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.
Stay Gold indeed. - Adam Cassidy
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