I have been living in Utah for a month now, at the top of a mountain in “Winter’s Favorite City.” Snow is falling, has been falling and will be falling. My local spot is a parking garage. I have a snowskate on my Christmas list. When my friend Randy tells me that his friend Joel is moving here in the spring, Joel and I connect and make a plan to meet when he is visiting Salt Lake City this week. Our initial scheme is to skate on Saturday, but Friday night snow falls over the valley and Wasatch peaks through the weekend, so we reschedule for Tuesday, downtown SLC at noon. By 11:30am I’m out the door, driving 40 minutes down the mountain, listening to What a Time to Be Alive.
Joel had suggested we meet at Gallivan Park, on 250 South and Main St. A few minutes after noon I see Joel as I drive past the spot, then loop for growing minutes looking for empty parking spots without success. Along one street I spot tens of quarter-pipe concrete planters and make a mental note to revisit. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at my difficulty finding street parking downtown during business hours. I imagine locals have their ways that I don’t yet know. The first parking garage I try has a six foot height limit, too low for this High Sierra, so I reverse and drive to find another garage with 6’10” clearance, where I loop up four levels of filled and reserved spots before securing an empty berth. I elevate down and skate back to the spot where Joel is waiting wearing an unbuttoned buffalo plaid over his Nocturnal skateshop tee.
Today in the valley, here downtown, is sunny and beautiful with no trace of the snow that I left in Park City. Gallivan offers a copper-plated table and some round planters along downhill flatground as we introduce ourselves and warm up. I photograph a selfie of us that I send to Randy. One of Joel’s Philadelphian roommates is Anatoly, a gemstoner who had been in New York on a class trip ten years ago when he saw Jason Byoun and me skating Columbus Circle, introduced himself and we exchanged social handles. Anatoly earned last part in Zach Styles’s Veil video, wherein Joel’s ender was switch frontside flip to 5-0 on the Philadelphia rail Jake Johnson switch flip back tailed. Here and now, Joel and I film each other doing a copper table line, then check a little gap to rock around the corner he had noticed when he was here over the summer.
On our way to the quarter-pipe planters, Joel sees a small trash can gap off a drop where I film him switch ollie and backside flip down over the can before deciding on an ollie myself. On the upstate day trip I shared with Tyler Dingman, whose text messages begin this piece, Dean and Taylor in October I had felt comfortable ollieing the Mount Vernon skatepark four-stair, so consider this gap a similar challenge that I land second and third tries.
A couple blocks up and over, the quarter-pipe planters are not flush with the ground, but I am able to easily backside wallride my first curvaceous subject then suck up and decline another to fakie. We pass a robed Mormon choir on a popular downhill block featuring many consecutive tall ledges. Further down, on a flatter side street bearing an earlier generation’s architecture that feels more Western, I see a red metal box beside a window covered with Spotify symbols that I want to nollie back tailslide. On my first pop, my twisting tail hits the window and shaves a sliver off the vinyl covering. I am not ready to break a window for this blindside clip, so set about crooked grinding instead. Once I land a good one with a flatground heelflip afterward, we start trying to figure out how we can get to this full-pipe we have both seen in passing. Since Joel’s street parking is about to expire and the full-pipe location appears a bit south of downtown, we step into his girlfriend’s vehicle and head toward the Public Library, where street parking costs but open spots abound. We’re skating west around the Leonardo Museum when Joel realizes he forgot to pay parking, so we go back to the vehicle, then I look around the eastern building corner and see the shadowed full-pipe’s ring right before me.
The weekend snowfall’s melted traces linger longer here on the museum’s shady side. The full-pipe contains leafy water in the bottom, along with a soggy copy of yesterday’s news that I use to shovel all the water out to the ground. Joel finds a spare pink rag in his skate bag that also proves helpful, then I’m ready to take a ride. The white paint inside the pipe feels stickier than I expected, while my urethaned movement within the metal tube provides a sound effect feeling I recommend you try for yourself.
Joel and I are trading off runs with pumps and backside carves when we see two skaters pushing our way. We introduce ourselves to Carlos and Grant, who say they are heading to skate these ledges. When Joel asks if we can come along, they give us a look as they shrug sure, which stands to reason because these two ledges are simply immediately around the building’s corner where we hadn’t yet explored. Grant takes a run through the full-pipe first and thrusts some kickturns before he slips out and slightly soils his fresh white Seasons skateshop tee on the sludge still at the bottom. I suggest Seasons would be happy to see their garment getting good use. Grant asks me if I’ve been to Seasons. No, I didn’t make it to Seasons’s Albany shop during my 19 years as a New York City resident and now that I live in Utah, wonder when I might.
