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Rewind: Mini Video 34 – Godstar

Rewind, Skating Videos

The second clip of 2006. This is a direct relation to the clip I wrote about last week, “Brigitte”, also from 2006. The same circumstances as before. It is compiled “greatest hits” footage from the “Hurry Up and Die 2.0” sessions. In other words, clips that were filmed (mostly) after the January 2003 premiere of “Hurry Up and Die”.

Again, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I don’t know why I chose the clips I did. They seem to span the timeframe from 2002-2006. Some were actually in Hurry Up and Die and/or Beez. My only guess why I reused some clips was, it was nearly impossible to post a full length video online at that time. Even Youtube allowed only 10 minute long videos for maximum length. I suppose I just wanted to show off some of the coolest moves I had happened to capture, and this was the only way to do it.

Let me get the first trivia out of the way right away. That “cool” effect in the beginning of the video was me filming through the holes in a Savier brand knit winter hat while zooming in on some trees at Riverside. I’ve always been one for practical effects. Follow @anti_cgi on Instagram!

Mini Video 34 – Godstar from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

Behind the scenes in the editing room. Elliott was at his most glorious. Heated sessions of MK2 on the regular. The most unsavory battles were obviously the Jax vs Jax face off, otherwise known as a “Jax Off”. (Credit to Russ on that terminology). My computer sat directly across from this personal arcade. It probably explains why I only made two video clips, clocking in at barely over 4 minutes run time for that entire year. Who’s got time for editing when you’re tempted to relive the arcade glories of the past?

Another issue was the fact that Sparks brand beverage was still lawfully on the market. Fueled by caffeine and GMO corn syrup malt drink, too much time was spent prancing away at the local 80s night, putting on “Rock Man” childrens’ sized Halloween costumes, and just the general process of “getting weird on beer”.

All of those time wasters are true, but it has just come to me that I know the real reason why I failed so badly at making more stuff – the hard drive I had all of the video footage stored on died. I was sat down making a new clip, and the drive went out in a blaze of glory. I have only just now, 12 years later, made serious progress in recapturing all 100 or so of those DV tapes. The moral of the story is, backup! I don’t even know if it was plausible in those days for a normal person to be able to backup gigs of data.

Chicago, 2003, Rock becoming one with the urban fauna. I’d like to imagine the descendants of these bunnies are still running the block. A long line of glory traced all the way back to when Rock gave them a nice little rub. Their verbal histories, passed on from generation to generation, remember him as a king. Their one true living god handing out pets and happiness, asking for nothing in return.

This photo was taking slightly before the ledge to ledge ollie featured in the video. Did upping the cuteness meter help John do the trick? How can we discount the theory? The bunnies were unsure, yet in the end willing to receive the pets only a towering man-god could give. Maybe some sort of bunny magic helped John to hop, hop, hop over the dangerous pit. I hate myself for that. 🙁

Same day. James with the frontside blunt. Look at how nice that ground still looks. Look at how square that ledge still is.

This was the time period where this spot was basically some sort of rollerblade mecca. I remember rolling up and there were what must have been 100-200 kids blading their asses off. So many sagged sweatpants. So many terrycloth head bands. The wax on the ledges was inches thick. It was truly a sight to behold. Long before I knew Dave Ruta, I saw him roll up to one of these sessions, say “you guys aint doing this shit while I’m here!!”, and they all bladed their asses out of there. Legendary. Follow @koolmoeleo on Instagram!

John Rockafellow – 50-50. I’ve never exactly liked this photo. My fault, not John’s. The goofy angle just makes the pipe look way lower than it really was. I’m unsure of who filmed the clip. I’ll just guess Pat Forster, I keep giving him credit for all of the other clips, why not.

This was always a difficult spot, and not many successfully got a sweet taste of glory here. John was the first!

Ben Vance – Noseslide. A different day than in the video. Same idea. I always thought it was really cool how Ben tied both ledges together in a line. It’s great how he busts the noseslide in the video in a sort of silly nonchalant fashion. It’s almost like he’s laughing at it on the way down.

James has a long and sordid history with his friend, the frontside board, on this rail. Or is the rail his friend? I’ve seen this rail do things to him that a true friend would never do. The rail is definitely not his friend.

