The Saturday before last I was in Chicago watching Beyoncé from a Soldier Field skybox with my girlfriend, her sister, her sister’s girlfriend, and two of my girlfriend’s cousins who are also sisters. Two more women shared the box with us as well. During a dance interlude, one of this duo asked how I was enjoying my evening in the company of all of these women. Obviously plenty, plus I was also engaged watching Tyshawn’s Ferrari ollie, reel of which I showed her on my phone. Sharon, an elegant older Black woman, was delighted to see Tyshawn’s clip and hear that I skateboard. She often walks to the Grant Park skatepark and watches the riders, especially the girls. Five years ago she hardly saw any girl skaters and now she sees more riding every day. My beautiful girlfriend chimes in to say that she is now one of these women skaters and I pass Sharon a copy of Adilson Pedro’s Quattu Skate Part Review when we say goodbye after the show.
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Per Thrasher, in The “Грёзы” Video, “a ripping crew of women explores the marble plazas, DIY spots and beautiful banks of their Post Soviet landscape. Get to know some new faces as they hype up their scene.” Thrasher’s “Post Soviet” descriptor indicates a degree of distinction regarding output from Russia at this moment in time.
Earlier this year, when Thrasher posted Oktybar's "Atlantida" Video, editorial noted “An incredible testament to the transcendent power of skateboarding, Oktybar skateshop's second full-length from Pasha Kryukov drafts a compelling portrait of the Russian scene before the war.” Alexey Cher posted on Thrasher’s Facebook-account-linked and rarely used commenting feature to say, “Some of these guys visited Ukraine for many times, we skated and had a good times together, they even had a team rider from Kharkiv. But now when my country is constantly shelled by russias terroristic government, they didnt show a single mention about peace, about this pointless war. So, f tricks, f style, f music, this art is pointless. Every skater in this video is a pussy. You have no future”. While understanding Ukrainian tempers toward Russians whose government is the aggressor and destroyer of skate spots and much more important things and people once dearly held, Atlantida includes an anarchy sign for the A in its titling, which indicates anti-authoritarian alignment, then gives the video’s first trick to an ollieing young boy draped in a blue and yellow Grizzly Grip hoodie, which, though implicit rather than explicit, is hard to read as anything but a color-coded gesture of support for Ukraine considering Atlantida is a commercial production under Putin’s regime. Still, one can sense Thrasher’s desire to tread carefully and also boldly for this Грёзы video description with the “Post Soviet” adjective that offers a chance to consider current events in broader historical context reaching back decades to the fall of the Iron Curtain when these now largely-severed international relationships began forming over early internet connections and the first cardboard boxes of cardboard boxes of wax paper wrapped waffle-gripped Vans started arriving in Moscow.
Грёзы translates to “Dreams.” 525 days ago this would have released in a different international landscape. To date, Vans Russia’s most recent instagram post from March 15, 2022 translates to “Vans cannot currently guarantee delivery of goods to customers in Russia. As a result, the purchase of goods on the Vans.ru website is temporarily suspended. We apologize for the inconvenience caused.” In post production statement, videomakers “express our gratitude to Pavel Kovalenko and the entire former office of Vans Russia, as well as Leonid Lukin and the "TNT" agency for their help and assistance with the implementation of the project. We say hello to everyone who rode with us on the spots and whiled away the time on our glades.”
Dreamscape begins on the blacktopped promenade between one roadway and the eight-story windowed wall of a block-long building where Sasha Stamenkovich approaches a perpendicular concrete parking barrier with her brunette hair in loose ponytail for a no-comply wallie attempt that declines her credit card in the space between her Iron Cross hoodie and Half-Cabs. She has screwed one yellow rail on her chassis’s frontside undercarriage; as the skateboard prods beneath she jumps up grabbing her rump.
Sasha S.’s right hand spraying black paint creates a smiling mouth beneath eyes characterized as inverted teardrops. A strong man appears wearing Asphalt Skate Mag logos down the black long-sleeves of his bat-winged horse riding Skate Barbarian chest graphic shirt smoothing a monumental ledge with a two-handed metal scraper while a giant statue of Lenin gazes elsewhere. Men and women, boys and girls, these skaters use green leafy branches to sweep a lot spot clear and press shovels to shape wet concrete as photomontage depicts the communal process of DIY builds.
