So It's Come to This ...
... a 4ts clip show
So, because I got caught up this week writing something for money — thanks to my deeply loved & appreciated Pittsburgh Pratt slash Personal Medici — and soft-launching a sad attempt at a life not completely dedicated to making some other fucker rich, it’s finally come to this.
Fretting over leaving all of you wanting for the week, I’ve turned to my other great passion for inspiration: sitcoms. That’s right: in the time honored, time-crunched tradition of a suddenly-coke-free writer’s room, I present to you … the first 4ts clip show!
(And let’s be real bb, probably not the last, either.)
Consider it a sampler and chance to check out something you missed; I’m not running an excerpt from everything. And look, I’m sorry for the cop out, sluts.
Interviews
Feathers and Fur: The Peach Interview
‘Obviously one of the other things that sort of caught my attention was with the full fursuit regalia and pulling off a trick. Can you see and feel the board when you do that, or are you just flipping and praying basically?
Basically flipping and praying. I mean, the board feel is one thing. There are like indoor foot paws. They're usually squishy and chunky. If you skate with those, then you can't feel like anything at all. It's like skating in, you're skating a cloud or something. Or you're standing in the woods in those sinking areas.’
it’s called a feather flip; peach tells you all about it // egylon
'Summer is Dead ... and I Killed It': The Sean Bernhardt Interview
‘See, Sean Bernhardt’s practice is a season unto itself — he killed one to make room — where black lines and boardwalk hues are shot through with delicious doom and language bristles and waves break beneath a fang-framed sky set in a cobra’s mouth while surfers score like hazy blades across hand-cut sprays for summer’s casket, all saturated with that heavy light like a veil lays across the sun — but also everyone under that hood wants to fucking rip.’
One Step Beyond: The Isaiya Allen Interview
‘Look, I feel I owe Isaiya an apology almost, because the below is just a lil bit of what he brings. The numbers, the fucking numbers: our convo clocked in at 13,464 words or 23 pages or — for the real editorial sluts — 68,980 characters. I love an Interview-style interview, to try and capture and present a person like a butterfly on a board, but dude’s just not able to be pinned down. It’s a cruel twist that the more organic the chat, the more tangled the transcript, so just know this in advance: if you’re homies and wondering if he shouted you out, he def did; if you’ve supported his skating with vibes or product or whatever and you’re wondering if he shouted you out, he def did; and if you want a ground-level guide to the North Carolina skate scene, he’s got it like a Map to the Stars Homes.’
Do Skateboarding Wrong: The Tank Interview
‘The Tim Olson (aka Bail Gun Gary) and Tony Hawk story: what happened there?
That one was pretty rad, and also I had to do a lot of apologizing to people that I knew.
I just know Tim through the internet, you know, he's just fucking cool. At one point he was working for Tony as his personal photographer. He was like, ‘hey, me and Tony are going to be out there [in NM].’ It was actually Easter Sunday of 2023, I believe. He was like, we're going to be out there for two days. They were doing this skate park opening out on the Navajo Nation. But they're gonna come out a day early and go skate.
Me and Tim hadn't met in real life yet. And he was like, ‘we gotta skate, Tony's fucking down. Let's go bomb Indian School’ and all this. And Tim wrote me, you can't tell anyone. He's like you tell one person and it's off, you know? And I was like, oh shit, okay, I won't tell anyone. And it was three months of this secret that he was coming out.’
isaiya with a bb boneless exhibition — got some rare ones right here
Four x 4: The George Phillips Interview
‘4ts: A lot of four downs by definition need a quirk of architecture, right? A rock, a sculpture, a sloping detail on a building. Is that part of the appeal for you? It 100% is for me; manipulating the built environment is at skating's heart.
George: Definitely! A lot of my favorite four downs are at really unique looking spots. Zane's 270 into the Sundial, Nick Garcia's BS noseblunt at Garfield, Taihou's FS 5-0. That said, a lot of really sick four downs are legitimately dropping in or wallriding a straight vertical wall. I think that's kinda the beauty of it, is that you can be looking for spots literally anywhere!’
Features
F*cking Love Them 2024: Joseph Campos
‘There was a website I loved —🌹🌹🌹,for its grave — and an author I loved, Alex Pappademas. He once wrote, in a best songs of the year feature, his no. 1 criteria for the honor: whether or not the song was capable of pushing everything else from your head, pushing away reality itself and shifting something inside of you. I’ve always loved that, and find myself turning frequently to The Pappademas Test.
Shocking Moments Caught on Video passes.
Joseph Campos? Fucking Love Them.’
‘Gardner recently took a Chicagoland swing with SD Deities Brandon Turner and Wes Kremer, aka the Man Without Social Media, sharing a presentation on some basic mental health skills with skaters in Naperville and at Uprise, 4tS’s local shop, where I had a chance to meet the dude in person, chat with Turner, and hear the wise words of Wes.
In true 4ts knockoff fashion — this whole ordeal is essentially skateboard Cat Marnell — we’re borrowing the brevity thing of the fairly-annoying Axios (call it Axel-os?) to give you the gist.’
HAIL SKATAN: Halloween Playlist 2024
‘After a blunt smoke seance and minutes upon minutes of reflection spent gazing deeply into the scrying mirror, I have divined for you a host of videos which rip so hard they’d close Camp Crystal Lake.’
Tricks
‘Let’s take a quick dip into myth, shall we? Look, I don’t have, like, proof or anything, but it’s hard to imagine anything which could be considered a trick coming before the caveman — as in, it’s hard to imagine any one doing any thing that was completely unnecessary before the Original Cube Gleamer decided what if I just fucking jump on this thing? Instantly, an entire world would open, Castlevania-style; before ollies or bonelessess or bean plants or no complys, you could just literally jump off, over, or down some shit and roll away. Down some steps, over a sidewalk, off a car, the caveman is essentially endless and — despite the name — timeless. It’s probably among the first tricks most of us will learn, and imo at least, looks cool as all fuck til the day you die.’
‘An ancient transition trick, the handplant is a bit different on the street than a street plant; the latter is the hands-on-the-ground-hit-the-pose-throw-it-down move, e.g. Mike V. In this kind of handplant, you’ve essentially warped time and space to make the face of the ramp whatever you’re riding off of, and the edge of said spot is the “coping.”’
‘Similar to — though not as popular as — the boneless, a beanplant’s the perfect warmup trick and often the first thing I throw down a gap. More than anything, it’s just fucking fun, and variations abound, including varials (I’ll show you sometime), into grinds, and the Russian boneless.’
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Sub's Sidebar: George Phillips' Fav Four Downs
‘When I asked George Phillips — founder of my favorite skate insta and connoisseur of hitting all four — if he had a favorite clip, he couldn’t limit himself to just one; as a fellow proselytizer of pure commitment, I completely understood.
So instead, he picked ten — and some honorable mentions to boot. ‘These aren't in any particular order,’ he says, ‘but they live forever rent-free in my mind.’ And so, beloved subscribers, it’s time to get gnar.’
‘True to the bean’s ancient origins, ‘varial’ here is being used in its original sense: moving the board shuv-style by hand. So essentially, we’re doing a no comply pop shuv by hand. Got that? It’s actually really simple, a good one to try when you’re dying for an easy win, and looks pretty neat IMO.’
‘Look, lots of people consider the media ‘sinister’ … and in my case, they’re correct, bb. Since I’m left handed and still use pen and paper, I’ve carried a steno book my whole career. So periodically I’ll be lifting the cover on said pads and giving you some lil details about previous stories. Welcome to Steno Book, sluts.’
normalize dump trucks to flat
