UNCs, JITs, OGs, and Young Fellas
Grant Yansura talks WKND Skateboards' "UNC" and their premiere approach, Carter Spinks on his latest, "OG and Young Fella," plus, can you get free grip at Tactics Card Shop, an anniversary, 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.
$5 for the future
Rank: 1
Mood: 📽️
"I'm literally picking up Adderall from someone right now; the lock-in of the century is happening today," Grant Yansura said over the phone on Wednesday. Friday — tonight — is the premiere of UNC, the latest full-length feature from his company WKND Skateboards.
"As we're speaking now, I'm still finishing up the video. I'm editing the skit side separately from the parts. So it's still coming together two days before the premiere. I think it's going to be about 70 minutes [in runtime] — super long, which, you know, is not common anymore, but just a little under half is skits. So it's a bit of a different vibe than just over an hour of only skate tricks."
Aside from the length and the skits — the latter being a WKND and Yansura hallmark, from movie homages to absurdist fever dreams to short films re-introducing former team riders to the fold — UNC is also taking an uncommon approach to its premiere. Tonight, the film's debut screening takes place in person at the Lumiere Cinema in Beverly Hills and will be simultaneously streamed live online via The Den.
For $5 USD, you can get into the premiere from the comfort of your own home. There will be a pre- and post-show as well as additional premiere bundles with UNC DVDs, zines, limited-edition skateboards, and the like for those willing to shell out a bit more. A rep from The Den likened those to a "souvenir," saying, "We want to create a moment for people to feel like they’re a part of it, like getting a band’s t-shirt at a show.”
It's a novel approach to a skateboarding video premiere, and perhaps the most expansive and dynamic overall experience ever attempted, outside of a full-on world tour. The WKND team will be hitting the road with UNC afterwards, heading from Minneapolis to Detroit, Chicago, Akron, Philadelphia, and New York City, which are, to be fair, a part of the world.
According to Yansura, it took around six months of planning and "a lot of Zoom calls" to put tonight's event together with The Den, the skateboarding-specific video platform and streaming service headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Getting to this point has taken a significant amount of work by any measure, but when you put as much time, energy, and resources into a project like UNC as Yansura has, you want to celebrate and promote it as best you can.
The WKND crew have been filming for UNC for roughly three years. What was originally supposed to be a project featuring Andrew Considine and Zac Gracie grew as the rest of the team stayed productive. UNC, in name and intent, is a follow-up to WKND's 2023 feature JIT (Juvenile in Training).
"JIT was solidifying the next generation [of WKND team riders]," says Yansura. "UNC is that generation kind of coming into [their own]; they're sort of the main characters as our first generation is starting to have babies and all that."
For a skateboard company to last long enough to have multiple generations of riders is a rare feat. Even more so is one as productive as WKND, which, over their decade-plus in operation, has released a full-length project almost every other year, along with promos, solo efforts from team riders, and short films scattered in between.
Yansura wants to keep that momentum going, an increasingly difficult proposition as the skateboarding industry continues its struggles, so he hopes UNC's $5 premiere on The Den — a concept Yansura notes was first piloted by the likes of Paul Rodriguez and Shane O'Neill in the aughts on iTunes — can serve as a "template" for others to follow and tweak as they see fit.
"Success for me would just be making back what we spent to make the video. That's the reason I want to sell it: so we can know it's possible, so we can do more videos and put more into them, knowing we can expect some sort of return.
"Because you put years and all this money into making a full-length, and you don't really see a financial return on it... you know, we're a company, so it helps with the overall marketing and brand awareness and image and all of that. But years of going on skate trips and what we spend on making skits and paying the people that help us make the skits look good and paying additional filmers and travel expenses, all of that stuff is such a [financial] loss because you just give away videos now.
"Before I had a company, back when people used to have DVD players, if you made an independent video, you would recoup some of the money through DVD sales. I feel like it became taboo to expect to make money [off a skate video]."
The Den says their goal is not just to help companies like WKND recoup their spend on projects, but profit from them.
"We want to build a place where you can protect the past, and at the same time, foster the future. We want to put our resources behind things that are pushing the medium forward," says their rep.
