A Good Spot To Have Lunch

This is SE Hinton in 1968 after she wrote the Outsiders.




This is Bryan Herman blasting over a picnic table off flat.



What do these two things have in common? I guess you could try and make some sort of connection between an author who popped out a couple books and pretty much just chilled and a skateboarder who seems to have a similarly irie work ethic. Really though, this is about Emerica's new video Stay Gold.

I'm gonna go ahead and claim Bryan Herman's first part in the video is the greatest human achievement in the last thousand years. Yes, even greater than the invention of the printing press, more earth shattering than Isaac Newton's bangers, more stupendous than the creation of the Human Centipede. So, why am I so excited about a bunch of lines on picnic tables in a baby bottom smooth california schoolyard? Didn't picnic tables fall out of fashion after Daewon OD'd on em and his setups started to resemble something out of a lego kit?

To answer that question: fuck no. If there's anything I wanna see, it's gnarlers with flavour getting down with some gimmick free ledge skating that would've blown doors in '96. I can hear you saying, "C'mon guy, Herman's just cruising some perfect tables. I'd like to see him come to Hoboken and flex on my spots covered with syringes and human feces." Well, shit, your crusty spot might look pretty thrilling if you get the lighting just so, but really you're just doing a 50-50 that my grandma could do switch.

Now, picnic tables. There are no illusions about them. Yes, those california tables are low. They are also wide. Tricks over them is no small feat. You can't deceive the viewer with a picnic table. They are like a unit of measurement. The tables Herman is skating are the same ones that Keenan switch flipped and Kareem 360 flip smith-smeared. You know what you're dealing with. Have you ever been to a famous handrail only to find out it's knee high? Did you feel cheated that the death lens made it look 10 feet tall? The tables don't lie. They are as constant as the stars. I take some small comfort in knowing that a trick over a table off flat will always be some kind of benchmark in that trick's history.

It probably speaks volumes that some lines Herman probably filmed in a few days eclipsed anything else in the video for me, but other gems abound. Brandon Westgate crushes with a Huf Barley speed barrage, Spanky cries for the children, and it's beyond me how Reynold's knees are still functional.