It seems he spent his teens and twenties coming here to catch a thrill whenever the need struck him. Quizzing my own brain, I can think of several different times he came here for a wild ride. The smith in the video was the wildest of them all. He took a beating like Rocky did from Apollo. Even though he could hardly walk for days after the smith battle, just like Rocky, victory was his.

Nothing from this trip to Minneapolis was in this video, but hey, we threw some crap off a bridge right before this. Solid crew!

The Bush years were really hard on Pizz.

“The Ender”. A trip to Madison. Greg was going ham like that chomping monster shown at the end of Hellraiser. “Never enough.”, Russ’ favorite quote from the movie applies. I’m not well versed in Madison “ABDs”, but as far as I know he was the first to kickflip and frontside flip over the rail here. I was filming, Pat Forster shot the photo on my camera. This photo shows a frontside flip down the stairs, sans rail, which I don’t remember happening. Did I film it? No idea. There’s another photo which looks like a frontside 180 over the rail, but I guess it’s the frontside flip taken just a touch too late. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. If anyone wants to discuss Lord of the Rings, I’ve been rereading the series for the first time in almost two decades. There are a lot more differences between the books and the movies than I remembered.

I’ll leave you with a relic of the times:

Rewind: Mini Video 33 – Brigitte

Rewind, Skating Videos

We’re coming up on the 20th damn anniversary of this website real soon. I’m not quite sure how to celebrate such a thing, but a rehash of our web clips from the past comes to mind. A lot of these clips, especially the earlier ones, have never been on the internet in high quality. Think 320×240, super high compression, long download times.

My original idea was to begin as far back as I could go, and also dig up photos and other related memorobilia that could pertain to the video at hand. Unfortunately the earliest videos were also filmed when photos were shot on film, and I’m definitely way too lazy to try to dig through that stuff and try to discover the so called photographic gold.

The earliest clip that was made after digital still cameras came into my life was from April 2006. Mini Video 33 – Brigitte. Filmed on a Canon GL1. Edited on a PC program called Ulead Video Studio Pro, which I remember being like a half assed copy of Final Cut Pro. This was the first time I used French pop music from the 60s, which has turned into one of my most predictable editing moves over the years. The song is by Brigitte Bardot, which explains the mysterious(?) title of the clip.

This video is actually a really bad example of what I’m trying to accomplish with this series of web posts, let me explain.

In January 2003 we premiered my first full length video “Hurry Up and Die”. Instead of calling it a day and putting out the video as it was (I even had the VHS box artwork in hand!), we decided to keep filming and upgrade the video with better clips. In retrospect we fucked up, no end date was chosen, so there was no way to know when this improved version of the video was finished.

Eventually, it was already years past the premiere and obviously “Hurry Up and Die 2.0” would never be done, so I decided to dump the clips onto the web. That makes this video a “greatest hits” of the clips filmed after the premiere of “Hurry Up and Die”. I kind of question how or why I chose the clips I chose, it seems like they range from 2003 up to 2006, which is when this clip was created. There really doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. I think a couple of the clips were even in one of the “Beez” videos.

All those words later, my point is, I don’t exactly have photos that match up with the things portrayed in this video. I dug through the hoard as well as I could. Some of these finds make some sense, some are a stretch. I did my best.

Ben Vance – Ollie. Shot on set during the creation of Hurry Up and Die 2.0. The video shows a 180, the photo an ollie. I think Pat Forster filmed the clip while I shot the photo. I don’t recall footage of the straight ollie existing, but my brain is no longer working so well, it might exist.

This was the worst spot ever. Ben is popping his ollie off of some crappy sheets of plywood he threw over the unskateable run up.

The crew! Ben, Rock, Willy, Aaron, Nate.  All key members of this video production.  I believe here we were watching some sports.  A pretty uncharacteristic thing to be doing at my house.  This was the GAME ROOM, for gamers only.  At this moment in time I think everyone in this picture lived within a few blocks of each other.  Less travel for maximum shred.

The Beer Goblin vs the Yooper Ratt Aficionado.

Jeff Bauman. He was the young maniac back then. Never afraid the “duh heck!” himself onto a rail. Pictured here wrapped up like a burrito, looking somewhat shell shocked. I don’t know what was going on at the time. Photo was taken in Tampa, where the nollie 180 down the 10 stair was filmed. We were down there for a skate trip in January 2005.