These two bench ledges around the corner are very nice, though the further one by the fence is more bowed in the middle from years of waxed grinds and Joel wonders if it could break at any point soon. I do basic lines while Carlos land back tails and Joel gets a line with front tail then back 180 nosegrind. Part of the reason we hadn’t explored around the corner initially was probably because there is a red-head woman in a red dress, who is smoking rollies and eating from styrofoam at the planter that forms the corner between the pipe and ledges where the bros set their bags before she walks elsewhere. When a third skater, Fred, arrives at the spot, he begins cleaning up her trash. They say the spot is occasionally a bust, in part because errant boards have shot into and shattered some of the ground floor’s dark glass panel walls we can see are replaced with black plywood. These three dudes all moved to SLC separately about four years ago and struck up friendships. I say Joel and I just met today. I love this spot already and foresee myself spending hours here through future seasons. These two benches remind me of the Water Department ledges in Los Angeles, but I really want to stack a clip on the full-pipe so head back around the corner.
Our pipe dehydration has been mostly successful, with only a small puddle remaining at the south end of the tube with the better outside approach. I begin by ollieing from the tarmac over the puddle into a backside pipe carve, then pump up and down to fakie thrust as I adjust my feet and start popping kickflips. Within ten tries I land one to fakie and give myself a little cheer, then go around the corner and enlist Joel to film me, horizontal please. When my first documented landing comes after a handful of preparatory pumps, I tell Joel I want to land one where I kickflip after my first pump rather than my fifth. He understands and supportively documents until I achieve my goal. I continue pumping after the make, then huck and stick another kickflip to fakie, landing unbalanced so my board parabolas out of the tube, away from the library over the rock wall toward a tree.
Joel and I are checking the footy when we see our new friends engaged in conversation with two male workers giving us the boot, considerately. Grant isn’t on IG but we follow Fred and Carlos, who slightly know and definitely respect the Utah Skate Spot Hound. I give them glitter “I’m crying because I love skateboarding so much” stickers and discussion turns to where to affix such a nice sticker. Grant says his will go on his toolbox, as their trio skates away then Joel and I head over to check out the huge six-block Antuan Dixon switch heelflipped like the moon landing in Baker Has a Deathwish Summer Tour, where implanted scaffolding now wraps the inverse summit like a spider’s web. I shoot a spot selfie of course.
We skate over to scope some brick quarter-pipes up to ledge planters we spotted when we were driving to the full-pipe, much steeper and tighter than ideal. I backside carve one, then slam in a crazy way on the second wave. I hop up, thankfully okay and decide I have clipped up enough for today. Joel is going to meet with his brother who’s in town to ski for trivia night at a taproom, so he drives me back downtown where we see a crew of three teenage skaters on the opposite corner from where he drops me off. We say we’ll see each other in the spring if not sooner, I give him a couple Skate Part Reviews for his flight back to Philadelphia and grab my board out of the trunk, then skate over and session with these teens for a minute on this banked marble slappy curb I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. I land a couple backside 50-50s while one of the boys slides back blunts, then tell them I want to get up the mountain before sundown, give them “I’m crying because I love skateboarding so much” stickers and start ascending home to my beautiful girlfriend.
—
I met Tyler Dingman over a decade ago through Jason Byoun. Tyler is best friends with Luke Clerkin, who used to live with his dad in Battery Park City then moved to Ireland a handful of years back. Together Tyler and Luke run the FookYah collective, which has made stickers detailing their shared interests in skateboarding, trees and books. Tyler and I hadn’t seen each other since before covid until my Starboard video premiere was below his apartment and Jason invited him. When I took his number that night, I realized that I already saved him as Tyler Henry Street, who I’d thought was this other Tyler who owned Mr. Fongs. I’m glad we reconnected before I left town and grateful that he invited me on that upstate skatepark trip. I can hear a snowplow beeping outside the window as Claire and I settle into the sofa before the electric fireplace and big screen. I turn up the volume and press play on his latest 7 and a half minute feature:
Acoustic strums welcome our gazes upon this green field where a wheaten old dog, willing companion, wags its ropy tail and turns from inhaling breeze to amble alongside the pedestrian filmer over buttercups spotting the grass. Luke’s dog’s name is Quinn, and Giant’s Ring is the name of this circular field surrounded by banked earthen mounds with its megalithic black tomb visible in the distance. Willie Nelson sings, “Laugh with me, buddy,” as the next rolling video focuses on goofy-stance Luke’s lower half, with dark train tracks down the outseam of his faded jeans above navy/white Old Skools rolling past a red-rimmed manual pad topped with beverages and keys. “Jest with me, buddy,” suits Luke’s backside ascent on a DIY concrete bank that he kickflips across until his rollaway reaches the point where this ramp’s construction is still in progress, so he backside kickturns down then carves in his dark crewneck sweatshirt worn a over a dark tee to scrape a quick front 5-0 on the cherry red curb implanted as the pill-shaped spine’s coping.
