the Four: April '25

on vert and vids

May 04, 2025

Sometimes stuff just aligns, like shoots and spring rains or spotting a bunny just when seeing one was what your spirit needed or an idea that comes dropping in — so to speak — exactly as your lede need was feeling dire. So, some thoughts for the sluts …

A loose dovetailing happened this month – well, a triple dovetailing; maybe it’s some kinda machine-learning-modified mega mourning dove, idk – between skate vid, collage materials, and my own phoning it in when I looked around and found myself surrounded by vert skating in a quiet but inescapable way.

First, it was my posting of a P-Rod interview I did for VICE a lifetime ago, a cheap dip into the archives to highlight a moment that’s shaped my views on him since it happened. Rodriguez was unflaggingly friendly and the consummate polished pro you’d expect, which made it a bit of a surprise when he was willing to talk candidly about a third rail: corporate cash. The whole thing was part Dew Tour promo and part We Are Blood rollout, the shiny blockbuster with Ty Evans and Middle Eastern royal families and, yeah, some big money behind it. A film (and I’m using that on purpose) ‘takes those bigger sponsors to come in and help make that happen,’ he said.

Second was a skate video. Tom Schaar’s Vert’s not Dead opens with him ascending one of the beasts the discipline demands with ‘supported by Monster’ scrawled across. Here is what P-Rod was talking about — a big money for a big part. The towering halfpipes and mega ramps Schaar absolutely rips to shreds just plain wouldn’t exist in this day and age without some serious sponsor largesse; they’re simply too much, too expensive and avaricious and needy (but needed!) for any one skater to support on their own, perhaps save a chosen few. And while as skaters we tend to gag at the thought of some Corporate cash, there’s no denying what was funded was fucking art. And art has always been beholden to patrons – you think all those Ninja Turtle artists made Florence, et. al. a font of beauty out of the goodness of their hearts? Out of the ideals of the Renaissance? Out of faith? Fuck no, bb. They did it because powerful merchants and Popes expressed power by funding creation, their own little Genesises of marble and paint and gold and stone, so when your eyes widened and you face flushed and your heart quickened and you felt fully the awesomeness of the Holy Spirit, you also were being awed by the Holy See, by the Banking Dynasty.

And Schaar is fucking sublime as any fresco, any sculpture here. He scales those cathedral walls — marked by sponsors as so much modern iconography and as awesome an architectural wonder as anything a TMNT ever did in God and Commerce’s name — and launches just lunatic shit into the heavens. Here’s an ollie to fakie, floated to the top of the Tower of Babel and back; here’s an array of flip tricks without a single grab in site; here’s coping and adornment and sea serpent flipped and spun into and out of, switch fakie nollie regular nose belly tail trucks or truck, Greyson Fletcher left stunned, Chris Roberts’ rhapsodizing well earned.

Third is a Transworld Skateboarding, part of a shrink-wrapped tranche of material for collage. August 2008, Danny Way floating a tre over a mega ramp inset into one of those California mountains — all orange and scrub and sky — like Typhon’s spine. The feature: ‘What Is Vert?’

Well what it isn’t, obviously, is dead. Or at least not to me anymore [snuffs candles, stores planchette]. Despite an exodus of interest and money — MIA in Paris?? — or perhaps because of it, my relationship with vert has pulled out of The Death Spiral. So long as I felt the focus was on stacking degrees like a trust funded forever student, I drifted away. At a certain point, going from a 900 to a 1080 to a 1260 becomes a matter of degree in both senses of the term; while impressive, they start to just look the same to me, tough to tease out with lay person’s eyes. But just as I love transitions tricks suffusing into the street, with handplants and bonlesses and hucked melons, I love this newest application of street to the beasts (supported by another Monster). Any viewer of any kind can find something that they love, that leaves a mark as proper art does.

The only button you need for vert now is rewind.

Here’s the boilerplate spiel for the ‘reasoning’ behind the Four. The capsules are gonna be short🫠

the Four: April ‘25

space program/nathan vitale, ‘blue marble’

If your Insta gavage is as skate heavy as 4ts’, you’ve no doubt seen some clips from this fucking thing, and for good reason. Vitale is one of those the motherfuck was that? types, putting new spins on seemingly everything. Sometimes literally so; a 360 pirouette to dump truck to ride on grind is equal parts ballerina and Lizard King. Massive boardslides, a noseslide to Del Mar indy out — all of it is a heady blend of heavy, bizarre, and flat out fun.

genius/carlo campos, ‘wasteman’

Another spring release raining unique tricks, Campos and Genius fulfill my need for homie vid vibes. And any vid featuring an indy taildrop to flat is an automatic yes for me, since that’s one of my, like, five tricks.

heroin/dalton dern’s part

How about some hammers? Dalton’s Heroin part links the YouTuber/social media scene to the core in much the same way as Bubba Jackson’s ‘Sounder vol.3’ did a few months ago. But whereas Bubba and crew take TikTok technicality and spin gold, Dern ratchets up the gnar and makes a go at his brother’s crown for Heshest “YouTube Skater” Alive.

quasi, ‘bobcbc’

Back to Quasi’s polarizing ways, this one is practically performance art: just Bobby de Kyzer and Tomas Morrison taking on a Toronto plaza for 74 days with beauty and menace.