Same trip. Everyone got sick. I remember sleeping in a dorm in an old train station. Everyone already got all of the good blankets. I ended up with six sheets. Bill was nursed back to health by this cat and his first generation iPod with 1 gig of storage. This photo also has a burrito vibe. I’m hungry.

Uncle Willy – Smith. A session at this ramp is featured in the vid. The ramp was in a barn at the Van Housen brothers’ house near Thiensville WI. It was a rad set up with rad vibes. Reason: the barn was filled with cats. Later on, this ramp was recycled into other obstacles at Cream City. I think it was turned into the old banked manual pad with parking blocks on it.

First trip to NYC, 2004(?). The big spiel about the easy availability of digital photos and what not at the beginning of this post was a slight lie, as I just dug out some pics from this trip and they were shot on film. The video had a line we filmed on this trip. Pat Murphy once told me he learned how to do varial heelflips by watching how Ben does them in the clip. I always was kind of bummed how I filmed the line, but Ben’s cool moves more than make up for my failings in life.

Ben Vance – Smith. Same trip. I could be remembering this wrong, but I think for some reason we drove through to night to make it to New York. Without ever sleeping, first spot of the day, Brooklyn Banks. Awesome to see in person for the first time. Top banks shut down pretty soon thereafter(?). This photo was on this site ages ago, I’ve always liked it. I had bought the fish eye this was shot on right before this trip! (Canon 15mm). I still use this lens to this day. Great return on investment.

Finally, two unreleased rarities of Pat and James. Battery park at night. On camera flash. They kind of turned out alright, but my prints were messed up. These new scans are the first time I’ve really even been able to see these photos. Also, I had just got this fish eye. Did I mention that? Did I maybe shoot every photo on this trip with it? I wonder why I did not film these tricks. Maybe my battery for my camera light was dead. Times were tough back then, keeping those things charged.

That’s it for now, until next time.

2 Sansas 1 Cup or the Sky High 30 Year Anniversary

Skating Photos

This past Saturday Sky High Skateboard Shop celebrated 30 years of existence. Sky High has been a key component to skating in this city for as long as I can remember. Endless years of skate Jams, trips, video premieres, high fives, and beers. The shop means everything! Here’s to 30 more!

Here are some of the activities that took place:

Max Murphy – Melon

Taylor Lalk – Backside Lipslide

Dustin Ciborsky – Frontside Bluntslide

Timmy Johnson – Backside Tailslide

Timmy Johnson – Backside Noseblunt

Max Murphy – 50-50

Jackson Roman – Blunt Fakie

Taylor Lalk – Backside Nosegrind

Dustin Ciborsky – Frontside Wallride

Danny Stemper – Death Corner Carver

Danny Stemper – Rock N Roll

Toilet Around the Campfire

Skating Photos

There’s been a recent change in the neighborhood. My neighbor has had a toilet sitting near his fire pit the entire time I’ve lived here. The other day, to my surprise, I saw him carefully hitting it with a hammer and putting the pieces in a bag. Word is still out whether or not this helps our hurts my property value. I’ll report back when the city sends me my yearly property assessment.

Nick “Sleepy” Mistele with a layback wallie on this Harley orange barrier. He had never done this before, but I think the power of the Harley Hog, bald eagles, and America powered him enough to pump over this Boban relation. Technically, I’d say a concrete Jersey barrier might be a cousin to the Boban, but not a direct relation. Same genus, different species. We call the plastic orange barriers Bobans because that’s all classic wiskate patron Boban would skate while working at the skate park. Mini ramp? Nope, Boban. Pyramid? Nope, Boban. Got it?

Hi-8 evidence of the Boban connection. It’s real. It’s true. Circa 2001. 17 years of calling Bobans Bobans. Mark it down. Update your dictionary. I wish I could recapture all of these old Hi-8 tapes, I really don’t know how I lost the files. If someone has a digital 8 camera they’d lend me, slide into my DMs.

Max lived here. Not exactly here, not on a backside smith on the ramp. That’d be something. Imagine sitting there, just stuck in a smith. All day and night. “Help!” You’d have to call Uber Eats to receive nutrition. “Yeah, come on in. The door is open. I’ll be here, I’m stuck in this smith.”

Max has always wanted to be able to frontside flip on transition like John Rattray or Daniel Stemper. This night was his night. Several melt downs, several liters of sweat lost. It was his, he endured, victorious!

I made poor Vince do this smith grind tail grab scores of times. He never complained. I kept failing. He kept doing it. What a guy.

