This is why you are here
OG oh my, the ROI on NBDs, Kenny Reeds, Nyjah Huston cracks his skull again, 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.
This is why you are here
Rank: 1
Mood: 🏀🗽
"Why the fuck are you even here?" A distraught New York Knicks fan shouted at another patron of the Vancouver-area bar and pizza parlour who had the temerity to cheer as the San Antonio Spurs continued to bludgeon the Knicks in the first half of Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday.
At first, it appeared to be good-natured ribbing, but it was not. "I'm from New York. This is a Knicks bar." She was right about that. The servers all wore Jalen Brunson jerseys. New York City-centric paraphernalia hung on the walls all around us. Framed New Yorker covers haloed the Knicks fan as she excorciated the man. "Get. The. Fuck. Out."
Later, she would suggest to the room that someone ought to "Tonya Harding" Victor Wembanyama, just like she wanted someone to "Tony Harding" Reggie Miller in the '90s. If Taylor Swift was going to sit courtside in her novelty Knicks t-shirt, she should do it to earn her keep. "She's an evil person," anyway.
In the second half, when the Knicks started to mount what became an historic comeback — the biggest in NBA Finals history, unbelievable if it hadn't actually happened — Knicks fan became animated by that daemon born from a lifetime of dedication to a franchise that's known mostly anguish, jumping up and rushing out of the establishment to watch the television screen through the front window as if it were a protective barrier from whatever heartache must lay ahead, before screaming with delight, rushing back inside, and squeezing various members of our table when Karl Anthony-Towns and Brunson hit ever-so-clutch threes.
Is it a coincidence that this comeback and the Spurs' collapse began after Spurs fan took Knicks fan's advice and left at the half? Who's to say, but it did. Her eyes began to well when it became a two-possession game, running over and down her cheeks when a floater from Brunson gave the Knicks their first lead of the game at 1:22 left in regulation. When OG Anunoby's hand cut through the air, which was just thick with desire at Madison Square Garden, to get a putback on a Brunson three that bounced off the rim to retake the lead and win the game in a moment of pure athletic glory reserved for schoolyard tall tales and ancient Greek mythology, Knicks fan ascended as the New York City-themed Vancouver pizza joint descended into pandemonium.
Via ESPN
To witness such radiant joy spread across a room like buckshot is special, rare, and easy to romanticize — and sometimes you need to do just that. Let it tear right through you as you scream "suck a dick" at the screen at your perceived enemies, like Knicks fan did as she wept. That emotional payoff is what gives sports their light. It's also what makes them so lucrative and easy to corrupt. There's nothing else like whatever this is; this is why we are here.
For the sake of, let's call it our souls, allow yourself to enjoy these moments. Push any cynicism aside for a bit. Also, leave the stoicism at home. Anunoby has enough for the rest of us, stonefaced telling the assembled media post-game that what he'd just accomplished, this monumental feat that meant so much to so many that the streets of New York City were chanting his name — as were the patrons of a NY outpost in Vancouver, British Columbia — "feels cool."
Indeed.
NBD ROI
Rank: 📈📉
Mood: 🤔
Reputationally speaking, what is the current market value of a Never-Been-Done trick at one of skateboarding's longstanding, career-making spots? It depends on the maneuver, of course, and who is doing it, obviously — the story of Carlos Ruiz will always linger in these conversations — but it does seem like the ROI on high-wattage NBDs is slipping.
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.
Admittedly, that line of thinking seems antiquated. What appears to matter most in our current contextless media environment where clipping reigns, is getting the footage out so it can be shared piecemeal on social media. But is that even an effective promotional practice anymore? Anecdotally, the only places I saw Agliardi's frontside-heelflip from "Abnormal Communication" reposted online were the Instagrams of Thrasher, Quartersnacks (where it rightfully topped the #QSTOP10), and his sponsors. As of writing this, Agliardi himself hasn't shared the make from the video proper; instead, collab-posting on an Instagram carousel with photographer Eric Palozzolo and a selfie angle from Karl Watson (which, if we're being fair, is awesome).
It certainly doesn't hurt to frontside-heelflip Wallenberg, and it only adds to the quickly growing portfolio of 16-year-old Agliardi, but do upstart skaters in positions like his need these tricks to establish themselves anymore? And do we as an audience care about them? What does that future look like? If the value of the NBD depreciates apace, their final resting place will be as an addendum in the comment section of a Dern Brothers' spot history video.
