Fantasy approaches reality
Etnies PROMOtes themselves well, I'm in love with my local hardware store, the raw pleasures of the feed, Jake Hayes goes Double Tables, 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.
Old dog, new tricks
Rank: 1
Mood: 🐶🛹
Last week, I described the latest marketing efforts of "heritage" skate shoe brand DVS, a company that has gone through several rounds of different ownership, as suffering from tunnel vision. In that case, looking straight back to the past in hopes of figuring out a path forward.
This week, Etnies, another heritage skate shoe brand that has undergone a change of ownership, released a new promo video that feels distinct from anything it has done before.
That's mostly due to it feeling like a Matt King video, which it is, as the Nidecker Group, which acquired Sole Technology's staple shoe companies, brought King on board to work across Etnies and Emerica. Is such a radical departure (etnies PROMO is a night-and-day difference from 2018's Album, a video with great skating that gets lost in the uncomfortably hi-def, low-to-the-ground filming style of that time period) a better marketing direction to head than DVS simply hitting reverse?
Time will tell, but anecdotally, I certainly enjoyed etnies PROMO quite a lot. That has also been the general sentiment online. It's paced well and the skating is equal parts impressive, fun, and creative. Plus, the spots are mostly fresh and King's aesthetic touch, which can be positively described as internet-inflected, pulls it all together. You know you've got something different on your hands when Andy Anderson's repetoire doesn't feel out of place.
Longtime Etnies riders Barney Page and Nick Garcia continue to be unheralded in a way that is frankly baffling. They are the heart of this video, the pillars of this brand, and come through with the strongest sections. Kylie Frank also packs a punch, while Corey Glick feels at home on the team and once again in King's sights, and Werka Choromanska takes a bit to get going, but once she does, her style shines. Julian Lewis is Julian Lewis — big scary rails, left-field creative tech, and a complete willingness to put his one and only body on the line for our entertainment.
During this time of infinite content where the algorithm dictates so much of what we see and pushes "creators" to chase the same mercurial KPIs, turning most of what's on our screens into a homogenized slurry, there is a premium on standing out. Of doing something different. etnies PROMO does that. Can their product keep up?
Actually, you know what, maybe it can.
Etnies finds itself in an interesting place. The brand rebuild is well underway. Letting Chris Joslin, Ryan Sheckler, and Aurélien Giraud walk from the team seemed shortsighted at the time for a brand struggling for relevancy (especially when Joslin went on to win Thrasher's Skater of the Year less than a year later), but those names wouldn't make sense in a project like etnies PROMO or it's teased 2027 full-length Subwoofer (they likely also commanded substantial salaries that a restructuring company would be keen to offload).
Bringing on talent like Glick, who deserves to be championed by a brand and fits this vision, is savvy. Alex Forbes, a brand marketing manager at Vans for nearly 15 years, now also appears to be involved in Nidecker's operations. The Waffles' loss is Etnies' gain.
Speaking to an audience is one thing, which etnies PROMO will certainly do for many. Convincing those viewers to buy their product is another, especially in this fractured media and cultural environment where "brand allegiance" is no longer much of a thing. If a shoe brand as storied as Etnies can find new footing after 40 years in the game, that's a serious feat. They're off to a good start.
A top 20 favourite place on Planet Earth
Rank: 1
Mood: 🔨🎨🧹
It's in there, somewhere. Whatever you need, you'll find it on one of those shelves. At first glance — aisles overflowing with everything from bug zappers to zip ties to French presses to claw hammers to Dysons to big ol' stainless steel pots to every colour of paint you can vision board to a cute hat for out in the garden — it's overwhelming. But there is a method to what you might call the madness of my local hardware store. A place I've been going to for 15 years; a few employees have been working there much longer.
Energy-wise, it's like Cheers if Norm sat at the bar and ordered Phillips flathead wood screws. It feels good to be in there amongst all that and those people. I understand that it's a bit strange to romanticize a locally owned Home Hardware franchise, but walking into a place where nobody knows your name yet they all make warm, friendly small talk like the longtime acquaintances you are feels good, especially with the one guy there who loves to overshare.
Maybe my standards are low. Or maybe this hardware store is just that good. Once you've spent enough time in it, the space begins to make sense and takes on a new dimension. It isn't just a brick-and-mortar; it's a dependable colleague. Not in the corporations-are-people sense, but a place I can rely on for things little and big. This isn't a paid advertisement. I pay them. They give me what I need, like this suction cup with a little hook on it that I used to hang my stained-glass barrier, which has really tied the living room together.
Raw pleasures of the feed
Rank: 1
Mood: 📱💆
You know who else is sturdy, dependable, and still has all the goods after all these years? Zered Bassett.
Sometimes I let Instagram take me away on its current of hyper-monitized surveillance, which rarely presents me with anything of personal interest, but every now and then it does connect. This algorithmic success can come to feel like a mosquito bite you keep scratching at even after it gets irritated and inflamed — you know it's not good to keep doing so, but you can't help it. You keep scrolling. Which is an odd and long way of saying that the itch that I didn't realize I had and was more than happy to keep scratching was Zered Bassett clips.
