless Beauty premiere tour happening as you read this to éS Footwear announcing a 20-day, 13-stop, 7-country world tour to launch TJ Rogers' signature shoe, there is, at least in this particular newsletter, a noticeable uptick in skateboarding companies hitting the road. It rules.
One of the popular theories bandied about regarding the skate industry's current struggles is that brands are no longer meeting audiences where they are, in this sense, physically. Instead, they rely too heavily on the ease of social media to get their messaging across. To some degree, tours and demonstrations feel antiquated, but they remain one of the most powerful marketing tools in skateboarding.
If you're a young skateboarder and a van full of your favourites — and names you didn't know but will soon — pulls up to your local skatepark and sets it ablaze, those are scenes that will stick with you for life and help create positive sentiment with the visiting brand. I still remember fondly an Emerica tour that came through Castlegar, BC, in 2005 or so — a Canadian Emerica tour, as in the shoe brand's sub-roster of Canadian riders. Antoine Asselin's board shot out and hit me in the shin that day. Memories.
Kudos to éS for making Rogers' shoe a big deal. Because if the brand doesn't treat it as such, why would the purchasing public?
Was it worth it?
Rank: 2
Mood: 🦵🩹
Over the weekend, I spent exactly four hours and twenty minutes attempting a single trick on my skateboard. The time was clocked by my friend, a saint, who filmed and watched the minutes ooze past like mud as I tried and failed to ride away.
At somewhere around the two-and-a-half-hour mark, I rolled my ankle. In the way that rolled ankles often feel with their sharp and shocking immediacy, my initial reaction was one of dire acceptance: it's broken. Not only would I be unable to walk, but more importantly, I couldn't get my trick. I waited, supine on the grimy concrete and looked up into the clouds until the shock wore off. Then I got up, limped around, assessed the damage, ate a bite of muffin, and kept trying. The ball joint wasn't in a great state, and my balance was off when I pushed, but it functioned well enough, so why not put it back to work?
This was the second time I'd come to this barrier to try this trick. During the first outing, I assumed it would come easy, a warm-up for other fanciful ideas. It did not. After four hours, we left empty-handed, getting ice cream on the way home as a salve.
Pushing yourself to physical exhaustion and your friends' patience to a breaking point just to get a clip for a video that a few hundred people might see was still fun, though. Right? The video proof you were out there, that you find meaning in what is, from any other vantage, meaningless. There's something moving in that. Or sad. Again, depends on how you view it.
Viewpoints can change. Was this trick that we would collectively spend over a full workday running at and filming worth it? My friend wisely asked that question after I rolled my ankle for a second time that day. The only counterargument I had was that I could still stand and I didn't want to have to come back a third time. So I kept trying.
I began promising "last tries," which, if you've ever reached that point, is a state of sweaty desperation. Just ten more. After those expired, a final three, I promise. On the last one of those, I landed on the board and fell off, so of course I was granted two more attempts. Somehow, after the extended personal hell I put myself and my friend through, I managed to make the last try of the very last tries work.
The relief was immediate and a mild euphoria crackled between us as we watched the footage — we got something.
Afterwards, I wondered if there was anything to take away from this experience. What I thought would be relatively simple had caused a not insignificant amount of suffering. Were there any learnings in that? Was it a character-building exercise? A show of determination, selfishness, or stupidity? Most pressingly, had I camped out too long? In the end, was it worth it? I wasn't sure, but as I hobbled around my apartment this week, I reminded myself that at least one thing was for certain: we got a clip.
Something to consider:
Harry Davies
Good thing:
Navied Mahdavian
Another good thing:
Ben Komins
More good thing? Yes:
George Cutright
That's right, even more good thing:
THE WAR REPORT
They said it wasn't possible, but here's another good thing: Walker Ryan's new novel, High Street Lows, is available now.
Old Friends Luxury Equipment
Walker Ryan
Holy shit, another good thing:
Good thing about a bad thing:
Zachariah Webb
Until next week… go watch The Naked Gun reboot. Or Endless Beauty if there's a premiere in your area. Hell, why not both?
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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My new collection of essays is available now. I think you might like it. The Edmonton Journal called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024." The CBC said it's "quirky yet insightful." lol.
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.
