If you get birdies, you're flying
Jace De Tomasso soars, Ryan Sheckler stars in an anti-child trafficking motion picture, SLS becomes irredeemable, Primitive does GOOD collab, 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.
If you get birdies, you're flying
Rank: 1
Mood: 🦅🦅🦅
A few weeks back, I posited the Devalued NBD theory: that never-been-done tricks at iconic skate spots no longer have the same impact they once had. It's not universally applicable, as I noted at the time, but it's also hard not to notice.
Chris Joslin more or less claimed Thrasher Magazine's Skater of the Year award with a 360-flip down El Toro, but that is a unique circumstance with a genuinely compelling backstory attached. That Joslin also bigspin-kickflipped Wallenberg's big four in that same video part is rarely brought up. That could be because Wallenberg has been so thoroughly skated that its novel wow-factor has dimmed. Or maybe that stunt-forward, one-up-manship approach to skateboarding doesn't appeal to wider audiences like it once did.
This came to mind as last week, tucked away in a new episode of Thrasher's Mark Gonzales/adidas-branded series "Abnormal Communication", was hot prospect Julian Agliardi executing a stunning frontside-heelflip down Wallenberg. A trick like that, which is in my estimation one of the best ever done down those long, legendary steps, feels like it should be in the finishing salvo of a solo video part or a breakthrough section in a full-length.
The DNBD theory was complicated further this week when Jace De Tomasso was announced as Thrasher Magazine's latest cover star, earning it with a perilous switch-ollie over the Costco Gap. Despite the imprecise name — there are approximately 924 Costcos around the world — that massive leap and descent is immediately associated in the mind of most skateboarders with Ryan Sheckler, who kickflipped it in 2008 for the cover of The Skateboard Mag (RIP).
The spot is easily one of the most imposing in all of Big Ol' Gap Skating. Sheckler's kickflip was the last trick in Plan B Skateboards' promo Superfuture (2008), and deservedly so. To ride away from anything on this 15'+ drop is a testament to human will and ligaments, which is why it was surprising that De Tomasso's switch-ollie wasn't saved for a video part, but instead the centrepiece of a Thrasher "My War!" episode.
That's not to say this is somehow wrong; it just defies convention. The episode itself is great. It highlights De Tomasso at length, giving us a glimpse of his personality — an opportunity not afforded to most amateur skateboarders on the rise — and he appears to be a very excitable and charming young man. Sheckler plays the role of elder statesman throughout, drawing on his experience at the spot and as a lifelong hucker to offer genuine insight and nuance. He comes off incredibly well. Still, by tradition, a cover-making trick is usually an ender or penultimate maneuver in a high-wattage full-length or solo video part. Does De Tomasso's switch-ollie lose anything by being excluded from that?
What then is the value of an historic clip like this? Sheckler believes his Costco Gap kickflip is one of the defining moments of his long career, immortalized in print and in traditional video. It's too early to say, of course, but will De Tomasso feel shortchanged years down the road when such a significant moment in his own career is forever sequestered into an ongoing web series and not the highlight of a career-making video part?
The current media environment is such that skate videos are consumed as "content," countless hours of physical toil reduced to gruel shovelled into our faces through our phone screens day in and day out. Framing this NBD as an immediate "My War!" (usually the series focuses on big tricks from already-released videos) risks reducing it further into the realm of contentization like an Architectural Digest's "Open Door" home tour. Or perhaps it puts this single trick and its author into a spotlight it otherwise wouldn't have received. Time will tell.
There's also a third possibility to consider: De Tamasso has done a much bigger switch ollie somewhere else.
There might be giants
Rank: -4
Mood: 🧌
As far as red flags go, this is an odd one. You may have even missed it if you haven't been paying attention to the once creeping, now mainstream brand of Christian nationalism that has taken hold of an unnerving amount of the god-fearing. Religious faith shot through with faith of a different kind: outright conspiracy theories.