Belfast locals have christened their DIY space “Ofield,” this re-appropriated concrete soccer field where next clip from a stationary angle frames their two concrete kicker ramps with a gap between them, before tall green growth ringing the pitch beneath occasional clouds in a blue sky, whereupon Cupid Stunt appears ascending to shoot his shot in a red tee, cuffed blue jeans, Rowley XLTs and a black beanie. “Don’t let her get the best of me,” could refer to the challenges preceding his correct 360 flip over the gap, “buddy,” where offscreen chuckles turn to chimes of “woo” and “yeah,” as Cupid rides offscreen and branches continue blowing in breeze.
“Don’t ever let me start feeling lonely,” agrees with the filmer’s inquisitive roll toward Donny, a long-haired beanie-clad goofy-stance skater in Blazers whose t-shirt supports The Who while he slappy crooked grinds the concrete box’s longer red metal side, rolling away over painted lines still indicating pitch parameters past a wheelbarrow to the filmer’s appreciative tongue trills with the self-made assortment of curbs, boxes and quarter pipes filling perimeter distance. Irishman now in New York Richard Gilligan made his DIY photobook of worldwide Do-It-Yourself skatespots over a decade ago, and I can imagine him photographing this slice of paradise that Luke is sharing Tyler when he drifts over the Atlantic for a visit.
Waterbottles and small bags beside the box and a flatbar occupy our screen as Luke filming pushes ahead until Tyler enters left foot forward from screen left to switch boardslide the red parking curb embedded atop cinder blocks to regular, then he pushes in black Vans showing tan waffle soles, navy trousers, a slate collared shirt, spectacles and forward ball cap toward the angle-iron ledge topping three levels of stacked granite slabs for a front smith grind dip and lift off the end. “If I ever needed you, buddy,” accompanies Tyler push-carving past the volcano and empty goal frame, “you know how I really do, buddy,” then he pops a kick that cuts mid-flip to show the fellows at night before firelight pressing dowels on the wet cheeks of tomorrow’s transition. “Don’t ever let me start feeling lonely.”
A bright eyed boy riding a shredded deck with graffitied griptape pushes regular-stance in grey patchwork sweatpants with two ollie holes through his left shoe while a Trek bike sits propped against the blue-tarped refuge that keeps supplies dry. “I cry at the least little thing, buddy.” A squiggly white arrow suggests one route up the black pill-shaped transition, then camera joins in course with Luke’s flatground back 180 showing holes in his blue jean knees as follow-filming angle reveals further distress in his worn-through seat, switch mongo pushing in Old Skools toward fakie adjustment for a half-cab over the perpendicular red curb to flatground manual showing the back graphic of his Watermelonism Striped Melon grey tee with talons balancing up a bit of the kicker ramp to backside twist offside. Luke under-rotates his landing then “I’ll die if you mention her name, buddy,” and steps off his board. One night years ago Luke might have been leaving Tyler’s Henry Street apartment when I filmed him do a similar half-cab manual back 180 at the Chinatown Triangle.
Cupid Stunt returns in his red shirt to throw down and gap from a taller wood quarter-pipe into front 5-0 on the smaller, closer to camera brick quarter-pipe with leafy branches overhanging the shot’s foreground. “Talk to me, buddy. Stay with me, buddy,” beckons Luke’s lens to follow Cupid Stunt’s further course showing front pocket fades on his darker denim pushing past Tyler bending down to grab his water bottle and another skater going for a boardslide. “Let’s don’t let her get away with it, buddy,” as Cupid Stunt’s impish green wheels manual across the red-rimmed pad before he slappy feeble grinds the red-top of the pill spine and pops back in to finish off his three-piece when Luke expresses pleasure audibly. Dingman follows up with front boardslide along the top of the spine to fakie, then continues to switch manual the red-rimmed pad as dark sweat on his ball cap indicates worthwhile efforts beneath the sun. “Let’s talk about things,” when his front shove attempt runs out of steam, skateboard shoots elsewhere then Luke’s palm marks the footage. When I told my friend Danny I was moving to Utah, he wondered how many times we would see each other again in this lifetime. I bet we accumulated over a years’ worth of days during five years of friendship with two of those years of co-working. Maybe fifteen days is a hopeful guess for how many more.