Sasha Petrova’s blonde hair tucks under her backwards ball cap as she shows a bloody palm then guest participant Ksenia Sheglova, the older blonde, holds aloft an x-ray of her hand with a middle finger sticking up. A onlooking child in a purple dress with rows of rhinestone butterflies across her chest gnaws on her father’s forearm. Liliya Sukhankova’s braided brunette ponytail whips along as her seaside back disaster attempt turns into back noseblunt lock. A flash photograph of Liliya at night sitting on her board wearing an orange corduroy shirt, tall Vans socks and short jean shorts sipping a beverage through a straw precedes footage of bikinied Sasha S.’s shallow frog dive off a concrete platform jutting into natural water. Blonde Sasha P. slides backwards down metal ramp then a black and white photograph shows her seated on the ground, straight legs toward camera showing waffle grip soles with a can of Coca-Cola nestled in her lap.
Pterodactyl’s discordant 2007 track “Polio” screeches in the C sharp minor chord like the strong man is still chiseling as Liliya with her back turned in a pink, white, lime green and purple striped polo shirt locks right hands with fellow brunette Sasha S. wearing a navy Anti-Hero eagle tee. Elsewhere, Sasha S. presses flesh with Sasha P., then the VX is seat belted, boards are stickered, and goofy Sasha S. begins backside boardsliding a curb for considerable distance with her eyes set on transferring over to this large banked rollaway. She jumps to bail, but can't escape her board that takes her on a butt-ride down, cut to Liliya’s wipeout on a kinked handrail grind, cut to Liliya landing her boneless sideways down a hubba and tumbling through a high drop. Sasha P. attempts to hippie jump a yellow chain but lands too nose-forward and pitches herself down the alleyway. Sasha S. sticks kickflip to fakie on the bank of a ditch and the crew begins to cheer, but she can’t quite hang on when she reaches flat bottom and trips backwards into the muck wearing what had been a fresh white tee. She hops up, back bearing this new dirty imprint that resembles a slap from a whale’s tail, dusts herself off as much as possible, then Sasha P. places her hands on Sasha S.’s back to convey the scope of the stain and give viewers a visual of angel wings. These first 41 seconds also constitute the Dreams trailer that released four months beforehand.
While standing on a photogenic ledgetop beside a vast verdant expanse, Liliya attempts to fingerflip her board but misses her grab so the board falls down out of frame.
Lenin’s statuary square overlooks the State Opera and Ballet Theatre in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city. Here Liliya runs up the banked marble back of Lenin’s bronze statute pedestal and grabs the top to hoist and situate herself under his flowing overcoat. A hand proffers her board up to her so she can drop-in on this overhead-high bank as dreamy music starts strumming with visual adrenaline rush of her accelerating descent into compress and release, showing first as a landscape single clip then again in fisheye as Liliya’s line continues with kickflip over a rough brick line in the plaza ground as convex angle shows white clouds and blue skies complimenting her light and tight denim during pushes toward two towering statues of a man bearing a torch and a woman with an ear of wheat in her hand beaming labor’s approval on Liliya slappy front 50-50ing their statue base. “Leaving home tonight; Give me a ride!”
Another giant sculpture in Novosibirsk’s square represents three Red Guards: one clean shaven, one moustachioed, one with a beard. All are wearing a different headcover and are holding their rifles in different ways as Sasha P. with custom silver and white hologram patches on her black pants above maroon Old-Skools on her shaped deck with cut out section of her griptape showing yellow top-ply manuals underneath and between the giant legs. “Paint my lips and nails rebel black. I’m not coming back!” She drops off base and continues through plaza then ollies up the curb toward the large Lenin bank where Liliya just dropped in. Here Sasha P. backside wallrides up the bank and pop shove-its down to the ground, shown again as single clip.
