Viaje Para Viejos
Stepan Soroka suffers Bastien's curse, can a Certified Manual Skater win SOTY? Independent Trucks goes to Vancouver and back in time, 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.
Viaje Para Viejos
A special correspondence by Stepan Soroka
Storm clouds dampen the oppressive Mediterranean heat and a spattering of raindrops taps impatiently on the stone tiles of the plaza. We climb the front steps of a Gothic cathedral to take shelter in its arched portico. Water pours down the kinked hubba that borders the top half of the double-set. "Someone noseblunt slid this thing and firecrackered the bottom stairs," my friend Charlie says. It's impressive, but it's starting to seem like we are spending more time looking at spots than skating them.
It's my first time visiting Barcelona, and I feel like I am late to the party. The videos and magazines of my youth were saturated with content from the city, its architecture inordinately familiar. A Rolodex of Spanish ledges, banks, and stairs is lodged in my memory, taking the space of more useful information. Is that where the birthdays of my friends and family should live? I crack a can of Estrella and ruminate on the seemingly impossible noseblunt slide. The downpour mists against my face.
We accept that the rain will not abate, as if our opinion on it has any bearing, and decide to head to a Mexican bar, the colonial irony of which is not lost on us. We are all children of empire. Skateboards in hand, we hustle along the narrow streets of the Barri Gòtic. There are four of us: Charlie and his twin brother Michael, who have flown in from Portland with the eventual destination of a Portuguese wedding, and Drew, a van-dwelling Ontarian on leave from his engineering job. A mélange of knee, rib, and back injuries afflicts my compatriots, impeding our collective stride and fulfilling the prophecy of our WhatsApp group chat title – Viaje Para Viejos, a Trip for Old People.
We stumble through the front doors of the dimly lit bar, dripping and awkward. The wooden tables are scratched with graffiti and the bartender mocks my Spanish when I order. I deserve it. When I leave the bathroom, I find a short man in a fedora setting up a guitar amp. My skate brain alights with recognition — Cab flips and crossed feet flash across the projector screen of my memory. Bastien can see me recognize him. I nod and say nothing, returning to our table. I mention the sighting to Drew and he leaps from his seat, beelining to our childhood hero.
Bastien plays his guitar with natural dexterity. A stand-up bass accompanies the noodling blues notes that bounce out of his amp and down the length of the narrow room. I adjust my inner frequency to receive the transmission. When the music is done, I am caught off guard when Bastien approaches and offers me a handshake. He speaks rapidly. "Your friend told me that everyone is hurt but you," he says. "You are going to get injured also." I have no time to rebuff his prediction before the conversation speeds around the next corner, and I am left to sit with its unease. Tomorrow I have a battle to continue. I already put wheels down, breaking my board and getting robbed of a rollaway. Capitulation is not an option.
Bastien and Stepan | the make.
The next day, I buy a fresh deck and head to MACBA. Hardflip backtails and nollie front blunts are being fired off on the ledge as I struggle with three flips on flat. What am I even doing here? I wore the wrong T-shirt, my haircut is lame, and everyone is looking at me. I should be at a DIY somewhere skating a quarterpipe. I am visiting the wrong city and should probably quit skating altogether. I take careful puffs off a joint that Drew passes me, crack a Damm Lemon, and give up on myself completely. With expectations gone, a perfect tré sucks itself up to my feet. The roar of my insecurities dulls to a growl.
Around the corner of the museum at the Big 3, people are drinking and freestyling next to the stairs. Scraggly dogs with wild eyes skitter across the run-up. I kick out a dozen three flips, unable to take the lead in this familiar dance with trepidation. What the fuck am I doing here? I'm 36 years old. My jumping days are behind me — then I black out and roll away, touching my hand to the ground, my back foot pivoting loosely but staying on the board. I run back up the stairs for a cleaner make. My fear is gone and I'm hyperaware of my surroundings, observing myself from outside of my own body: I catch the next tré perfectly, but my heel slips off the board when I land and connects hard with the ground. Bastien's words ring in my ears as my body turns electric with shock from the impact. The dogs resume their patrol of the run-up.
Drew and I pick up our rental car in the morning and head west. The twins have flown ahead and are waiting for us in the Basque Country. We drive through dry, rolling shrubland that reminds me of the Okanagan. Propagandhi's Failed States album plays through the stereo.