WKND certainly fits that bill. Yansura and others like Peter Sidlauskas from Bronze 56k and Cephas Benson and Donvan Jones from The Bunt podcast also serve on a loose advisory council for The Den as they build out their platform and pressure test new ideas. Their voices are integral as The Den "start[s] to make decisions on things like selling products and attaching it to unlocking videos," the company says. "We know we're not the ones making the videos, nor are we the ones selling the videos; we just want to create the technology to be able to let people do those sorts of things." (According to The Den, their tech stack is bespoke with "no AI used.")
When it comes to selling product related to UNC, The Den says they came to a revenue-split arrangement with WKND that both parties are happy with. They also shared that early pre-order sales are strong, and with users in 165 countries, the company has been pleasantly surprised by how many international orders there have been for a West Coast-centric premiere.
The question now is whether it's possible to change the behaviour of consumers who, for close to two decades, have been accustomed to getting skateboarding videos for free, and have long been conditioned to view those artistic labours as content. Early attempts by Rodriguez and O'Neill to set a precedent for purchasing videos in the online age couldn't hold the gates against the ravenous temptations of free and immediate. There are multiple generations of skateboarders who have never known skateboarding outside their Instagram feeds.
However, that could also be a dim view of the consumer and skateboarding fans writ large. Maybe they just haven't had viable avenues to support available — an easy and accessible way to pay to play.
"You know, maybe people want to see our videos, but they don't really buy boards anymore, or they get free boards, or they don't want to buy skate apparel or whatever; that's all fine. I get it," says Yansura. "But maybe they would be down to pay five bucks for a video, just to support it so that that person, their team or crew, can keep making them.
"I'd like to think people understand that the skate industry is struggling, and I think that there still are a lot of fans of skating, so if they want to see it continue to happen and see videos [with] actual budgets to work with, they might be willing to buy it for a couple bucks."
Yansura had a video to finish editing, so I left him with one last pressing question as he waited for his Adderall plug: who's skateboarding's premier Unc?
"In our crew, it would probably be Andrew Considine. I think once you start making a noise when you get up or sit down in your chair, that's when you've entered that status. Andrew makes super loud noises every time he gets up or sits down."
Cross-generational congress
Rank: 1
Mood: 🧒🧑👵
Conlan Killeen surprised himself. After riding away from a massive, hovering kickflip over a planter and down a large set of stairs that sits just East of the boundary separating the City of Vancouver from the City of Burnaby, he tells the camera as much as himself, "I can't believe that worked out." Across the street, a woman clad in yoga gear shouts in celebration. Killeen shouts back, "I'm 37 years old!"
Presumably, that makes Killeen one of the "OGs" in Carter Spinks' latest feature, OG and Young Fella, which premiered last Friday in Vancouver and that Skate Jawn shared the following day (along with some excellent photos, also shot by Spinks, some of which are republished here). Killeen, along with a glut of local talent, shines amongst some genuinely awful and crusty Pacific Northwest skate spots in Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Seattle, with a few San Francisco cameos to boot.
The premiere was held at Strathcona Park in East Vancouver, with Syd Clark and the team at Menu Skate Shop helping organize the event, supplying the screen and providing free donuts and Coronas for those in the crowd. At a time when Canada's skate scene can feel a bit fallow and under-supported as the main media outlets have long since shuttered or publish irregularly at best, it was a big few days in the city. Despite many reports of lingering hangovers from the Vancouver premiere of The Bunt Video earlier in the week, the scene still showed up and sat down in the grass for OG and Young Fella.
Those in attendance were treated well. From Reis Burrows' stylish and well-rounded display, Eric and Bradley Warlimont's back-breaking technicality, Kenny Nguyen's ability to 360-kickflip over and into seemingly anything, the magic that is Dylan Timmins, Dane Pryds and Pierce Mckay going big and eating it big, Tremaine Glasgow's hard-charging tour de force, to Kyler Hale putting his stamp on the city, and Spinks' keen eye and sharp edit making it all sing — OG and Young Fella is an overdue and welcome showcase of Vancouver's skate scene and the new and known names who populate it.