The crew departs to prospect where Sasha S. plants her back foot atop a skinny natural quarter pipe acting as stair bannister, cut to close-up on her frontside sweep dropping to tailstall before return down. At a mirrored section of the same skinny spot, Liliya’s board shoots toward the camera on her first backside 5-0 attempt, then a longer lens angle shows her successful stab and turn wearing white calf socks with large black Olde English P’s on each side representing Postaments, the new domestic brand from Asphalt Magazine. While the brand is rooted in skateboarding, they don't want to focus solely on the skater audience. With all its style, POSTAMENTS says: “Child, don't worry! There is no future, live one day, do what you want, enjoy what you have” as the angle reverts to fisheye filmer’s for Liliya’s front 180 off the thin strip to sidewalk.
St. Petersburg sits where the eastern Gulf of Finland receives the Neva River, along which ponytailed Sasha S. pushes past a large brick background bank beside roadway infrastructure. She wears a tucked-in navy shirt with a small pink Vans chest embroidery and pink long sleeves wrapped in overlapping white and black strips, grey-belted black trousers and black Half-Cabs with white soles to ascend a path where another bank appears below and grows beneath her as she backside boardslides up the top lip and nollie front 180 twists her tail over the cusp for switch ride down and off the curb.
“Let’s get out of here” implores the soundtrack as a vintage video game font of those same words appears imposed on the bottom left of screen while Liliya stands elevated on a stone platform and uniformed men in screen’s bottom right attempt to talk her down from her perch. Instead we see her determined pushes toward a ride-on backside 50-50 grind away from the future vast statues are striding toward and pops over a chunk missing from the edge of this top stair as she absorbs the six block drop where she bailed in the intro. “Nothing’s here I would miss, with my hair waving on the breeze,” Liliya drags her fingertips along the end of the marble curbdrop to brick street, then her downhill clip turns pedestrian heads.
A frontside angle shows Sasha S.’s successful kickflip to fakie on the ditch bank, then blonde Sasha P. lands primo during her follow-up heelflip attempt on same bank and knocks her head after her hat flies off en route to flat-bottom. Undeterred in denim bell-bottoms, she lands her heelflip to fakie then Sasha S. picks her up so both girls twirl in circles, which transitions in the same hypnotic motion to Liliya pirouetting 360 backside kickturn at a skatepark barbecue, “someone’s hand on my shoulder, no use having to grow older.”
Catch Liliya in the deep end of a three-leaf clover bowl where the pool coping blocks alternate between dark and light grey concrete in a nod to Vans’ checkerboard heritage zipping through back 50-50 then back smith grinds as single clips. Sasha P. front rocks a shallow end pocket then Liliya returns to the deep end dipping back disaster as assembled mates jubilate. Sunsetting sky shows yellow, pink and orange over a river filled with cruise boats, while Sasha S. photographed with a tote on her far shoulder waves at the camera between setting sun flares in the ashtray through shadowed forest. Past dusk, at the top of a natural hump in the glossy white brick sidewalk, Liliya no-complies over a break in the paving stones at a location that includes the colorful mosaic tiling featured in video title.
Sunrise, an airplane, then golden sunset pass in montage while the song’s bridge beckons through over-saturated pan down to Sasha P.’s flatground kickflip wearing checkerboard tee shirt and checkerboard socks. She adjusts her backwards hat during further goofy pushes toward noseslide on a double-sided ledge down a thin chute releasing to regular midway to enjoy the remainder of narrow ride.
Next up at the same spot, Liliya frontside 50-50s this ledge’s other hubba side where it surpasses 10 steep stairs at the mellower, much longer grade that she grinds to its end. While passing by in the opposite direction, a bonneted child leaps off the top of the ledge, seed of inspiration fast to sprout, while Sasha S. Kickflips down a curb over the handwritten graphics jiggling “Love is not a crime” lyrics then backside wallies offside a banked roadblock.
On a coped ledge, Sasha S. front 50-50s to front shove out, then camera zooms on Sasha P.’s face and Vans logo tee as she hits the same ledge from the returning direction with a crooked grind popped out so that she can ollie over a curb to finish her line. Angelic Milk’s “Rebel Black”, currently soundtracking, also has its own woman-coded creature skating in the music video from their 2016 EP Teenage Movie Soundtrack. That the St. Petersburg-born, Turkey-based musician Sarah Persephona’s current songs feature lyrics critical of Russia’s War against Ukraine add another layer of gold flaked paint wherein Princess Lamb urges Riots Not Diets.
