I took a long break in between the old Hi8 Stuck In The Past series and starting this new, mini DV Stuck In The Past 2000 run, but after I finished a few big projects in 2018 I started to capture all those old tapes and it was amazing to see how much skating people got done in Vancouver when the scene was looking pretty bleak for spots between 1999 and 2005. Skate-stopping was at it's height, and everything new was being built pre-capped.
The infamous "Dorm" in Vancouver's West End eventually birthed the Roughriders crew/brand/extended family, and part one of the series heavily features that particular group of downtown aficionados. Two of my best friends and former room mates book end the edit, and I even snuck myself in the mix since these guys welcomed me into that big cutty family from day one.
This is only a fraction of the Vancouver skate scene at the time, and there's lots more to come for Stuck In The Past 2000, so enjoy the trip down early 2000's nostalgia lane and keep your eye on The Red Telephone for the next episode!
Andrew Reynolds, backside kickflip, Tucson, 2010. [o] Cassidy
Joe Hammeke recently posted up his 2010 sequence of Andrew Reynolds' classic, and massive, line-ending backside kickflip down Tucson's famous 15 set at "The Blocks" downtown, from his part in Stay Gold, and it got me thinking about the story behind that day - from the perspective of a coincidental witness.
I was giving some friends a tour of Tucson that day, and we happened to show up at that spot at the same time as the majority of the Emerica team. Not wanting to make anyone feel awkward, we decided we'd continue on to another spot to let them handle their business, but on the way out we passed by Aaron Suski and I figured I'd quickly ask him if he knew of any close by spots, since I knew he was from there. He turned out to be one of the nicest humans of all time, and in addition to giving us directions for a nearby ditch, he gave us his phone number with an enthusiastic "Hit me up to skate!". What a guy. With directions in hand, we went off to search for our own spot to get busy on, and after finding the ditch Aaron had mentioned, Bud Patterson manned up and kickflipped into the abyss. Not much approach, and a biiiiig rollout, but he caught a beauty which I also caught on my old Pentax ME Super. (below)
After Bud got his kickflip, we headed back to downtown, passing through The Blocks on the way. As we rounded the corner we were just in time to catch Andrew Reynolds tossing his first attempt at a backside kickflip down the 15 set, after a raging fast switch frontside tailslide on the bench in the hallway before the stairs. On the 3rd attempt, he got it perfect. Unfortunately, Manzoori did not.
In a somewhat unbelievable turn of fate, the exact same thing that happened to The Boss all those years ago on a kickflip down the same stack had just happened again - Mike had adjusted the exposure dial on the VX1000 one notch too far when he reached the much brighter top of the stairs, and he closed the shutter completely. No backside flip for you today. That is unless, you're down to try it again - you did just make it in 3 tries...
It's Andrew Reynolds. The guy will backside 360 off a mountain and re-do it if his pinky finger looked awkward on the roll away - he's gonna re-do the backside flip. Damned if it wasn't a battle the second time around, though. I seem to remember it being around the 30th try that the second one went down. He took a beating too. Andrew Reynolds is a G.
Now, what I haven't mentioned is the huge crowd of local skaters that had gathered after word somehow spread that the team was in town. Braydon Szafranski said he counted 70, though he looked pretty partied out and that sounds a bit high - so I'd say 50 tops, but still a lot of people gathered around waiting for you to do a gnarly stunt. I swear he blocked it out. Something tells me 20+ years of demos helps with that. One eager local even airwalked the set to keep the hype going as Drew caught his breath.
Shane Heyl was on damage control going through the crowd to sternly tell everyone not to post the footage - particularly Bud and Falconer with the VX, but it's understandable. A few years after Stay Gold came out and all the extra edits had been watched to death, I snuck my clips of both backside flips into the end of the Arizona section in The G9 Summit, right after his team mate and my new desert go-to skate buddy, Mr Aaron Suski. Hopefully that high profile poach aged appropriately and there's no hard feelings about hyping up an unseen angle long after the attention has faded.
