Today, tomorrow, and also forever
Don Luong on Foundation Skateboards' latest video, Kyle Eggen chomps rails and threatens the global economy, a cross-border appeal to share banks to ledges, 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.
Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
Rank: 1
Mood: ♾️
"How much longer can we do this for, Aidan?" Asks Tum Yeto team manager and resident filmmaker Don Luong from behind the lens.
Luong and his subject, Foundation Skateboards PRO Aidan Campbell, have been trying and failing to film a line for over an hour. The heat is pressing down and Luong's back aches. The pair have been making skateboarding videos together for over a decade under the Star and Moon's banner, so they know each other well. They're familiar with this struggle.
Campbell smirks. "Forever."
"It's funny to even admit this," says Luong of that moment, which can be found in Foundation Skateboard's latest feature, Today Tomorrow Forever, "but when I watch it, it gives me chills."
If there has been one constant across Luong's tenure with Tum Yeto and the 10 or so videos he's filmed and edited, collectively, for Foundation and Toy Machine, it's that he puts all of himself into them. Creatively, physically, emotionally. So it's not surprising that he would get hit with chills, that pang of connection, to something and the someones, he has spent so much time with.
Cole Nowicki
That's also why the video's title resonates with Luong the way it does. If you're a skateboarder, one who has the bug and is committed, that's another way to describe the length of your sentence in its thrall: Today Tomorrow Forever. From childhood to however long the human body lasts.
"That's what skateboarding is, right? You're just chasing your youth. The fact that I'm pushing 40. I'm 38 years old. And the fact that I still wake up with this innate urge to go play with this toy, that is diabolical from the outsider's perspective."
This pursuit of youth, or skateboarding as a fount of it, also guided Today Tomorrow Forever's creative direction. In typical Luong fashion, it is a beautifully constructed video, and opens with dreamy shots of its stars rising and falling through the air, the trampoline sending them skyward out of frame. "I don't think there's anything that connects me to my youth more than jumping on a trampoline," says Luong.
Speaking of being young, Foundation's newest team rider, 19-year-old Jessie Darnall, delivers in her first appearance in a major video. Luong describes her addition to the company as a "right place, right time" situation. Darnall, an Orange County local like Luong and a few others on the team, used to receive skate lessons from recently promoted Foundation professional Austin Heilman. It just so happened that one day she was at the same skatepark as Luong and the team, they watched her rip, and Luong reached out to see if she wanted boards.
Darnall would accrue the grip of clips for her section in Today Tomorrow Forever in about 4 to 5 months. Luong recalls an early exchange in that process where she excitedly told him how fun filming is and that "This is like my second or third time" doing so with a legitimate camera. While green in that respect, Luong is embracing the opportunity "to try and build someone up." Since longtime team and brand manager Mike Sinclair left the company, Luong has taken on his responsibilities, which include fostering future generations of Foundation riders.
Aidan Campbell has been a fixture of the brand since 2014. In the intervening years, he's steadily produced technical, creative, and downright shocking skateboarding on spots that only Campbell is the ideal candidate for. Omar Hassan recently called him one of the most underrated skaters going today. It's hard to disagree. He proves as much again in Today Tomorrow Forever.
Ruby Lilley, skating to a well-suited Big Thief track (that she chose herself), puts in the best effort of her career, a push that saw her get the patented and joy-inducing PRO AF surprise at the video's premiere last weekend. As she told The PLATFRM, "With this part, you kind of see me grow up and grow into my style more and my skating."
Tanner Lawler, another recent addition to the team, brings such a high level of ledge skating mastery to the mix that I felt compelled to ask Luong if he is the most technical skateboarder Foundation has ever seen.
"He's got to be. One-hundred percent." However, that's not to discount the speedy and compact Heilman, who brings his own eye-pleasing brand of technicality to the table in a section that hammers home why his name now graces the underside of a skateboard.
If there is a current Foundation team rider who pulls together the threads of the brand's original Glam Boys on Wheels (1990) transition-centric era, the That's Life (2004) stair-and-rail stunts era, and the creative all-terrain remit of the now, that would be Jesse Lindloff. He has stayed relatively quiet since his last appearance in 2023's Whippersnappers, but he has not been resting on his laurels. Like Lilley, Today Tomorrow Forever will be a crowning career achievement for Lindloff, and is a welcome reminder, or an introduction for the uninitiated, to just how remarkable a skateboarder he is.
Foundation Skateboards finds itself in an interesting place. It has a roster of skateboarders who, in their own ways, call back to varied stages of the brand's 37-year run, while it continues to establish a wholly unique present through the keen filmic eye and, now, talent management of Luong. It's also been an incredibly productive period. Today Tomorrow Forever is the Foundation Super Co.'s sixth video in 10 years.
That's all the more impressive considering that most of the team, including Luong, have second or third jobs.