Look at this guy. I remember holding an issue of maybe Thrasher or Skateboarder when I was a kid, when Bassett was first breaking onto the scene, staring slack-jawed at a sequence of him doing a rodeo flip at a skatepark.
What? Who was this person and why was this proto-Switch God doing shit like this that good? And here he is, approximately a quarter century later, as talented as ever. Much of skateboarding is Remembering Some Guys (in a gender non-specific sense). Names from our youth or modern fandom that either inspired something in us or, for whatever reason, stick in our gray matter, unable to be wrenched free, whispering, Pat Rakestraw. Besides the awe of watching an athlete perform at the peak of their powers, this is the best part of sports: remembering a moment in time you were witness to and lived through.
Skateboarding is different from traditional sports in that when, say, a professional basketball player doesn't get picked up by a team in the league and can't find another professional avenue to play, you generally don't see them ball again (it's also easier to fade away if you've made millions even as a bench player); when a skateboarder loses their professional opportunities, they might still be at your local park or uploading clips to Instagram. To be clear, this isn't to say that Bassett is over the hill; he certainly isn't, or that he's out of professional opportunities; he still has those (though he should have more); it's this active proximity, this readily available proof, that allows us to Remember Some Guys even harder than most other professional athletic endeavours.
We can genuinely say he's still good as hell in his 40s and deserves a spot on the roster. You can't say that about most NBA or NFL players. Pat Duffy is still skating like a maniac in his 50s. Maybe that's why skateboarding has such a hard time moving on from the past: it's always right there, accessible, active, and ripping online.
Fantasy approaches reality
Rank: 2
Mood: ⏫⏫
It took about 23 years, but the absurdist plane of skateboarding envisioned by Spike Jonze in Girl Skateboard's seminal 2003 feature Yeah Right! has very nearly been matched by the absurdist reality of skateboarding experienced every day in 2026.
In the middle of the late Marc Johnson's section, he appears to levitate off of the schoolyard asphalt and onto the top of two vertically stacked picnic tables. For those unfamiliar with movie magic, it very much looked like Johnson had accomplished something beyond the reach of mortals, which, to be fair, is something he had a long history of doing. This, however, was part of Jonze's invisible board/ramp motif that ran throughout Yeah Right! and saw skaters fly up handrails and to the peak of electrical boxes from flat ground, seemingly unaided.
Last week, Thrasher Magazine released its latest cover featuring Jake Hayes grinding the top of two stacked picnic tables, seemingly unaided.
Thrasher Magazine, Photo: Jake Darwen | New Balance Numeric on Instagram
There is no movie magic here. Hayes found his way up there without the help of a green paint-slathered ramp. While it looks like there is some discrepancy between the heights of Johnson and Hayes' grinds (with Johnson's being taller), Hayes has authored an instantly iconic moment in skateboarding, captured with the sharp eye such a maneuver demands by Jake Darwen.
It does feel a bit off and indicative of an emerging trend that a trick gracing the cover of a major print magazine has its videographic evidence released two days after the magazine in a social media post rather than in a Hayes video part or as part of a larger project. On its own, this is a tightly run marketing activation: Hayes cover goes to print, Hayes is surprised with cover, footage of cover trick goes live.
However, that does, in a way, make it feel a bit less about Hayes' monumental trick and more about the New Balance Numeric 340, the shoe Hayes is advertising in the clip. Obviously, product promotion is what most skateboarding media is; this just feels a bit blunter an effort than most. Imagine this gobsmacking 50-50 was the closer or penultimate trick in a full Hayes video part, a New Balance, or Deathwish edit, instead of a straight-to-socials post that's already, as of writing this, three rows down in New Balance's Instagram grid.
Of course, it's a fantasy to think that today's reality should be closer to 2003's.
You know what else feels as good as going Double Tables? Becoming a paid subscriber. Nothing on Simple Magic is behind a paywall, but your delicious legal tender will get you stickers and swag, go towards paying contributors for their great work, and put some dough in my pocket as I write these each week. You can also leave a one-time tip.
Pat Rakestraw in Black Label Skateboards' Back in Black (2006)
Something to consider: Destroying every Flock camera you come across.
Matthew Gault
Very good thing:
Another good thing:
here
More good thing:
A.J. Daulerio and John Saward
Good continues:
Zahra Onsori
Walker presaged last week's newsletter:
Walker Ryan
Goodbye, Dolly:
Natalie Weiner
Rahawa Haile
Niko Stratis
Yes, more good:
John Paul Brammer
Good Farran thing:
Good pod round-up:
Village Psychic
Justin
I'll be on the pod this Sunday chopping it up with the fellas.
David Roth
I'll miss this pod.
I just like watching Leo Romero skate, okay?
Until next week… the world can be cold but you'll find warmth in the embrace of others.
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.