Bud and Adam filmed a lot of clips for Soft Spot before it finally made it's way to the internet in 2017, and plenty hit the cutting room floor. Adam took some of the rejects and added them to the timeline to make a remix version of his part for the Red Telephone page, complete with some intriguing cameos. Is Harrison Ford down with AC? We may never know, and neither will you if you don't watch to see what the hell we're talking about. Enjoy!
Adam Cassidy, Fakie 5-0 pop out, Vancouver. [o] Skelfie
It's been cold and snowy in Vancouver lately, so why not get comfortable in your favorite toasty spot and have a look back at Bud Patterson's 2017 debut full length video project, Soft Spot, featuring Newfoundland's Motion crew and a supporting cast of friends and family.
Most of the Motion crew have since relocated off the rock to pursue a life of confusing people with their accent in different cities, but the bond is strong as ever and these guys can hold it down for a group of 35+ skaters. Ian St Aubin has the well deserved ender, which was quickly followed up by a year of absolute ledge destruction at his local indoor park in Toronto. Dude has the flick, and his son Ben is going to be a familiar name in the near future.
Bud also has a sick part - the opener - and it's classic VX1000 street skating lines to set the vibe for the first half of the video. Smooth operator, that Kreep. The friends section is one of the hi-lights of the video with plenty of east coast OG's and new bucks, so now that you've settled in, hit play on the player below and enjoy the ride!
Stuck In The Past 2000 is right around the corner! There's an insane amount of classic footage on Adam Cassidy's old tapes, including plenty of never before seen gems, so don't miss this throwback to an iconic era in Canadian skateboarding. Edits start dropping end of February! *Aaron's groin survived to produce a beautiful baby daughter years later.
Wow. We're huge fans of Sour here at Red Telephone, and this latest full length offering, produced largely by Gustav himself, is sure to gain the Swedish-turned-Spanish brand a whole lot more fans once the skate world at large bears witness to the magic contained within. Gustav, Nisse, Albert, Simon, the street loop... there's simply too much to even try and sum up, so set aside the time you need and watch this masterpiece with a good sound system hooked up.
Also - as if Gustav isn't enough of a wizard, this clip he filmed of the new guy is waaaaay too smooth considering he jumped off his board and then ran to keep up for the last trick! This guy is going down as one of the greatest ever, for sure.
While in Barcelona, I stopped by the Sour office - they were in the transition of renovating a new spot, close by - and met the owner, Bjorn, plus Barney, and Simon. I hung out for a while and chatted with Bjorn about all things skate, and then perused the racks for a Gustav deck to add to my collection. I remember seeing this board online before visiting Barcelona, and not having any idea what it meant. Then my board stopped dead on these damn pods so much skating around the city that I nearly lost my mind, and it all made sense when I saw the deck again on the racks. So I decided it would be a perfect souvenir. Turns out Sour was stuck with a huge amount of them because the manufacturer printed a whole bunch of 7.8's by mistake - that graphic isn't supposed to bleed, there should be space on both sides. Thanks for the killer deal, Bjorn! And the huge grip of stickers.
Here at Red Telephone, we follow the breeze, as they say, and we got so caught up in the delightful gust of adventure during 2018 that this page was all but completely forgotten. Please forgive the lack of content and rest assured that all 7 of you who actually check this blog are about to get a year's worth of updates in one post.
Here we go...
- KITSCH SKATEBOARDS 2018 LINE -
2018 started off busy in the design department at Red Telephone, with 2 big projects on tight timelines overlapping, but it all worked out in the end. Adam Cassidy took on the art direction for Kitsch Skateboards' 2018 line (above), working with tech guru Mike McNabb, and collaborating with established Kitsch contributing artists Ben Tour and Andrew Pommier to create a fitting tribute to Vancouver's iconic Plaza, among other graphics. The line was a great success and Red Telephone looks forward to working with Kitsch again in the future!
- MONKE SKATEBOARDS "SURVIVING THE MADNESS" VIDEO -
The other big project on the table for 2018 was editing a retrospective video for Monke Skateboards, covering their 20 years of keeping Canadian skateboarding wild and unpredictable, and featuring a good deal of never before seen classic footage filmed by Ben Chibber. Capturing the tapes was an experience in itself, and hopefully one day Ben lets the world see the plethora of amazing gems that weren't used for the Monke project.