According to Spinks, that cross-generational roster inadvertently inspired the name of the video. While on a session, Glasgow noticed their crew was made up of those titular OGs and young fellas and floated the name a month or two before they wrapped filming. Spinks already had a title in mind, but others in the crew were on board, and when you have the creative freedom of an independent production, no one can stop you from calling an audible. Such as a last-minute change to the soundtrack that has Hale closing the show to Dolly Parton's "Light of a Clear Blue Morning." It works beautifully, as the late Parton comforts the listener, crooning "everything's gonna work out just fine" as Hale bombs a frightening San Franciscan hill in the rain.
A mostly one-person production can bring about complications, mind you. With Spinks serving as filmer and photographer, he often has to ask the skaters to do their tricks twice. Killeen battled his massive kickflip for the clip and the photo separately, which put his 37-year-old body out for a few weeks at a time. Pryds, who landed a life-threatening ollie over a chain onto a dumpster first try, had his life threatened on his second attempt, when Spinks wanted to capture the trick a bit cleaner.
So it goes. Chance and circumstance play a bigger part in skateboarding — and skate videos — than we perhaps give them credit for. Mckay, for example, has the very last trick filmed for the video, landed following a battle spanning years and countless visits, says Spinks, as the lot where the spot lies always had one too many cars parked in McKay's runway.
When the FIFA World Cup trampled its way through Vancouver this summer, large areas of the city were cordoned off. That parking lot was one of them and for the first time in ages no cars were present. Spotting their chance, McKay and Spinks skirted past the fences for a few attempts — only to be given the boot by FIFA's foot soldiers. Weeks passed, and just days before the video premiered, Glasgow stopped by the lot and texted the group chat: the parking stalls were free. After another battle, McKay called it. They returned the next day and, thanks to some creatively placed pylons the night before, one extra parking space was open. It turns out, after all that time, that was all McKay needed, as he stuck the hippie jump in short order.
While chance and circumstance might get short shrift, the universal understanding of a skate video is that they take work. Whether you're struggling on your board, juggling cameras, deep in the editing suite or, like Kyler Hale, spending your nights fixing up downtown Vancouver skate spots, including staples like Hot Spot's existentially long, curved downhill ledge.
Before we go any further, it's important to impart that Hale's ender at Hot Spot is impossible. The ledge is rounded, chunky in parts, and there is barely any run-up. How Hale managed to [SPOILER] backside-smith all the way from its top to its bottom defies comprehension, and it was a dogfight with reality all the way through, as evidenced by the sheer force of will required to maintain the smith's dip.
After the credits rolled and the throngs milled about in the dark of Strathcona Park, one prevailing topic of discussion was that it had to be the longest backside smith ever done on a ledge. And you know what, it might be. That din was regularly punctured by stray hollers of I'm 37 years old! Those are some of the easily recognizable features of a good video: it's memorable. You want to talk about it when it's done.
It took three years for OG and Youngfella to come together. Weekends and weeknights out suffering and celebrating with friends for that moment last Friday when the sun dipped and the light dimmed. However you want to phrase it, that's a sacrifice, one well worth it. And for Spinks, after that three-year gestation, he now focuses his full attention on another: he and his wife are getting ready to welcome their first child into the world. OG and young fella, indeed.
An anniversary
Rank: 5
Mood: 🎂
This month marks five years of writing this newsletter each and every week. That is pretty excessive, to be honest, but I'm still having a good time. It really means a lot to know people enjoy or get something out of reading this. Whatever this is that I'm doing. Sincere thanks to everyone who reads, subscribes, shares, contributes to, and supports Simple Magic. Some lovely people even willingly hand over their hard-earned monies for it!
Speaking of, for paid subscribers, the curious, and those who visit the shop, I'll be making some new merch soon if that is of interest. The incredibly talented Michael DeForge whipped up some new Simple Magic wordmarks that'll go on some stickers, t-shirts, a hat, and maybe some other stuff. What other swag do people like? Pens? Keychains? Hot dog branders? Lemme know. I'll have more updates on that in the coming weeks.