"I don't think our situation is unique in [skateboarding], but I think it's important to recognize because the work, all the heart and blood and tears it takes to do this, it is a full-time job. Filming videos and making parts is a full-time job, and let's be realistic, board companies can't pay you a livable salary." Luong says.
"I know some skaters on my favourite board companies aren't getting paid at all. You know, so it's such a labour of love, to say the least. I don't think the general skate fan realizes, or maybe appreciates, that. They just see skate tricks and they're like, 'Oh, cool. That was rad. What's next?' I don't think [they] realize the guy got off work at 7:00 PM the night before and had to wake up at 8:00 AM to drive two hours to sit in the heat and [try their trick].
"Skateboarding isn't my bread and butter, but I give it all my attention and all my love because, well, call it a curse if you want. It's such a beautiful, almost self-destructive thing. You're so obsessed and you're sacrificing all this time and energy. And for what? The ROI on skating is not fucking good, you know, unless you ride for Nike or Adidas or whatever.
"We're all doing it for the love."
In that sense, it's fitting that the title for Foundation's latest video comes from the opening statement of the company's underrated 2001 classic, Art Bars Subtitles and Seagulls.
Dedicated to you.
Skateboarders of the world.
The fire burns from within.
Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
Today Tomorrow Forever premieres online next week.
Recession indicator
Rank: 2
Mood: 🤘📈📉🤘
Nostalgia strikes from angles expected and odd. A field of tall grass bowing to the wind may take you back to a childhood on the prairies. An album shared with a lover can return you to their arms with each listen. If you're of a certain age and ilk, a skateboarder's video part comprised primarily of handrail tricks will transport you directly to the year 2008.
People did not stop skating handrails between 2008 and the release of Kyle Eggen's (very good) Creature Fiend section for Creature Skateboards last week. People have only gotten better at skating handrails in that time. No amount of kinks, curves, loops, or what might otherwise be seen as a creative metallurgical impediment can stop the modern rail skater.
However, it remains rare for someone to release a video project in this day and age that achieves an almost complete purity of handrail skating.
Total tricks: 40
Total rail tricks: 33
Total ledge tricks: 1*
Total gap tricks: 6
Total manual tricks: 0
Total transition tricks: 0**
* A backside-180-nosegrind down a very large hubba ledge
** There is a single embankment skated but Eggen only lands into it after skating a rail
Eggen's video part is approximately 83% handrails. One-hundred percent of tricks are done down something. Does that not smack of the mid-to-late aughts? Eggen is following a lineage laid out by those like James Brockman, Jon Allie, Ben Gilley, and many, many more. Rails on rails on rails.
That might sound tedious on its face, but Eggen isn't just recycling staples in separate locales; he showcases an impressive technical acumen, from switch-nosegrinds to hardflip-backside-lipslides to some big-ass-crooked-grinds, and looks good while doing so. What makes Eggen's part a true throwback is that the majority of handrails he does are of the single incline variety. There are a few that are kinked, but he only goes through the kink of one of them, preferring to gap out to their final length.
That is uncut 2008, which is fantastic, except that it's an obvious recession indicator.
A proposal to ease and, ultimately, heal international tensions
Rank:
Mood:
These are, as we know, Trying Times. Everywhere, someone or something is trying to end time as we know it. There is no panacea, but I do have a proposal to at least ease and, if all goes well, heal international tensions between Canada and the United States of America.
The president of the country below the one where I reside has threatened to annex my current home on multiple occasions, has levied a series of asinine, self-defeating tariffs, and so on and so forth, yadda yadda, we all know how stupid it all is. What I suggest, instead of conquering, is a simple exchange.
The United States of America is a place of bounty. Particularly the state of New Jersey. When it comes to banks to ledges. I mean, look at how many different banks to ledges there are there in JP Blair's excellent new video WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
What I did not expect was all of those banks to ledges! There is a soul-crushing dearth of banks to ledges throughout this so-called country, so what I'm suggesting, as a way to lower the temperature on both sides of the 49th, is that America give Canada — and specifically Vancouver, ideally somewhere close to my apartment — some — not even all! — of New Jersey and New York State's banks to ledges.
What will the U.S.A. get in return? You already took Mark Appleyard. What else do you want? Jesus Christ, man.
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Something to consider:
Brian Merchant
Good thing: The 13th annual Wheels of Fortune is going down in Seattle as we speak!
Another good thing:
Sure, why not, more good thing:
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Bonus Lindsey:
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More good Jaebing:
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Good news thing:
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Good pals in the park thing:
Sam Korman and Bobby Puleo are going on a walking tour for Plank and Montez Press Radio:
A thing from last Friday:
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A funny, concerning, and embarrassing thing:
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Until next week… give your place of dwelling a good, deep cleaning. A spring cleaning, if you will.
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.
