Sci-Fi's fantasy

The visual language of Sci-Fi Fantasy's "Endless Beauty," VANSZA, FUCT, the best wheel-brand video ever? and more.

Sci-Fi's fantasy

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.

Sci-Fi's fantasy

Rank: 1
Mood: 💫✨

If you spend enough time online, in forums and Facebook feeds, YouTube wormholes, Twitter threads, and dead-end subreddits, you start to pick up on it — the visual language of the internet.

It is wry, absurd, often amateurish, either tinged or poisoned by irony, yet earnest in a way that most would rather not admit. Found footage as non sequiturs, fluctuating visual quality, grating music, and an awkwardness both forced and sustained are something akin to its grammar. At its core, it is self-referential to the point of cannibalization, an act both reverent and debasing. To use the internet this way can seem confusing, like looking a gift horse in the mouth and finding an endless parade of gift horses with mouths being looked into.

Born on GIF-laden message boards and in the primordial gunk of early online video uploads, that language was refined by genuine auteurs like Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, who Zohran Mamdani's video producer, Donald Borenstein, gave flowers to while speaking to Defector this week.

“Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are two of the most influential filmmakers of the 21st century,” Borenstein said, referring to the duo’s unconventional style of cutting, quick push-ins, and the general “roughness around the edges” that gives their work a real DIY feel. “More than anything, I just watch a bunch of dumb comedy. That's why wipes and whip pans and stuff are such an important part of the visual language.

You'll find that language throughout Endless Beauty, Sci-Fi Fantasy's debut feature-length video. Filmed and edited by Luke Murphy and Matt King, the online influences within are evident and a natural extension of what we've seen from the brand so far, under the art direction of its founder, Jerry Hsu.

Discordant low-poly digital animations, board graphics featuring semi-trucks overturning, a homepage video of Hsu confronting the business realities of running a company and self-combusting.

Via Sci-Fi Fantasy dot co.

Sci-Fi's fantasy is, at times, a bleak corporate hyper-reality, one that's not too far from our own. Crucially, for Endless Beauty, that idea and the visuals behind them aren't overpowering. They're level setting. This isn't "brain rot," an online aesthetic used to terminal effect by EDGLRD Skate in their unwatchable video, Point Cloud. Sci-Fi's fantasy provides a place for the skateboarding to live without actively obscuring it.

And that skateboarding is best described as dynamic, with each team rider distinct in their style and approach, yet meshing together in a way that feels cohesive. The shared throughline is, perhaps, that they are all unafraid to get a little weird with it. From Joa Field's technical combinations that are equally zany and impressive (irony taken earnestly?), to Akwasí Owusu's whole deal that feels beyond our current understanding of the physical act of skateboarding itself, Zak Anders sniffing out fascinating new angles to old spots like a tier 1 truffle pig, Max Garson showcasing through clips and b-roll that he knows how to have a good time, Gabbe Eliassen bringing his highly Instagrammable transition madness to the big screen, and Arin Lester achieving peak Lester with rewind-worthy, blink-and-you'll-miss-it flip-ins-and-out, you get an understanding of what a "team" means to a project like Sci-Fi Fantasy.

These skateboarders, through their personalities and on-board abilities, fit within, or more accurately, help express the brand's visual language. They are at times strange, compelling, and fantastic. A roster that Hsu must have enjoyed piecing together.

Speaking of Hsu, he does not disappoint. For a skater approaching his mid-40s, Hsu is not afraid to pay penance to the concrete. It is beautiful, endlessly. Particularly that ender, which sets the stage for the video's one-two climax.

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan Lay told me that he "took filming for this video really seriously" and "worked really fucking hard" on it, and that is obvious. He owns the video's most gruesome bails and some of its most astounding makes. Smooth, technical, fast, fearless, he pushes and endangers himself in equal measure. For Lay, who believes he's had a "middling career," I'm not sure how you describe his effort in Endless Beauty as anything but an apex.

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.