Visions so astonishing, preposterous, impossible. A cosmic lattice of calligraphy, geometries unthinkable.
Chris Hannah's prairie poetry is a salve for my swollen foot and the damage I am not ready to admit to. We pull off the road to piss and are inundated with the smell of wild rosemary. I pull a few sprigs from a bush and place them on the dash.
Our flat in Bilbao is in Casco Viejo, or Old Town. The phrase can also mean "old condom," a recurring joke during our stay. From here, it's a 45-minute train ride to Algorta, home to the La Kantera skatepark. Perched on a cliffside and buttressed by crumbling castle walls, a concrete vert ramp and pool-style bowl overlook the Atlantic. On the beach below, long-distance swimmers wade into the water with orange floaties and disappear against the horizon. I grit my teeth and force a few slash grinds and rock'n'rolls. Sampling the legendary transitions is non-negotiable. When I limp down to the ocean for a dip, small rocks jostled by the waves roll into the back of my heel. I float in a gyre of pain and wonder.
Drew flies home early and the twins and I take another train outside of the city. We've picked a spot at random from Google Maps: an estuary called Mundakako Itsasadarra. The water here is impossibly clear. We swim and drink txakoli, the effervescent white wine that the Basque are famous for. I keep my weight on my toes as we walk between the tiny towns that line the shore, past a Roman-era port and a cemetery filled with ornate mausoleums. Some are well-kept and radiate affluence; others are overgrown with vines, their broken doors teasing pitch-black inner chambers. I lean into one and recoil as a swarm of wasps escapes into daylight.
We stop for more wine whenever we see a taverna. Michael calls it a "txakoli parade." It is a slow, limping parade on this trip for old people. Graffiti reading "Palestine Askatu!" is everywhere, even here in the countryside. The separatist history of the Basque has cemented a solidarity with the Palestinian cause. As we wander along the shoreline, the violence of this world seems further removed than ever, a stark reminder of our privilege. The estuary's cyan waters sparkle in the sunlight, the mountains beyond glow a hundred shades of green.
On our way back to Old Condom, we disembark in Guernica. It takes me a moment to realize why I am familiar with this place. Pablo Picasso's cubist masterpiece depicts the 1937 terror bombing of the city by the Luftwaffe. I become acutely self-conscious of the Iron Cross logo on my Independent windbreaker. While Michael secures us a table at a restaurant, Charlie and I hobble through the town's main plaza and up a large staircase. We reach a stone pavilion that houses the trunk of an old oak tree. For centuries, the tree has served as a meeting place for Basque leaders to issue legal decrees and swear oaths of loyalty. As dusk settles, we crack a can of Estrella and swear an oath of our own, passing the beer back and forth until it's empty.
We head back down the stairs, a three-quarter moon casting long shadows over the plaza, the mountains that line the river valley now silhouettes. The restaurant is in the back of a bar, behind a set of sliding doors. We order monkfish and txakoli. The bottle arrives cold and glistening. My heel throbs in rhythm with my heart, slow and deliberate. We raise our glasses, the toast wordless, its meaning understood. I sip the wine, surrounded by conversations I cannot interpret. Outside, the moon continues its slow arc, illuminating the rebuilt city. The oak tree stands silent and alone.
It's the most wonderful, confusing, and occasionally overwhelming time of year
Rank: 2026
Mood: 🛞🛞
Through the lens of professional skateboarding's premier measure of achievement, up to this point in the calendar year, which is shockingly closing in on its last pages, there sits no clear front-runner for the coveted title of Thrasher Magazine's Skater of the Year award.
That doesn't mean there hasn't been any skateboarding worthy of the mantle; incredible, ground-breaking footage is published online almost daily for your consideration. The past few weeks alone are undoubtedly the start of SOTY season's Content Deluge.
Plus a good read on Free
And with the impending Red Bull video Cannonball, which has already netted riders Jamie Foy and Ryan Sheckler dual Thrasher covers, and the creatively titled Vans video FUNKDIEGO (echoes of DEFUNKT, anyone?) due in the next few weeks, we will surely have a number of contenders.
But, if I may, probably prematurely, stump for one who's already made a pretty compelling case before it gets lost in the rising din of SOTY season: John Di Lorenzo.
