Talles Silva – Top Heavy
In 2003, 14-year-old me was convinced handrail tech – which at the time felt like the absolute coolest subgenre of skateboarding – had peaked. This was the year Yeah Right!, Free Your Mind and Bootleg 3000 left an indelible mark on our culture, permanently burning Justin Eldridge’s switch flip salad, Darrell Stanton’s nollie front blunt and Scott Kane’s kickflip frontside noseblunt into my still developing brain. Simpler times when I thought we’d reached the limit of what could be done in that category and would move on…
Now obviously whether or not there actually was a shift away from this stuff is debatable – and if there was some people certainly didn’t get the memo – but given skateboarding tends to be subjected to the same 20-year cycles as everything else in this world and that arguably the most impactful of these types of bangers in recent memory is Antonio Durao’s 2023 Thrasher cover/Johnny’s Vid opener, there’s a case to be made about us entering a resurgence of impossible moves on ‘small’ rails.
This of course is something Yuto has been relentlessly advocating for since he made a name for himself, but it’s seeing this Blake Carpenter part followed by the above Top Heavy clip of Tiago’s protege Talles Silva that really hammered it home. Like has anyone else ever even done a switch big flip front board? And what, we’re just getting one of these a week now? And how is fakie heeling into a back lip even a thing?!
But more importantly, if we are entering this early 2000s revival phase (which would make sense given how heavily the last few years have been influenced by ‘the nineties’), how do we protect ourselves from the next stage? Because I’m not so keen on reliving the dark days of skin-tight stretchy KR3W denim…