When Ryan Sheckler casually mentions "I'm filming an anti-child trafficking motion picture right now" in his Thrasher Magazine "VS" feature with Chris Joslin, that both implies the existence of pro-child trafficking motion pictures and prompts an immediate uh oh. That film, which is both in production and still crowdfunding (currently at $3,000,000 of its $5,000,000 goal), is called DREAM, and bills itself as "a supernatural thriller that tackles the real-life horror of child trafficking in the U.S. Inspired by true rescue missions and the camaraderie of classic '70s and '80s caper films, we explore the painful realities faced by both victims and their families, through a lens of mysterious hope."
If this sounds familiar, that's because DREAM takes after another "child rescue thriller," 2023's conservative cultural phenomenon Sound of Freedom. That film, starring prominent QAnon champion Jim Caviezel, is based on the alleged experiences of Tim Ballard, the former head of Operation Underground Railroad (now known as Our Rescue), an organization whose mission statement says it "fights against sex trafficking and sexual exploitation around the globe." Sound of Freedom achieved legitimate box office success, raking in $251 million on a $14.5 million budget. The film was buoyed by a major push from conservative media, the QAnon faithful, whose core tenet of belief is that Democrats and "the left" are a godless child-stealing and eating sex cult, and myriad evangelical Christian organizations that helped organize screenings for churches around the world (including the church my mother attends in rural Alberta).
The evangelical focus on this issue is notable and complicated, as Elizabeth Dolfi, "a professor of religion at Columbia University who has studied the evangelical anti-trafficking movement," told Slate in 2023.
“There’s something about sex trafficking, the moral panic of it, that seems to have captured the imagination of American evangelicals in a sustained way. It’s the kind of issue that’s difficult to say, I disagree with your stance that human trafficking is bad. They can point to this, over and over again, to say, This is who we are. We are abolitionists. We care about social justice.”
Molly Olmstead
Shortly after the release of Sound of Freedom, reports surfaced (and in some cases resurfaced) that Ballard's exploits, which loosely inspired the film, were exaggerations or outright fabrications, primarily to drum up donations and investments for his various projects. Ballard was then accused of misappropriating those funds from Our Rescue. He was later sued for sexual misconduct and human trafficking by members of his organization, who alleged that he groomed and abused them. One of the film's funders was also charged with accessory to child kidnapping.
Sensationalizing the plight of the vulnerable as a means to make money, and using it as both shield and cudgel against your perceived enemies who question your motives, is a tried-and-true strategy of the grifter.
Ben Pauling, who wrote and stars in DREAM, and whose dream apparently inspired the film (seriously), told the right-wing propaganda network One American News in 2023 that DREAM was following the blueprint of Sound of Freedom, and called it "the next child trafficking rescue movie" in an Instagram post sharing that "news" hit. In the segment, Pauling and the host decry "critics" who correctly tied Sound of Freedom to the extreme conspiracy theorists involved in the film and those who supported it. Distance themselves as they may, those conspiracy-addled people are clearly Pauling's desired audience and cash cow, as he's chosen to promote his project with the likes of career conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza.
Pauling also brought Troy Brewer, a pastor and head of Troy Brewer Ministries, onto "the team." Brewer is a right-wing Christian nationalist crank and conspiracy monger who broadcasts on Rumble and has a flair for the supernatural, once claiming that he saw and confronted a literal giant. He also claims that his organization has rescued 12,000 victims of child sex trafficking and targets of child sacrifice (drug cartels are apparently sacrificing children to the giants — who knew!). If you want anything approaching proof of that work, you'll have to sign up for Brewer's streaming service, ODX.TV, which costs up to $47.99 USD per month for access to "rescue stories."
Ryan Sheckler publicly and proudly gave his life to Jesus Christ after years of serious personal struggle and seems to have found real purpose through that faith. He is a true believer. But the line between belief and delusion is thin and the wicked will test your faith. As a professional athlete who has lived the life he has, he knows that better than most. It's unclear what speaks to him about these men who drape themselves in scripture but act like dimestore charlatans. In a May 2025 promo video for a DREAM fundraising event, Sheckler invites viewers to join him, Ben Pauling, and Troy Brewer to "help these children," presumably by donating money to the trio's independent film production. Sheckler, who has famously run into trouble making big claims in the past, issues another.
