Sole = Trio

Since the apparent folding of Element's footwear series (thank God), three parts from their would be video entitled 'Sole' have been released online in a trilogy. The featured skaters being Chad Tim Tim, Levi Brown, and Darrell Stanton.

It appears that father Tim Tim, back from injury finally and fresh off an interview in last months Transworld, is back in the saddle in terms of his career. Fitting in nicely with the ledge trends as of late, he hurdles proper switch backside flips and switch back smiths along with a slew of switch back lip and back tail variations going a damn decent speed and making everything look easy. I was not originally a fan of Chad, or others like him which were just too natural on the board (ex, Danny Garcia). But after watching his Time To Shine part multiple times and seeing his berrics footage, I came around. Check out the back lip to sugarcane on the up ledge, and the fakie boardslide 270, which was a brilliantly chosen trick for that spot. Also, he does some hucking in this section. Refreshing.



His ender doesn't really feel like an ender, but thinking about it more and more that shit would have been incredibly hard to pull off. OH, and beware, his intro is way longer than it needs to be. There seems to be a trend with phones in this internet offering, also. Strange to say the least. Does Apple have an advertising agreement with Element?

The second part of the trilogy is Levi Brown's part. The first thing I noticed is his Toyota Tundra, and wondered as to why my girlfriend didn't hunt down this part before me. On that note, there was about zero industry buzz about this release, which surprised me a bit. Hence why I'm almost a month and a half late finding it. Perhaps it was overshadowed by the Plan B partnership news. Anyways, Levi also has a long intro, and he does Chad Tim Tim's ender frontside. The first 50 seconds of his part feels kinda funny, like it's not really his best efforts. However, he displays a startling degree of variety, and once you get to the wallie to hill bomb, the rest is a GRADE A part. Levi seems to be one of the masters of snap on his flip tricks, and his wall frontside flip and massive wall kickflip coupled with his smith flip (one of the best I've seen) and his absolutely crisp fakie tre before his water adventure ender all add evidence to my theory. Sometimes he flicks so fast I can't even see the flick on this laggy internet connection.



Oh, and watch out for a guest skater by the name of Jesse Plumb who rears his head in a couple clips. Should be obvious which ones. Final note on Levi's part: Gap to picnic table noseblunt.

Now, I was gonna toss some hate on Darrell's part because his opening ledge combos really are not very appealing, other than the back lip to back bluntslide. However, early in his part there's a steep wallride bluntslide front 180 which caught my attention, and as my hopes for some Stanton Spinning grew, he nollie cabbed that massive sixteen or whatever it is that he cannonball back 180'd and backside nollie'd several years ago. There's too much high impact insanity to mention here, so I'll highlight his ledge massacre (front feebs, back 180 nosegrind, front blunt), his front tail 270 big drop (which blows everything else done on that ledge out of the water), his epicly filmed ditch gap inward heel, the appearance of the rare switch bigspin and switch bigflip down sets, the fifty back 3 (great spot use)... see? Too much. The long lens angle on his ender, if you've heard that lame mainstream song where they say 'oh, oh oh, oh oh, oh, my, god' unfortunately cropped into my head when he landed.



Solid internet video, save for the long intro in each part, the iphone appearances, and some bummer ABD's in the form of Tim Tim's flyout switch flip that served as Rodrigo TX's ender in the LRG vid (and no offense but Rodrigo is a bit more of a powerhouse than Tim Tim, so again WHY was that his banger? I even liked Chad's more) and Darrell's nollie tre into the steep sidewalk bank. But I loved the aforementioned skaters rock tricks, both the nollie cab and the tre which appeared in Tim Tim's interview, and although Tim Tim's part seemed like the most uniform and interesting throughout, both Levi and Stanton got fucking down in their parts. Pretty stunning, now I just need to watch them with the music up and outside of a library. Peep all three parts. Not a perfect video, but it makes me wonder what Sole would have been like. And this was free, and had some hefty clips in it. Up yours, Berrics?

Unforunately or fortunately depending on who you are, my computer charger got Dog-raped so I have no home computer for several days. I probably won't update again til the weekend. I've got a list of things to post about though, so don't worry or worry depending on who you are, there'll be more bullshit to read in the coming week.