That said, the switch-backside-flip down the cavernous double set? He'd first tried that for Welcome Skateboard's underrated Seance (2019) but couldn't stick it. Some six years later, he rode away. So who knows where his limit lies? Lay serves as the engine of Endless Beauty, building on the relatively low-impact creativity and combinations of the preceding 20 minutes and kicking it into overdrive with a sense of purpose and heart that spills from the seams through b-roll and the sheer work rate on display.

Ryan Lay in Endless Beauty.

When we reach Corey Glick, we've been waiting a while. Not in this video itself, but in the years since he left Foundation Skateboards, where he established himself as one of skateboarding's premier talents under the audio-visual auspices of Don Luong. What would this new era of Glick look like? He was at the peak of his powers when he jumped ship. Now, here he is, closing the show in one of the most anticipated videos in recent memory.

It's a role deserved and worth the wait. While Glick isn't chomping rails with the hunger of his Tum Yeto tenure, he bridges the gap between the quirky creativity of the first two-thirds of the video and the rank gnarlitude of Lay. Glick spins 360 into separate grinds that will likely leave you, as it did me, yelling at the screen. We are witnessing the continued evolution of a skateboarder, one who grew tired of the old ways and found himself anew, culminating in a final trick that you must watch to truly feel its weight.

What Endless Beauty achieves, beyond being a good skateboarding video, is a goal almost equally as important: it establishes the brand's vision and how it will communicate with audiences going forward. We've received dispatches, gained glimpses through the product, but ultimately, the fantasy needed room to become big enough to get lost in. To believe in it. Here, Murphy and King, in command of the edit, give us just that. Its soundtrack ranges from the stilted to the sublime. The quick cuts and visual bobbles are bizarre, superfluous, and, at times, tender. It's all part of Sci-Fi's fantasy, spoken in that common online parlance, and a reminder that the internet is real life.

VANSZA...?

Rank: Hmm
Mood: 🤔

In the promotional video introducing the popular recording artist SZA as Vans Footwear's new, and according to Vogue, "first-ever artistic director," SZA speaks over a video montage of her concert performances, some canned behind-the-scenes moments, and polished lifestyle shots. One line stands out in particular.

"Maybe things weren't falling apart, maybe things were shifting into place."

If you've followed Vans' business trajectory over the last few years, you wouldn't be at fault for reading further into that. In May, I wrote in this newsletter that, "VF Corp, parent company of Vans, The North Face, Dickies, and Timberland, will be laying off 400 employees across its portfolio, including 82 roles at Vans, effective June 29. According to the Orange County Business Journal, that includes 'footwear and apparel product managers, buyers, designers, project managers across various divisions, a head designer of footwear and a digital marketing associate.'"

From those in the industry I've spoken to since, it truly was a bloodbath, with one Vans team rider stating that everyone they used to liaise with at the brand is now gone. Later that month, Vans would go ahead with its shoe release party for The Curren, "that included bringing hundreds of skaters, media, and influencers out into the desert to indulge in, as detailed in the [event's subsequent] YouTube recap video description, 'a broken full pipe under a chandelier... the sounds of yacht rock from a string quartet, rich caviar, and smells of leather scented cologne permeating through the air.'"

An alley-oop to god
Plus: Vans splurges on caviar while 82 former employees update their LinkedIns, Tacky produces the rarest of resources, Simon Bannerot reaches up to a higher power, and more.

Those layoffs came on the heels of continued poor portfolio performance across the board for VF Corp. Just a few days after The Curren release party, the conglomerate updated its shareholders that, as Reuters reported, its "fourth-quarter revenue fell 5% to $2.14 billion from a year ago, missing analysts' average estimate of $2.18 billion... sending its shares down about 11% in premarket trading."

