This is my friend Lew, at some park I know not where.

Lew is, to say the least, a unique person. He makes his own boards, and I mean from nearly the ground up. Presses his own laminates, shapes them, finishes them, skates them. And they are damned good boards. Honestly some of the best I’ve ever ridden.

But rather than his boards, I want to just look at this trick Lew is doing here. I see this called various things, usually a “layback frontside rock ‘n’ roll”. There’s a trick that pre-dates it where you kinda do the same motion but the board doesn’t rock, called a Kiwi Slide, invented by Peter “Kiwi” Gifford.

Anyway, I love everything about this little clip. I love the trick, I love the way he rolls away. I love the style. But above all, I love the SCALE. This is skateboarding at a human scale. This is a guy hitting a fairly small quarter pipe style wall at a skatepark and doing some tricks on it. It’s not a guy trying to out perform anyone, or get on the cover of a magazine (like anyone buys mags anymore), or press his luck. Lew is skating for fun, on stuff scaled for pretty much any skater.

This is what my friend Dale and I call “the small arts.”

In his post Lew is very self-effacing. But the Small Arts are what I live for. The Small Arts can be small in scale but gigantic in spirit. As a legendary Jedi Master once said, “size matters not.” And he was right, even if he was fictional. There is nothing truly small in this clip. It is so full of the Force. Full of true mastery.

Every week, or really every day, I see clips of “amazing” skateboarders doing stuff once thought impossible. None of it moves me in the slightest. None. I’d rather see clips of my friends doing their thing, whatever that thing may be, than pro clips. I don’t think I am cynical. I’m not. I just love skateboarding, and have since I was 11 years old, and I love to see my friends skate.

Click the link to see Lew. Instagram’s embed code is fucked.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ck1-4OaPfCK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link