What did make it into the video was an unreal amount of essentially unseen Ted Degros footage - who looked way too stylish for such a young dude - an all hammer part from island legend Steve Strang, and cameos from some of skateboarding's biggest legends that will have you googling Ben's name to figure out if that was really just Keenan and Dill skating Vancouver...
Release that video, Ben!
- KITSCH IN BARCELONA SPRING 2018 -
Stacy, Tom, Geoff and Derek, waiting for the ground to dry, Barcelona.
A bonus of doing the art direction for Kitsch in 2018, was free accommodation in Barcelona for Adam as he joined the team for their annual get away to skate paradise. Some nagging injuries kept his skating to a struggling minimum, but he brought back a memory card full of... memories, and one more must see skate destination checked off the list. Check the hi-lights below!
Adam wasn't going to let aching feet keep him from hopping on these amazing ledges at a hilltop plaza in Tarragona. Just do what everyone did in the 90's when it was ad deadline time and you didn't have a photo - front nose!
Stacy Gabriel gets a quick one in at the world's busiest skate spot. There may have been some disagreement on the idea of meeting at Macba each day...
The classic spot known as Fondo is now technically a skatepark, and the huge marble bank is gone, but this classic bench to can set up was fun to skate and Derek Swaim heelflipped it about 40 times while filming some different lines.
Colorful skies at Fondo.
Geoff slashes a Hurricane in the mosaic tile base of the Montjuic communications tower, located in Barcelona's Olympic park. Quite hard to skate, and blindingly bright, but worth it to get some picturesque shots. There was lots to skate all around the area as well.
Barcelona local and filmer extraordinaire, Mario Cano, keeping it real with the VX1000 on another drizzly day. Didn't stop Stacy from getting his trick.
A fellow Canadian, hailing from Hamilton - Tom Fazzio is set up in Barcelona and we connected with him fresh off the plane. Always down for the sesh, and a great guy all around. He introduced the crew to the Sour guys, and scorched backside 180 nosegrinds on this classic spot just up the hill. Thanks for everything, Tom!
- BACK IN VANCOUVER -
After Barcelona, spring in Vancouver kicked in and the G9 was brought back out of retirement for the occasional session, with short edits being released through acdtz's instagram, until it's unfortunate and untimely demise when it got bonked just a little bit too hard by Adam's board. Red Telephone kept going with other equipment, but the G9 is sorely missed and a replacement is is the works.
Adam threads the needle to backside tailslide at an under-construction spot in east Vancouver - the same ledge that claimed the G9. - R.I.P.
- CALIFORNIA "COASTER" 2018 -
Matt Day gets a backside tailslide in at a much harder to skate than it looks spot, La Costa/Pontos, Carlsbad.
In the late fall, the annual Red Telephone southern escape landed Adam in Oceanside once again, and over the course of five weeks he managed to film a surprising amount of footage, which was made into a great little skate-cation recap video (and a b-sides edit with more surprises).
A virgin ledge smack dab in the middle of classic SoCal spot territory?! This thing barely needed wax and went like a dream. Capped shortly thereafter. Adam scores a few extra points on his backside lipslide for his throwback Etnies Scams/tee combo. Details.
Chris Haslam usually makes time to coordinate with the Red Telephone trips, and as usual he met up with Adam to scout some spots for future filming missions, and get down to a little good old fashioned curb doggin'. This golden beauty in Oceanside was a stones throw from the house and freshly poured - not to mention there was an unreal curved, metal edged bench in the hallway in the background.
Adam was sidetracked by a traumatic elbow dislocation right around the start of the New Year, but being cooped up inside with an injury will give him plenty of time to work on the second installment of Red Telephone's Stuck In The Past series - now Stuck In The Past 2000, as we've moved into the digital age, 1999 - 2005. Expect full edits to start dropping the end of this February...
We also threw together a recap of Bud Patterson and Adam's favorite clips from 2018 - hopefully we see a follow up to Motion's "Soft Spot" in 2020.
That covers a good deal of what's worth mentioning for the Red Telephone extended family in 2018. They just opened a Popeye's Chicken outside of Vancouver, so 2019 is shaping up to be a solid year. Stay tuned for those Stuck In The Past episodes!