Ksenia appears in guest role wearing a slate crewneck sweatshirt for boardslide pop-out on an I-beam ledge with her black ball cap strapped on a belt loop of her light blue jeans and pushes in white Vans Authentics regular-stance past people posted in the park to ride-on backside 50-50 grind an ascending I-beam ledge and backside shove out. Next single Ksenia hammers the same spot with a ride-on back 50-50 up to varial flip out.
Liliya wallies over a yellow and black parking fence toward camera then ducks away under a red and white striped ribbon while Sasha P. underscores the same cord coming toward camera and no-complies over the barrier away. Liliya ride-on grinds the flat then broadly kinked sections of the handrail that caused her earlier entanglement and Sasha P. noseslides a flat ledge out over three stairs.
An open-air roof structure overlooking water turns up at both ends to resemble a mini ramp in the sky where Liliya rides to blast a frontside boneless. Her next clip is kickflip into a crusty bank ride wearing white and black striped polo shirt with turquoise collar and cuffs. “Am I still young and finally free?”
Liliya’s mistaken first attempt at front boneless in from the topside of the shiny black hubba in St. Petersburg’s Lenin Square repeats from the intro. For Liliya’s make, lyrics beckon “neon lights shine down right on me,” as she successfully navigates steep downward course and powerslides across the plaza’s pit as fountains spray rainbowed mist. Sasha P. ollies a grass gap off a stage then redisplays her bloody stigmata scrapes and returns to hippie jump over the yellow chain to alley ride.
“Gonna make my living on writing silly songs.” A paddle steamer churns before Liliya carves a creamy brick riverwalk slope in pink and white striped polo and light blue/navy Sk8 Hi’s to ascend a large, smooth natural hip and backside 360s to broad face rollaway. Sasha P. has been watching from above the curb at the top of the hip where Sasha S. tried boardslide in the intro and channels the stoke to hit this ledge with switch front boardslide transfer lifting blindside over to regular-stance bankroll hanging on through clattering brick rollaway over the spilled contents of busted sandbags as she yells amazement then cheers relief while the song ends. “Yyeeeeauh!” Sasha S. picks Sasha P. up from her board and twirls her counterclockwise to ground. Liliya strides down the bank in short shorts to congratulate her friend as she twirls a bottle of mineral water before a background of trees and a green and grey cathedral spire.
A male accomplice in tan Carhartt overalls and yellow ball cap breaks bread for his company before dipping into the bounty himself. Silences reigns as appreciative mouths chew. “Bon appetit.” Another man narrates the spread that begins with hummus, includes rotisserie chicken and ends with beers, which prompts excited coos from the ladies who reach for the cold red cans first. A wrapped right hand doesn’t stop Sasha P. from cracking open her Efes tallboy then the two Sashas sit for photograph before a dark wall on a yellow bench with their boards.
Sasha P. throws down in time with Shark Tears’ finale song “Baby”’s shimmering entrance and wallies up the steeper banked side of a ski slope launch ramp on down across the foundation spot to a graffitied quarter pipe where she nosestall reverts then pushes to back 5-0 up the ski slope launch’s red-painted coped siding above steel mesh fencing neon green painted rubble underneath that forms the construction guts.
Sasha S. shows no exhaustion always rooting for the Anti-Hero on the same QP in her favored navy tee as a foliage-perched filmer depicts her scooping backside tailstall with her right hand grabbing board and left on the coping, rollaway prompting a solid hand clasp with the filmer that resonates beneath single towering communication tower. Elsewhere on the slab, Sasha P. rides up a pyramid and front boardslides the parking block set across flattop, popping back to regular down the far bank in crisp white footwear. Liliya takes another quarterpipe lick with a blunt to fakie wearing white ball cap, white crop tee shirt and khakis.
Cyrillic handwritten credits in white overlay a photo of the two brunettes, Liliya and Sasha S., sitting on a rock in front of a golden green lake with cliff walls and trees beyond. Sasha S. wears checkerboard Vans slides and their hair is wet but drying after an earlier dip. In next photo-pan Sasha S. lies on her back daydreaming in a field with her board as headrest. A male pitmaster gestures humbly toward Maillard-marked franks cooking in a rack over glowing briquettes on a concrete grill embedded at the DIY. Liliya’s lengthy braided ponytail brushes blue jeans below her pink baby tee as she reaches front feeble grind across a quarter pipe then Sasha S. joins her on the lip with a black-clad back disaster in Half-Cabs.