"It's going to be a good time... Jesus is going to be here."
Christ, that's irredeemable
Rank: XIV
Mood: ✝️🤖
Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a “limit” — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.
That passage is from Pope Leo XIV's May 15 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, a wide-ranging document "on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence." As with most of Pope Leo's recent letters, there is an urgency to the subject at hand, which is understandable; we live in urgent times.
When it comes to artificial intelligence — a term which has become a marketing catch-all that doesn't really capture the spirit or function of many of the products that smother themselves in its label — the angle of concern for the leader of the Catholic Church seems obvious: if humanity and the works of humanity become secondary to or subjugated by the fabrications of a machine, a machine that can be exceptional at processing human data but cannot be human, why would anyone be concerned with who created humanity itself? Pope Leo has refused to approve an AI-powered avatar of himself and consistently raises alarm about the labour and spiritual (however you want to interpret that) risks of generative AI, as he wrote in January.
In recent years, artificial intelligence systems have increasingly taken control of the production of texts, music and videos. This puts much of the human creative industry at risk of being dismantled and replaced with the label “Powered by AI,” turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts and anonymous products without ownership or love. Meanwhile, the masterpieces of human genius in the fields of music, art and literature are being reduced to mere training grounds for machines.
It's not a coincidence that the Catholic Church released Magnifica Humanitas on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which is subtitled "On capital and labour." Both address the immiseration of the working class and the erosion of personhood under new systems and technologies.
If you've opened a social media app or watched television in the last few months, the flood of AI-generated content is apparent. The risk of people becoming "passive consumers of unthought thoughts and anonymous products without ownership or love" is already happening, but most people cannot stand it, because any feeling person can tell when "ownership or love" is missing. It's also important to note that "AI" is everywhere not because it is widely useful or appreciated; it's being pushed on us to satisfy the bottom lines of businesses and the ideological dullards at their helm. Whenever you see "masterpieces of human genius... reduced to mere training grounds for machines" by the creatively void, it's as a means to reduce labour and capital costs, which can only lead to the most stupid shit possible.
If you must collab pt. 4
Rank: 2
Mood: 🐻❄️🐻❄️
Over nearly five years of writing and publishing this newsletter each and every week, I have spent a not-insignificant amount of time whinging about low-effort, poorly considered skateboarding brand collaborations. One of the primary offenders is Primitive Skateboards, whose business model appears to hinge on collabs with everything from Kikkoman Soy Sauce to the movie Elf.
However, if I feel it necessary, nay, a sacred duty to lambaste that doodoo, I must also be willing to be forthright, complimentary, and even encouraging when an offender does good. Primitive has done just that in its recent collaboration with Mehrathon Trading, a capsule collection celebrating the history and friendship of a pair of Ottawa, Ontario's greatest skateboarders, Wade DesArmo and Spencer Hamilton, who also happen to be professional representatives of Primitive.
Mehrathon on Instagram.
Sure, the toonie concept is a little corny for a shared pro model, but almost anything that tries to tap into a semblance of "Canadiana" will be. This is a nice thing. A good thing. They launched the collection at Birling Skateshop's Archives Block Party in Ottawa last weekend and it looked like an awesome time. Celebrating people, bringing people together, and selling some novelty products along the way? A collab doesn't get much better than that.
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Something to consider:
Nesrine Malik
Good thing:
Max Harrison-Caldwell
Another good thing:
Snack
That's right, good things abound:
Alexandra Tey
MORE good thing:
Ted Barrow
If you're in the area(s): I'll be reading at the launch of the latest issue of Geist here in Vancouver on Tuesday.
And next Friday I'll be heading to Portland for Adjacent. Say hi if you see me.
If you've got the means: Pat Gemzik, a force in Australia and Canada's skate scene, needs financial help after a brain tumour diagnosis. You can find his GoFundMe here.
Very good video:
Until next week…
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.