Those results, and the press that followed, could be interpreted as Vans "falling apart." Is bringing SZA aboard, a flashy signing whose full scope of impact is yet to be seen or understood, "things shifting into place?" SZA, who has no previous experience as an artistic director, campaign manager, footwear designer, or anything of the sort, and who already has a successful and demanding career, is a left-field choice to help steward the brand at this critical juncture, even if the role turns out to be more publicity stunt than SZA actually getting into the thick of it.

Screengrab via Vogue.

It's a move designed to reach audiences outside of skateboarding, as SZA herself told Vogue.

SZA isn’t necessarily a skater girl, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t fascinated with the outdoorsy and adventurous mood of the brand. Since its inception in 1966, Vans has been a hit with skateboarders and BMX riders alike. Now, SZA is drawn to exploring that brand identity from a fashion perspective, and amplifying its legacy of inclusivity and community-building. “Skate culture is so paramount [to Vans], but the ethos of skate culture is what I think is beautiful,” she says. “There is a lot of perseverance, trying and failing—a community that loves to take risks.”
“I have this yearn to bring things back to deeply human spaces—AI is making me feel weird,” she says. “What I’m noticing is that people are yearning to escape—to go into nature and the wilderness. I feel like nature has poor marketing: I want to be part of the best marketing that nature could have, and be the best marketing for corny, cringey humanity.”

While confusing in the context of a brand like Vans', those aren't terrible sentiments by any means, and SZA could very well bring new creative life to the company. However, for Vans, a company that has struggled in recent years to create a clear picture of what its brand is or wants, especially in the skateboarding space, this muddies things further.

In October of 2023, VF Corp announced "Project Reinvent," which was designed to "help the conglomerate enhance brand building and sales strategies in North America. It also called for boosting revenue results at its Vans brand... [and] naming several new executives, including a new president for Vans and a new VF COO," per Retail Dive.

Is this still part of the same reinvention? Because right now it looks a lot like the same old schtick.

I think you should go have dinner and go to bed

Rank: 1
Mood: 🔥

Age restricted??

Best wheel-brand video ever?

This mouthguard is made is

Rank: -35
Mood: 🥱

Erik Brunetti, the founder and creative head of FUCT, the longtime streetwear brand with roots in skateboarding that has floated in and out of relevancy over its 35-year existence, shared some thoughts on Twitter last week.

Okay...

It's generally not a great idea to give too much mind to someone's purposely inflammatory online posts, as engagement is often the only intention, but it was surprising to see someone like Brunetti, who has genuine experience in these industries, give such a lazy diagnosis of their struggles.

Why are we pushing into MMA / BJJ? Simple, the skate and street wear industry has completely cannibalized itself over who’s more woke and righteous. FUCT has always moved forward. We started streetwear because it didn’t not exist to cater to people like us.

Spelling and grammar aside, how would these industries cannibalize themselves by being "woke"? What does that even mean? The term "woke" has long been a hollow invective to sling at anything and anyone you don't like when you have a baby-brained understanding of the world like the common Newsmax viewer. When it's deployed like this, at this point in history, it's also hard not to read it as explicitly bigoted. The current American presidential administration wields it as a cudgel against literally everyone who isn't straight, cis, white, and male, and anything that would impede or critique their fascist takeover and destruction of the state. Last month, the White House issued an executive order titled "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government." This week, the president stated on his personal social media app that the Smithsonian teaching the public about the horrors of slavery is "woke." Again, what? It is lazy, comical, and horrific.

If I had to hazard a guess, it's that Brunetti was reacting to the news that SZA had been named Vans' artistic director, which was announced the day before his post-storm. That move can rightly be criticized, as I spent a good deal of space doing above. Is Vans being "woke" or "righteous" by hiring a famous Black woman in a prominent, public-facing position? I'd say they're trying to cash in on her celebrity more than her creative vision. It's just questionable marketing, something Brunetti should be intimately familiar with.

"This mouthguard is made is..."