A long dog with a long dog. Sleepy, but cool. Imagine having a pillow that looked like your own species. There actually is such a thing. I guess this is Francois’ “Waifu Pillow”! Although there is no sexual angle to this relationship. Pure, innocent, like freshly fallen snow. Is it possible for an ex pro athlete to be that innocent? You might have a point. He had to have the killer instinct. “No Fear!”. 6 wins to his name. Look it up! BGR Crush. I bet he’s had a groupie or two in his time.

Matt Nordness <3 Fritsche

Serious Art, Skating Videos

For five years Matt (BMAN) had an ongoing love affair with this over the rail into the bank. The run up is terrible. After you land, if you can’t ride it out to the right, you run into a fence. She’s a harsh mistress. But BMAN loved her anyway. She gave, she took, she treated him wrong. True poetry, true love. Fritsche.

Matt Nordness <3 Fritsche - 2010-2015.

Portraiture by Jeremy Pettis.

“I Already Used That Song 15 Years Ago, Guy”

Serious Art, Skating Photos

America’s birthday! Nothing says “USA!” like dogs, Odouls, and Zima.
Brothas from different mothas! Pizz and Chase twinned it up at this years BBQ. “No time for slippin’!” It’s unknown if they communicated the wardrobe situation before hand or not, but Pizzy did take up smoking for the rest of his life to pose for this picture.

Newcomer on the scene, Francois, was pretty leery of all the celebration, but he did manage to make a few appearances and meet a few dogs. Did you know the French were some of the greatest contributors to our winning the Revolutionary War against those tyrants, the English?? Viva La France!

Is NA beer patriotic? Who am I to say? Who are you to say? Patriotism lives in the heart and soul of man. On the way to work the other day I saw a sticker on a car that said “GOD, GUNS, BEARDS”. Is that patriotism? Would god like guns? I suppose he can be pretty vengeful. Though, I suppose it depends if you’re asking Old Testament or New Testament god. Beards, obviously, that goes without saying. But do these things actually have anything to do with America? Some might say yes. Some might say no.

The last time I tasted Zima was probably 1994, Allison A’s party in the subdivision near the grade school. Probably threw back 1.5 of those babies and was feelin’ fine! It was great to relive those times gone by. Pre internet. Pre juuling. My keyboard still does not have a working “j” key, so I had to google “uuling” and use the copy and paste feature of my computer.

After all of that celebrating, I suppose it was time to skate.

Have I retired from filming? Is it possible? I think sometimes it would be nice. I retired from filming for this week at least. Here’s some photos instead!
Max was on a tear. He had already been doing scores of frontside crooked grinds before I arrived. He continued doing them for photos, like the one shown above. About two hours later he decided he’d film a line starting with a frontside crook. He couldn’t do it anymore. The moral of the story is, save your frontside crooks like you might save quarters your grandma sends you on your birthday. You might never know when you will need them.

Is this a reflection of the state of our society? Can a skate photo be ART? I think it’s probably only a picture of Max doing a backside noseblunt near some rubble. It’s pretty neat he was able to do this, as you might have noticed, you have to ollie onto that slab first, thus making the trick much more difficult.

Sleepy was recently featured on Instagram looking particularly GQ. Does he have a future as a male model?

Sleepy was taking this backside 180 nosegrind coast to coast, and then to everyones surprise, added a 180 out. I had to get super close for my attempt at a Slap style photo, and it made me very scared. But everything worked out in the end, and my safety remained intact.

Here’s a picture from a far away camera of the same trick. I’ve been using this really old 85mm manual focus Nikon lens, and its quite enjoyable. The contrast is really low, probably due to the crappy lens coating of the era, but it looks pretty nice.

If I had been in Slap position during this naughty flat line, I’d be writing this from my grave. My S/O would be rich from my life insurance pay out. My dog could afford college.

Hanley Juke arrived and wasted no time doing several of these nollie backside flips. He wasn’t impressed with himself though, “that’s my go-to”. I told him it’s a nice go-to. Then we hugged.

Rick Nasty did a little work on this backside flip. He wanted to give up a few times, but he persevered and in the end felt success. Now that is the American Dream. Literal boot strap pulling.

Finally, Brick was sitting off to the side, unsure of himself. I think maybe he had some low “T”. He must have visited New Male, because he busted a nice no comply and everyone was happy. The end.

