If you haven’t been paying attention like me, you’re probably still aware that board skating is in the Olympics this year. Friends, family, colleagues, all assuming you’ve been excitedly watching. No, motherfucker! I’m about that blade life! But it brought me back to that existential question we all ask ourselves from time to time, what does blading look like to an outsider? To someone who can’t tell the difference between a mizu and kind grind? What looks lame even though it’s cool? What looks cool even though it’s lame? So here is a list of the top ten tricks (or types of trick) I think would be most impressive to a broad Olympic Games audience.
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#10 Misty Flip:
We all know this list should start with the back-flip, but we all hate that, so I decided to start with something a bit more palatable. It was the first trick that really got me stoked on blading. Some kind of upside down spinning gnarliness. Even the name sounded rad, like a mystical maneuver Ryan Jacklone spent years studying in the forest with a group of Samurai.
Eugen Enin / Misty Flip
#9 Cross Legged Grinds:
Grinds are cool, but your skates are attached to your feet, so it doesn’t count, right? Well, my feet are crossed, looking like some kinda cool yoga position Ryan learned at an ashram in India after he was done studying with the Samurai.
Casey Geraghty / AO Fakie 3 to Savannah
#8 One Foot Grinds:
I have mixed feelings about this one. A long time ago I was skating with a friend who just got into it. He did a frontside around a curved curb and a passing drunk yelled, “Woohoo! I give it a ten!” Then he looked at me and asked, “What do you got???” I thought about it for a second and decided on alley-oop makio. It seemed simple enough. Look mah, one foot! And I’m going backwards! Anybody could understand that, right? I laced the shit out of it and confidently asked dude what score he had for me. He looked confused and then sympathetically gave me a five, as if to say, keep practicing and one day you will be as good as your friend. But I blame that on the booze and stand by the cool factor of standing on one foot. Maybe a rocket makio would have won him over.
Joe Atkinson / Rocket Makio
#7 Switch-Ups:
Unlike technical grinds, you don’t really need to understand where or how exactly someone’s skates are locked on. You just know they were grinding one way and then in the middle of this fragile balancing act, jumped and changed position, and kept going! WTF? I would still argue 270 to backside to frontside (and maybe 540 out or even just 180 revert) is one of the most stylish tricks you can do.
Derek Henderson / Quadruple Switch
#6 Transfers / Rail-Transfers:
Like switch-ups, but more intense, because there is distance between obstacles. Especially if the obstacle isn’t an obvious part of the course, maybe the railing to keep the crowd separate, which gets you extra punk points for being up close and in their face.
David Sizemore / 360 Transfer to Royale
#5 Disasters / Gap To Grinds:
This might seem like a step down from rail to rail transfers, being one less obstacle, but straight up gaps to grinds are usually bigger and faster. Plus being one less obstacle means less they need to understand and dumbness usually wins a crowd. I would also lump “spin to wins” in this category. The spin adds a little razzle dazzle, but I don’t know that many people entirely understand what’s happening, like all the little board twirl things going on right now in Paris.
Montre Livingston / AO 5 Soul
#4 Kinked Rails:
Hold up, this isn’t even a trick, it’s an obstacle. Yes, but grinding them is a unique trick. But you just said dumbness usually wins a crowd? Yes, but the opposite can be true also. And depending on the rail, the stoke can begin before you even do anything, “There’s no way they’re gonna grind that rail…”
John Lyke / Soul
#3 Big Airs:
Hold up, this isn’t a trick either. It’s an adjective, right? Yes, but it’s also something everybody understands. You’re just flying through the air higher than the person before you. Awesome.
Carp Lopez / Kung Lao 180
#2 Nearly Eating Shit:
In our world, the exact opposite is true. We love to see master technicians like Sean Kelso perfectly execute a trick and then smoothly skate away in slow motion. But let’s face it, in the “real” world, half the people watching these types of sports just want to see someone breaking bones. If they don’t get to see that, at least they get to see someone out of control, nearly die, and then pull off the trick at the last minute. Woah, that was close!
Adam Bazydlo Defying Death
#1 Smoking:
Everybody knows smoking makes you look cool. Ok, not really. But I didn’t have a tenth trick for this list and sometimes the coolest move is to just not give a fuck what anybody thinks #JustBlade
Bladers Looking Cool