When's the last time a Certified Manual Skater won SOTY? Daewon Song in 2006? Seems serendipitous that exactly 20 years later, there's the opportunity to anoint another. And, it should be stressed, given Rusty's lust for life-threatening stunts, that Dilo is anything but a low-impact manual practitioner. There has never been two-wheeled skateboarding done as dangerously as Dilo's.
Will his back-to-back weeks of Jacuzzi Unlimited video parts be enough to overtake the storm coming from Diego Todd, Tristan Funkhouser, Jamie Foy, Yuto Horigome, Chloe Covell, Jhancarlos Gonzalez, and whoever else drops their payload of clips in the weeks ahead? It's a tall order, but let's try our best to keep a balanced perspective and Dilo's wheelies in mind.
There it is
Rank: 1
Mood: 😱🤔
This week, Independent Trucks released their long-awaited Vancouver tour video that features what is likely the wildest skateboarding trick done in this city, and perhaps one of the gnarliest ever done, period. The stunt graced the cover of Thrasher in January, which I wrote about at the time:
"Skateboarder? I've been seeing your kind for a long, long time," was the first thing the physiotherapist said to me as he stood in the doorway of the treatment room, not looking up from the clipboard in his hands. The fifth or sixth thing he said was, "I'm pretty handsy. If I get too handsy, I'll charge you extra."
He had a grip on my ankle, which resembled a grapefruit bisected by the meat of my leg. I had rolled it severely, multiple times, over a month earlier. X-rays came back negative for a break, but something still felt off. Dr. K touched and squeezed the pooled blood floating around the ball joint, quickly diagnosing the issue: misaligned bones in my foot were impeding the healing process.
"I'm going to pull on your foot very hard, three times, and then we're going to watch the swelling go down," Dr. K claimed, not unlike a foolhardy skateboarder who believes the trick they're about to attempt is easy, a warm-up.
The difference is that he is professional. He pulled hard once; the pain was immense. Shocking to the point that I could do nothing but yelp and laugh. I immediately understood the sounds that had been coming out of the treatment rooms while I was waiting to be seen — screams and cackles like the feasting of hyenas.
He reefed on it again. I howled. "Look," Dr. K said, and we both watched the swelling go down. Second try.
Outside of his office, as I hobbled toward home, I came across a patch of Bondo at the run-up and landing of a massive brick double set with an accompanying kinked handrail. That's funny, I thought to myself, that anyone would even prep a spot that clearly can't be skated. I took a photo to share in the group chat. Several months later, this appeared across social media feeds everywhere.
Jhancarlos Gonzalez, while on tour with the Independent Trucks team in Vancouver last August, risked his one precious life on the above gap-to-lipslide outside of my physiotherapist's office and was rewarded with a Thrasher cover and the rank astonishment of anyone who has ever seen this thing in person, including Red Dragon Moses Itkonen, who shared on Instagram that he was there in person for the stunt and also gave a shoutout to Dr. K, who has been seeing his kind for a long, long time.
And, as Gonzalez demonstrates, for good reason.
Mellow | Photos: @yvrspotbook on Instagram
Upon the release of their Vancouver tour video, Independent seems to have fully re-embraced their iron cross logo, something they were teasing at the beginning of the year, which I coincidentally also wrote about in that same edition of the newsletter from January.
Cole Nowicki
Time is a round-ended cross or whatever.
Want to try something that's (probably) just as thrilling as flying out to the second kink of a massive handrail but much safer? Consider becoming a paid subscriber. Nothing on Simple Magic is behind a paywall, but your money will get you stickers and merch, go towards paying contributors for their great work, and put some dough in my pocket as I write these each week. You can also leave a one-time tip.
Something to consider:
Very good thing:
Snack
Another very good thing: Alex Fazekas-Boone and the Adjacency Bias gang put out a banger.
More good: Boil the Ocean on WKND's UNC and Spike Jonze's trend-forecasting.
Good world-building:
Walker Ryan
Yes, even more good:
Dolores Magazine
Good Golding:
BFI
Good George:
George Cutright
Good thing about a blob thing:
David Roth
Good things about bad things:
Amanda Mull
Ginger Greene
J.W. McCormack
Good part:
Until next week… yes, SOTY season has begun, but more importantly, it's also the start of SOUP season. Get your vats out.
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.