Dining at the Wendys in the airport in Bahrain

Skating Videos

Estabrook, June 2018. Quick hits only. w/ Max Murphy, Rory Morgan, Danny Stemper, Al Stoops, and Nick Mistele.

Maybe this can be like a classic wiskate.com post.  This is what happened this week:

Grilling season is in full swing. That means at least once, maybe twice, maybe thrice a week, the crew gets in the backyard with some briquets and goes for it. Lately there’s been a lot of hamburgers, which is odd, because usually this is a sausage sort of household. I’m still not quite sure how to feel about it all.

These days there is a new homie in the equation: Francois. Francois is retired racing greyhound we’ve adopted about six months ago. His original name was BGR Crush, and during his time as a pro dog athlete he won six races. If you feel so inclined, if you google his original name you can find some videos of him racing. You’ll also learn he has almost 700 brothers and sisters. It’s taking some time for him to learn how to be a pet, but he’s come a long way. He loves to BBQ with all of his new friends.

This is Max. Max is really proud of his hamburger concoction. He’s got some sort of cheese/jalapeno bagel that he picked up from the store standing in as a bun. We don’t require strict adherence to grilling standards in the backyard. Experimentation is applauded (within reason).

Parkour is a sport(?) invented in France that involves running around to dubstep music. Generally Parkour would be frowned upon, but in this case there was no harm in a little “Jack be Nimble”, and a little M4M high five leap with ‘ol Pizz. (Not pictured: Pizz’s brat fell onto the charcoal and got all dirty. I sprayed his brat off with a hose. Pizzy requires a clean brat. He ate it and proclaimed it was the best brat he’d ever had. Was there some sort of chemical reaction when the brat got hosed down? More research is needed.)

Three men survey the results of the Parkour session. The phone pictured uses Republic Wireless, which is a budget cell phone provider. You should get Republic Wireless if you’re interested in having all of your incoming calls go straight to voicemail, and half of your texts never being delivered. It’s worth it to save the money.

Jacob and John. It’s a problem writing about these guys because on the computer I’m using the “J” key does not work. I always have to search for a file with a “J” in the filename that I can copy and paste. My go-to area to look is the “Completed Videos” folder. Sometimes I’ll Google “ohn McGuire” if I’m having trouble finding a capitalized version. Maybe I should get a new keyboard. I’ve put it off because, names excluded, you don’t actually need to use the letter very much.

Somebody had found some new ledges this weekend, wax was in a short supply. Gabe had this tiny satchel of crack rocks, and that was about it. The ledge really had to be seasoned in a well thought out manner, otherwise the tiny supply would be wasted.

Max didn’t have much trouble with the wax situation on this nosegrind. I find this to be a pretty forgiving maneuver when it comes to the wax required to get it to grind.

On the other hand, a backside smith is defcon 5 when it comes to required wax coverage. Those nuggets of wax were doled sparingly in an extremely calculated fashion, akin to how one might move his queen in a tense game of chess. After many tries with the kingpin brake being applied, one finally grinded, and Max rode away triumphantly.

Jabob with a wallride nollie. He did between 16 and 70 of these. It’s kind of a hard trick to time a photo of. He also almost murdered me with his skateboard while I took this photo. Once, about 15 years ago, I was filming Pizzy at those dumb green tennis courts at Marquette. Pizzy was going for it, with speed and intent, and somehow I didn’t notice a giant stick (I imagine it more like a tree trunk this many years on) directly in my path. When you’re falling while holding an expensive camera, somehow your instincts for self preservation go right out the window and your main instinct is to try to save the camera. It’s crazy how 1000s of years of evolution can be ignored to try to protect some consumer electronics (more research needed). While saving the camera I hyper extended my arm really bad, and I had to film switch the rest of that summer. The shoulder sometimes still bothers me to this day.

Finally, we must say goodbye to a wiskate OG, Elliott. If you peruse the archives, you’ll see he’s been around and featured on the site forever. You might get the wrong idea that his primary use was to appear in weird photographs. He actually in reality was a normal cat most of the time. He was really getting up there in age, and had been quite sick the last few months. Pour out some of your squirreled away original recipe Sparks for the dude. He deserves it. He’s also the reason this keyboard doesn’t have a working “J” key, he knocked some crap off a shelf onto it. So maybe I won’t ever fix it, an annoying keepsake from a cool dude.

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