Darker later when the homies are clad in jackets, one skater in a fresh high and tight haircut grabs his stray board to make way for Luke’s backside shove-it across the same abbreviated bank where he kickflipped to start this affair. “Before I got mixed up” with the bright eyed boy from earlier, now drinking from a green glass bottle seated beside his mate under the blue tarp upon the protected stacks of good granite bricks beside an uncovered pile of rubble for general fill as Luke pushes past before clip cuts. When Tyler back smith grinds on the angle-iron cinderblock ledge and his back toe drags on rollaway, he mouths ‘fuck’ before exasperated laughter with a headshake. Much as the DIY is a perpetual work in progress, so are many of the tricks displayed here. Time feels extra precious when usually distant friends are finally together, so clips run past the makes and breaks with an emphasis on extending the moments. Luke pumps a bit of the volcano as his dog Quinn passes outside the fence, then targets himself toward the angle-ironed ledge for back 50-50 front 180 out, but he doesn’t hang on and his board rides away by itself, “feeling lonely,” as one dude stands holding his bicycle in conversation with the skaters sitting on the ledge holding their phones while Luke, with his hands on his waist, catches up with his board and Willy’s song from his 1968 Good Times album draws to close.
Now Luke, wearing his red sweater over a white collar and khakis, is lying with his eyes closed on a chaise longue in a lush green backyard with dark-eyed oatmeal blonde Quinn sitting by his Birkenstocked socked feet while wind blows through Belfast willows. A follow-up ground-level shot frames Quinn at center before reclining Luke asleep in the sunbeam to the back left beside his white mug of tea. One rainy day includes a walk at Giant’s Ring with Luke under a navy and red umbrella, following Quinn through fields where his coat compliments the wheat stalks. Later that day, half a rainbow charts its pot of gold at this DIY pitch Ofield looking over Belfast below, with the name ‘Belfast’ being an Anglicisation of the Irish Béal Feirste, which roughly translates as ‘the mouth of the sandbar.’
Keys of Ethiopian nun and pianist Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou‘s song “The Homeless Wanderer” introduce this stateside section beginning at the Upper West Side’s Andy Kessler Skatepark where Harry’s friend and Pratt student, Gus, a regular-stancer in shorts, mounts the low bank backside then kickflip wallrides onto the steeper slope descending. One time early in my New York tenure I rode the L train back to Manhattan after a KCDC party and sat across from Andy Kessler and Jimmy McDonald. At Lenox Ledges, Gus in green shorts and green/white Asics front tailslides to regular, front noseslides to regular, then kickflips his Baker deck off the curb to street. Downtown at night, rain remains on the waxed lips of the banked Battery Park ledges where blonde Gus, now in shirtless in pants, wallie boardslides the ledge to fakie before frontside pivot around to rollaway. At Grant’s Tomb, back in shorts again, Gus fakie flips into switch back 50-50 pop out on the curb Tim Penman likes, while a couple talks on a background bench and two large American flags hang before North America’s largest mausoleum.
Returning favors, Gus is happy to film Tyler, wearing his backpack over a white tee in shorts, ollie onto the Grant’s Tomb block and drop off to take the skinny two-level downchute plunge to Riverside rollaway. Obviously Pappalardo and Rizzo have done their things here, where that drop to first pinched kink remains no joke. One can imagine Tyler’s elation at stacking a clip on this landmark in the similar way to how Gus has been checking famous skatespots off his list as he backside power slides before clip cuts. A propped yellow access gate boosts consecutive selfie-angle wallies, Tyler goofy preceding Gus regular.