It has been written
Rank: 2
Mood: 👶👨👶👨👶👨
Kenny Reed I in Static II
You're telling me there's another Kenny Reed who is a very, very good sponsored skateboarder? With billions of people on this planet, a little title overlap is bound to happen, but this does appear to follow a pattern of sorts. Are these Kenny Reeds this era's Tom Knoxs? That would imply the existence of another unique multi-generational same-skater-name duo in a few years' time. In 2032, will a second Nelly Morville break onto the scene? Will 2040 see a new Zion Effs or Trae The Tank? Much to consider as I fill out space in this week's newsletter.
Thru the torture and pain
Rank: -🧠
Mood: 🤕
Nyjah Huston cracked his skull again. Roughly five months after a catastrophic head injury that sent him to the ICU, he returned with a fractured jaw, cheekbone, and lacerated kidney. In an Instagram post announcing the grievous injury, Huston addressed what he assumed would be the criticism masked as concern coming his way.
I’m sure there’s tons of people see this happen again and think “damn this dudes an idiot and never learns his lesson” or the classic “ Told ya you shoulda started wearing a helmet.” Those are the people that don’t understand the minds of us skateboarders and how dedicated we can be. We don’t put ourselves thru the torture and pain for money or to prove anything. We do it because it fuels our daily life.
There is truth to that. Risk is a part of the bargain we all make when we step on a skateboard. It can make the act of skateboarding more exciting for the individual and harden one's resolve when we find ourselves on the losing end. It's ultimately a choice one makes in exchange for whatever it is one gets out of skateboarding.
However, Huston is literally doing it for the money. That is his career. He is one of the most professionally and, one assumes, financially successful skateboarders of all time because he puts his livelihood on the line in ways the purchasing public finds entertaining enough to buy products with his name on them. Because of that, Huston is of a stature that he can even monetize his most traumatic injuries. Following his accident in December, he sold a pro model skateboard featuring an X-ray of his cracked skull. Barely a week after posting from his hospital bed last month, Huston shared a carousel on Instagram that features a screenshot of his most recent head-first dive into the concrete, followed by images promoting his new fragrance line and Monster Energy.
There's a surreality to watching the humanity of that skateboarding truth Huston wrote about being stripped away by the human experiencing it and shuffled among various branded partnerships. Or, there should be, anyway. That's just the way things are now. Here's what I wrote following Huston's first concussive slam and the footage getting shared on social media by a stranger.
What makes Huston's injury all the more disquieting is that the footage appears to have been taken by a bystander, who then uploaded his near death to social media, where it went viral. The cruelty of the injury is compounded by the cruelty of contemporary society, where someone else's trauma becomes not just your content but an opportunity.
Huston now appears to have recognized that opportunity himself.
To twist Baudrillard, and also reference him in a time he astutely presaged, you might call this the triumph of the virtual over the real. "At a certain speed, the speed of light, you lose even your shadow. At a certain speed, the speed of information, things lose their sense," he wrote in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. The speed of content has separated us from our shadow and our senses.
Thankfully, Huston survived, and this incident becomes another of the countless reminders of the risks these skateboarders — professional athletes — take for our entertainment. Many for little to no pay. Huston is one of the few pro skateboarders who has done well enough that he could step away after something like this and make do financially. It would be understandable. Advisable. He can afford healthcare. Not everyone is so lucky.
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Something to consider: "'Unbelievable how accurate': How paid influencers hype Polymarket's odds" by Jason Beeferman, Maya Kaufman, Jessie Blaeser and Declan Harty for Politico.
Good thing:
Walker Ryan
Another good thing:
Anthony Pappalardo
A G.R.A.T.E. thing:
Sacco in Equator:
Where the wild directors are: 'sletter friend Farran Golding will be in conversation with Spike Jonze for BFI Southbank's Push Play season.
Ruby Lilley is on one:
More basketball:
Kaitlyn Schwanemann
Katie Heindl
Good book thing: Don Luong has a new photobook that looks beautiful and you can order it here.
Another book thing: Isaac Bjorke reviewed Natalie Porter's Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides for Portable Gray.
Mingus Gamble entered The Den:
Until next week… be on your best behaviour, the FIFA security apparatus is watching.
Harley Rustad
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.
