Clip Town USA
A handful of times a year we get sent crew videos from the States that we know very little about, watch them through, and by the time we hit the credits are overwhelmed with feelings that essentially amount to: ‘We’re not worthy 😭‘. For some inexplicable reason these vids weirdly tend to show up in our inbox right when we’re worried there might be a bit of a dry spell in our release calendar too. Untitled definitely had that ‘gift from the gods’ effect on us, as did All Those Days, and the newest underground American skateboarding masterpiece that I’m going to place into this loose category today is Clip Town USA.
The only thing I’d really seen about Chris Burt’s new joint was this mind boggler of a trick Village Psychic leaked from the prem, which for obvious reasons sparked a series of questions… The main ones being: ‘Where the fuck is this Clip Town USA?’ and ‘How do I get there?’. Unfortunately this initial burst of excitement quickly subsided as I continued scrolling, and within minutes I felt so overwhelmed by the usual daily onslaught of skateboard tricks I’ll never be able to do that I succumbed to another hour of sleep, completely deleting the mental note I’d made to look into this video. I know, blowing it, it’s my job, bla bla bla, kill me now. That clip was literally the first thing I saw lying in bed, just seconds after I’d properly opened by eyes: I don’t think I can really be blamed for feeling like things were moving a bit too fast for me on planet earth that morning.
Luckily months later on a day when I was feeling slightly more equipped to face it all, I received an email from Pete Spooner (to whom we owe the amazing Various Artist) offering a preview to the vid, an intro to Chris and the answer to both of my – long forgotten by that point – questions. It turns out that Clip Town USA is in Minnesota. As for the ‘How do I get there?’, well that suddenly became very obvious: just hit the link! So I did immediately, and about halfway through my journey I started to understand the meaning of the title… This was not just your regular skateboard video, created simply for the viewer to feel the urge to play on their own little four wheeled plank: these 25 minutes and 52 seconds were carefully devised to make you want to stack. Sure some of the dudes in there clearly have abilities that go far beyond our wildest dreams, straight pole jamming onto handrails and all sorts, but then you’ve also got others that seemingly skate just like you or me; only you can tell they really went in for this. Like one can only imagine the levels of sheer Marc Johnson-esque will power that it would have taken some of these dudes to roll away from their shit. I love that. That’s exactly the energy we need to get through this crappy winter. Plus nothing feels out of place. Usually when we get sent 25 minute videos of this caliber our instinct is to think about what parts we could maybe cut out and drop before the full length, but in this case it was a no brainer: we had to let people digest it in one block. This one couldn’t be about whoever had the craziest stunts getting all the shine, it had to be about the project as a whole, and it making you want to spend days in some busted carpark trying a manual that’s way beyond your capabilities just so you can have a clip in your mates’ next video that actually feels like it deserves to be in there.
Featuring Pat Gallaher, Mathias Rostein, Kevin Braun, Grant Katula, Brady Albright, Jack Olson, Kirian Stone, Tyler Luth, Devon Walker, Mitch Guth, Scott Plotke, Mike Lemnitzer, Jimmy Goodman, Nathan Cameron, Andrew Ellison and Dalton Jones.
Filmed and edited by Chris Burt.