On the old TF’s last weekend, its honeycrisp pitch glows under setting sun as Yaje flatground ollies over a bicycle, then takes a couple pushes past the stumps where the first bench already got sawed off and taken away for safekeeping, to front 5-0 the next green bench, carving around Miche sitting on the next bench then pushing past Danny Weiss and Paul Lamb. Yaje’s pushing right slip-on shows a switch ollie hole as he exits through the gate and out of Tompkins, with follow angle showing the white Dogtown cross on the back of his navy t-shirt past a woman wearing Timberlands and tight bluejeans, to wallie the light post over the puddle onto Avenue A pushing downtown across the street checking for traffic over his shoulder wearing a shoelace belt. I had been at TF earlier that Friday afternoon talking in the dugout with Danny Weiss, Russian Steve and Yaje, when Yaje recalled me doing switch back tails on the 12th and A benches when I first moved here and inspiring him to learn the trick. Dingman had walked through at some point with his black dog, Blue, then said he would be back in a bit after he dropped Blue at home. True to his word, he filmed this clip when he returned after I left.
At the Upper Westside movie theatre courtyard, Vince wears DC Stevies to backside pivot a banked planter to fakie. Mark Gonzales wears a crocheted bucket hat in approaching selfie angle as he front tails a curb to regular rollaway wearing Adidas and cuffed selvedge denim in line with white angled advisory paint.
Jason Byoun, wearing a white tee, blue jeans shorts and navy/white old skools on a summer night, kickflips the Cooper Union bank to fakie before a red-jacketed man appears in uniform complete with a red hat and says, “You can’t do that.” “Alright,” Tyler confirms from behind the lens, “We’re leaving. I’m sorry,” while Ross, with long braids and a black tee, has already started his go. He ascends under pressure to hardflip his Hardbody deck, lands fakie sideways on the bank and kickturns down to rollaway as Jason claps. “That was fire.”
Back in Belfast, the recently re-stoned C.S. Lewis Square is a popular spot for locals to gather and learn, offering a freshly built mellow wooden quarter-pipe where Luke pivots to fakie in his favorite jeans and Watermelon tee, then continues to display a plywood box’s capacity for his switch manual. Dingman slappy front 50-50s a downhill parking garage curb, then Cupid Stunt executes front blunt on their DIY volcano. Tyler follows up on the volcano with a frontside pivot to the fakie.
Newtownard’s Leisure Centre Skatepark is a smaller fenced space showing graffiti on its concrete curves beside a post-modern building filled with community health amenities. One afternoon, a boy holding a football on the other side of the fence calls his classmates’ attentions to mustachioed longhaired Donny, who was wearing The Who t-shirt earlier, now sporting a short-sleeve yellow button-up while he performs a quarter-pipe-top backside nose-pick pop-in then carves across the park to backside kickturn on the opposite quarter-pipe where a child on a scooter drops in and Tyler stands atop the deck, then he slides off a back lip attempt on the middle ledge. Next rolling clip picks up from this pit where Cupid Stunt wears a red tee over a white longsleeve and wallies a triangle to land frontside into the parallel bank, before he reaches the quarter-pipe where he backside big spins below coping as mates pipe birdcalls before an unsuccessful frontside shove ends his line and the lens gets palm-tapped. From the far side of the driveway banked mount, Tyler backside ollies over the spine toward the stationary camera and ducks low through the foreground to clear the center for follow-up redshirt Luke ascending above the implanted triangle to screech a front tailslide across the spine downbank to regular. One blond child bicycles past the buildingside bearing the shadow a light pole casts.
At a pre-fab park made of Fearless Ramps, two young girls sit on the elevated bank to ledge with a boy in a BMX helmet around their age standing on his ground-level bicycle beside Tyler the filmer with all their eyes turned toward the fellows relaxing on the upper deck-spanning quarter-pipe as Luke pumps up to their level then front 5-0s across the long quarter-pipe toward the camera and his mates eating chips with their shoes off before his rideaway prompts jubilation as the angle returns to the children and brings to mind Jenkem’s recent Metal Park Kids.
“Don’t overdo it because your ass will fall down,” cautions a Cherry Street local with polarized sunglasses perched on the brim of her hat as she sits on the earlier section of the white, two level drop-down ledge in front of PS 184.
At the base of Forsyth Plaza, Yaje twirls his board like a barbershop pole while he gives his pitch: “Why don’t you just come to LES? We’re going to meet up with them at LES.” “Alright, yeah,” Tyler agrees from behind the lens as he sets down his orange metal water bottle that rings with its emptiness. A white plastic plate of peanut noodles on an emerald tray with a Styrofoam cup of complimentary soup steams and gleams. Jason and I used to go to a downstairs restaurant on Eldridge Street for this meal until one day the gate was the down. Tyler spins his black dog Blue in circles on a polished wood floor with his left hand pivoting black Blue’s white chest while filming with his right. “Whiskey in the Jar” is a traditional Irish drinking song, shown here with a sober riff when a blurry, blue green view retracts through the glass jam jar of water capped on the dashboard driving down a rural route.