Something to consider:

Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war
Figures from classified IDF database listed 8,900 named fighters as dead or probably dead in May, as overall death toll reached 53,000

More Ryan:

Ryan Lay Interview
By Conor Charleson

Another good thing: Dr. Paul O'Connor with "a heady melange of ritualised skateboarding, mythic sculpture, and some grey space simulacra," for Everyday Hybridity.


A good BTS referenced earlier thing:

Selling Zohran | Defector
On a cool Sunday in November, a few days after Donald Trump’s re-election, Zohran Mamdani stood on a street corner in Jamaica, Queens, holding up a hastily drawn cardboard sign that read “DID YOU VOTE?” on one side and “LET’S TALK ELECTION,” on the other. It was just weeks after the 33-year-old New York state […]

Good pod round-up:

Skate Muzik w/Ted Barrow - Mike Carroll special 16th August 2025
Playing Classic Hip Hop, Hip Hop. Together with skater and art historian Ted Barrow we discuss the importante of Mike Carroll’s most seminal skate video parts. Straight from the city of San Francisco, Mike Carroll and the EMB crew created modern street skating and style as we know it.
Episode 107 - Josh Kalis | Ausha
Episode 107 with Josh Kalis, professional skateboarder from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Together we discussed his life and career, from picking up his first board in the late 80’s, crossing paths in the early 90’s with a young Jamie Thomas in Dallas, Texas who invited him to California and offered him a spot on the Toy Machine team, getting on Alien Workshop and DC Shoes and settling down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he and Stevie Williams teamed up to push further the concept of plaza skating at the already iconic Love Park spot, joining Stevie on DGK after 13 years on the workshop, moving back with his family to Grand Rapids where he built his own indoor park as well as his clothing brand “Silak” and much more through surprise questions from friends of his. (00:13) – Intro (01:13) – Romie Dennison (04:59) – Skin Phillips (08:28) – Jimmy Astleford (09:16) – RB Umali (12:26) – Mike Ballard (22:00) – Kelly Bird (27:09) – Jimmy Pelletier (33:25) – Tobin Yelland (43:26) – Jeremy Wray (49:52) – Karl Watson (55:43) – Kerry Getz (56:45) – Dave Ruta (01:07:00) – Ken Keistler (01:11:09) – Jimmy Gorecki (01:15:53) – Bill Strobeck (01:26:50) – Jerry Fowler (01:33:41) – Mike Hoag (01:45:03) – Troy Morgan (01:47:04) – Collin Slew (01:51:26) – Zack May (01:53:38) – Mark Appleyard (01:59:58) – Jacob Rosenberg (02:06:13) – Dane Vaughn (02:12:47) – Jack Curtin (02:20:08) – Ryan Gee (02:24:19) – Chris Carter (02:29:24) – Thomas Winkle (02:36:00) – Love Malmö (02:39:38) – Raul Navarro (02:42:17) – Ruben Garcia (02:58:15) – Darren Harper (03:00:51) – John Gardner (03:06:01) – Alex Carolino (03:16:20) – Flo Marfaing (03:18:35) – Brian Panebianco (03:29:21) – Conclusion For more information and resources: https://linktr.ee/beyondboards Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Walker Ryan On His New Book and The QS Anonymous Brand Survey. August 17, 2025. Mostly Skateboarding Podcast.
This week, Jason From Frozen in Carbonite and Mike Munzenrider talk with Walker Ryan about his new book, High Street Lows then about Mike’…

I'll be on this Sunday's Mostly Skateboarding episode talking Sc-Fi and some other stuff. Always a pleasure chatting with the gang.


An ancient discovery thing:

Scotland’s first skatepark to be dug up by archaeologists
A University of Glasgow team will undertake excavation and survey work at the former Kelvin Wheelies park.

Good thing about a bad thing: Policy researcher Daniel Stone breaks down the history and deleterious effects of private equity — one of this newsletter's foremost enemies — in skateboarding for the Center for Economic and Policy Research.


Until next week… there's never been a better time to get into baking. Have you considered pies? What about tarts? Imagine a crumble.


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.

Order the thing

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.

Order the thing