Thank you again for reading and allowing me into your inbox each week.
Branching out
Rank: ₱950
Mood: 🃏
The most gracious reading would be to call it a diversification of one's portfolio. Otherwise, how else would you describe Marc Roca, embattled owner of Lakai Footwear and Tactics Skate and Snow, shuttering two Tactics storefronts in the Pacific Northwest and laying off employees at the head office earlier this year, while at the same time opening Tactics Card Shop in Makati City, Philippines?
Curiously, as far as I can tell, Tactics PH, which sells Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and other TCGs (Trading Card Games), along with Tactics-branded trading card gear, hasn't been promoted by its sister skate and snow shops.
Last week, a former North American employee of Tactics sent me a link to the company's Filipino outpost, and I initially thought it was a funny rip-off of the Tactics branding, but a quick search online found Roca himself in the trenches of a Facebook comment section promoting his latest venture.
If anything, Roca, who from all accounts lives in the Philippines while operating Tactics and Lakai from abroad, isn't one to pass up an opportunity, so perhaps TCGs are the passion that he finally had the chance to pursue, or maybe TCGs provide steadier revenue than skate and snowboarding. Whatever his motivations, he seems to be following a similar playbook to Lakai, with two Tactics PH-sponsored TCG players making the podium at the Vibes 2026 European Championships last month in Bologna, Italy, which I would like to imagine is something approximating Lakai's Chris Joslin Thrasher Skater of the Year coup. Those players, who go by Deuce and Avacyn, competed alongside a guy who appeared to be doing Sam Bankman-Fried cosplay.
Anyways, what I suggest is leaning into your existing brand synergies, Marc. Don't keep your Tactics separate. Picture this: With each purchase of a Magic: The Gather booster box, Tactics PH customers get a discounted pair of Telfords.
Rest in Peace, Daniel Santovin
"Oh, that's Tracker Dan," a friend explained. This was a few years back, while I was in Tempe, Arizona, for Slow Impact. I had asked them about the man who had just approached me and struck up a kind, lively conversation about something I'd written in this newsletter some weeks earlier. He had engaged me with an earnest intensity that initially caught me off guard. It's not often you encounter someone so free of pretension, and that's what our subsequent few in-person conversations in Tempe and many more online ones always left me with: Dan is a person who cares and he doesn't care who knows it.
Daniel Santovin passed away on September 12 after an extended battle with colorectal cancer, an experience he documented online with that same earnestness. Dan worked within and alongside the skateboarding industry for many years, where he earned his nickname, and did more for the world of skateboarding and people in it than I'll ever have any real understanding of. But when my friend told me that was Tracker Dan, I knew I had been talking to someone special. If you've followed skateboarding for long enough, you've probably come across "Tracker Dan," whether shouted out in magazines, in the "thank you" sections of skate videos, or overheard in conversations at your local.
And that's most likely because the kindness and genuineness he shared with me, a literal stranger, is what he shared with everyone. It's also what he encouraged everyone else to do, as he told the audience at this year's Slow Impact.
Slow Impact on Instagram
"Just be kind to each other, man. Just keep making the world better. It's fucked up out there, and this is a good group of people, so we gotta shine the light. Let's do it."
Thanks, Dan. The love is there.
Some things to consider:
Jason Koebler
Maggie Harrison Dupré and Jon Christian
Good thing in response to a bad thing:
“When we were being stolen from our parents and experienced genocide in Indian Residential Schools, we wondered, ‘Who are the people that will help us?’ Today, we are those people. Today we offer our help, support, and jurisdiction to override these dehumanizing laws.”
Ziya Jones
Another good thing:
Happy book birthday to the realest out:
Natalie Porter
Good Farran thing:
Farran Golding
Good vid:
Carter Spinks has a great clip in here, btw.
RIP Annie Dillard:
Click to read Dillard's essay "Total Eclipse."
Alex Sujong Laughlin and David Roth and Giri Nathan and Kelsey McKinney
RIP Mickey Reyes:
Until next week… shine the light.
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.