Liliya’s volcano blast matches ascendent sonics through her back smith grind on the quarterpipe, begging for her baby, swerving over a hump channeling the volcano’s lava flow toward backside kickflip across a further blue-painted bank. Notice Liliya’s fist pumps when missions are accomplished. She stands slappy front 5-0 across the spine spanning a double-sided quarterpipe, riding up and off on island transition.
Sasha P. powerslides to fakie over the volcano’s wake to position herself for backside half-cab front rock-n-roll on the QP. Onward she pushes toward the spine and boardslide transfers over. A carving photograph shows her channeling Farah Fawcett skating on the set of “Charlie’s Angels,” curving like onion domes topping cathedrals. A male mate licks his rolling paper as Sasha S. handles her stash, then Liliya blasts a tuck-knee grab over their DIY equivalent of Georgetown’s quarter pipes and pushes on to bounce backside 360 no-comply with a silver watch on her left wrist. Sasha S. backside bonelesses back to approach side, then Sasha P. strings together a volcano pump, knob wallie and pushes fast past the spine in checkerboard socks toward the quarter pipe nestled under old growth shade for feeble grind to fakie followed by a still shot of the same trick.
Smoking cigarettes in the lyrics until a cement mixer arrives onsite for buildout and burnishing transition edges, Liliya in Daisy Dukes and her knee-high Postements socks back 360s the spine’s approach capsule then slides back lip across the quarter. Wearing blue jeans with Vans socks at the same quarter pipe, Liliya grinds back 5-0 and taps deck check on her descent to fakie. Next comes a frontside crailslide followed by another back 5-0, girl uninterrupted straight to fakie this time. Sasha S. lets her Hessian hair down for QP front smith grind transfer off-pipe to banked descent. Liliya flies over the volcano frontside to land in fakie 5-0 stall, releasing down transition to fakie as the skatepark applauds.
A passing dog watches Liliya spinning her board as her eyes scan for future patterns of passerby, awaiting the right moment to take off. She touches her ponytail tip, her eyebrow, taps her deck once, then throws down in her turquoise collared white and black striped polo with regal chest insignia to front crailtap on a concrete slab tilted at the back edge of a parking lot. Here too Sasha P. dips front feeble into the gap atop the slab then boomerangs alleyoop frontside 270 on down.
In a shaded park meadow beside modern sculpture, Sasha P. scratches her head while the photographer naps. Sasha S. smokes with a man off in the eaves, then dives in the water again before this collaborative crew strikes varied stances at seaside, one standing balancing on a rock in tree pose with her palms facing skyward to touch the clouds.
Sasha P. wears a lavender longsleeve tee with khaki cap and navy pants passing under hazy seaside skies onto a whitewashed seawall where DIY concrete patches painted inconspicuous white lay in wait to facilitate her front rock-n-roll, shown twice as chorus murmurs “baby, baby.” She pounds the cameraman then Liliya back disasters in marine blue and black striped fitted longsleeve looking like Cher Strawberry and Corey Duffel for her alley oop carve to dock with gymnastic landing. In aftermath, as Sasha S. sits on her board watching a red and white train passing through green countryside, Liliya steps in front of the camera gaze wearing silver necklace and white vans embroidery at her shirt center where a pendant would hang with a wisp of hair in the left corner of her closed mouth until she opens her lips to smile as she brushes the strand away and turns her attention toward her friend.
As an American adult living now, I feel shame as my country allows a growing number of restrictions on a variety of liberties. When watching Грёзы, I can see the ways in which this part of the world continues to appeal to America’s ideal despite evidence for a contrary reality. Boxes may have stopped commercially flowing, but skaters find their ways and this missive arrives like a lost letter slipped through the mail slot late at night, a reason not to forget far-flung friends and family when previously dependable communication channels break down or are broken. In times of war and even not, wearing love with pride can be a crime. I rest comfortably imagining this Грёзы crew and most all skaters everywhere to be a part of the global leftist network, therefore thank these women and their devoted documentarians for doing what they did to let this video reach me.