Mellow yellow python curbs surround two mulched islands in a parking lot where a backshot selfie angle shows goofy stance Gonz wearing Adidas, khakis and a navy hoodie up for slappy back 50-50 on the first curb, rollaway kicking up run-off dust en route to slashing front 50-50 across the second yellow curbside. Selfie-filmed street skating shows motivation when isolation confronts an idea that anyone is happy to see someone displaying, let alone the modern master himself sharing multiple frames for this FookYah production.
The same woman on Cherry Street may be waiting for a school bell to release someone as she sits beside her propped backpack and an e-bike talking about how good rubbing Vicks on everything, or even a massage might feel after a session. Phil Rodriguez, in a white tee with neon back graphic and forward black hat, who we’ve seen adjusting himself in the background during the seated woman’s discourse with Tyler, now cruises past her and pops onto a back noseslide that caresses both levels of the drop-down ledge. I double front 50-50ed here years ago, and the spectator says “Whoa,” when Phil slices his dismount to regular in dark trousers and burgundy/white Dunk Highs with Rob Welsh flavor. In a streetlit parking lot corner, shirtless Phil has turned his black hat backwards to hang switch flip manual across an island pad.
Fisheyes focuses on bespectacled Taylor Gecko wearing a tie-dye teeshirt featuring Coney Island’s Steeplechase Face as he uses his teeth to rip open plastic packaging in his sunlit apartment. At Dreamland’s Maspeth skatepark, concrete waves form a cerulean wall along the elevated BQE where Taylor grabs a tuck-knee transfer from quarter-pipe to bowl then scrapes a backside grind on the kidney bean before jumping off into the empty pool. One spectating mate slaps his board on the coping while another claps and another grinds on the quarter pipe from which Taylor vaulted.
Dingman’s San Franciscan selfie angle centers Pier 7 pad and shows his backside throughout a low to high switch manual. A second stationary angle from the high-side drop shows his unzipped hoodie in half-cab manual to backside 180 out as a couple walks past in step. From the same angle backgrounding the bay comes kickflip manual with red socks adding pizzaz to Tyler’s typically muted outfit.
Rolling shadow into a downhill selfie angle heralds Tyler’s ride-on approach to 50-50 grind along a descending doublesided waxed curb that veers frontside down Cleary Court before twisting backside onto Geary Boulevard to guide him around the corner out of sight. A second angle, from the corner facing up, features blinding central sunlight interrupted by Tyler’s grinding passage twice as he hooks through the curb and continues on down out of frame again, while the bankrupt white Modernist Cathedral of St. Mary looms in the background. Wooden fencing in Tyler’s third selfie angle blocks sunlight and sanctuary to catch the shady end of his curving bend before tapering to sidewalk exit as piano keys finish with a final flourish.
Red sweatered Luke sits in a sunroom surrounded by planted flowers petting Quinn’s head while Quinn regards the camera. Rainy glass panes and shrubbery in the following shot obscure and blur Luke’s angle of Tyler and Luke’s mother, both wearing mackintoshes in the rain examining her garden. “You’ve gotta figure out how to do it somewhere,” a man’s voice on the radio agrees, then a shoulder-high angle shows the small left hand of a baby that Tyler has hitched to his chest waving at a collection of carved jack-o-lanterns displayed on upside down overpack boxes in the garden level entrance to a New York City residence. Tyler, adopting the baby’s voice, says “Bye-bye” then these two turn right and continue their walk as the baby’s left hand continues to wave at whomever while the beeping of a reversing vehicle urges caution within earshot as this video ends.
The role of skateboarding in maintaining relationships appears the primary focus of “Laugh With Me,” with locations and participants counting for more than particular tricks performed upon summoning wand. As friends move away, or had never planned to stay, frequencies change and documented memories provide a tie that binds strong enough to include toe drags and finishing missteps. Selfie angles encompass victories secured in solitude, while on special occasions, old friends meet new friends to sample local fare. Belfast’s Ofield DIY is proud proof of commitment to community, with cultural exchange reciprocated back on American shores. Skateparks feature as prominently as street footage throughout these minutes, indicating an indiscriminate eye toward navigable terrain consistent with Tyler’s oeuvre over the past dozen years. What a treat to see reunions where everyone rallies to finesse themselves on favored features. Thanks, Tyler, for sending this my way.