A year in review....

When it is raining every day it is easy to forget how much good stuff has happened recently, and this year has been awesome for skating in Southampton so I thought I’d have a little review for you guys!

First of all the amount of videos that came out this year was amazing and they were all generally really really good too!
Here are a few little re-reviews.
If you aren’t too fussed about videos then skip down a bit!

Mindfield
The Alien Workshop video was one of my favourite videos of the year, the whole team are some of the most clean, original and stylish skaters in the world. This video introduced us to Jake Johnson, one of my favourite new ams, the combo moves of Tyler Bledsoe, and a resurgence in the popularity of AVE who absolutely kills it, and skateboarding from Dylan Reider that can only be described as beautiful. This video is bound to go down as one of the all time classic skate videos. AWS also tried something a bit new in having a book with the DVD and cool looking packaging to try and get people to actually buy the video, and it seemed to work a bit too. I was also stoked on how well Workshop decks sold after the vid came out

Zoo York – State of Mind
I have to admit this took me by surprise, I think this turned out to be one of the most underated videos of the year, I love east coast skating but thought since Zoo got bought by Ecko it might be a bit generic, but they have a team of rad skaters, Eli Reed, Ron Deilly and Matt Miller all held it down, and the older dudes like Donny Barley and Aaron Suski still kill it and there was still an east coast feel to the vid, even though it’ll never feel like the OG mix tape days!


God Save The Label
Pretty under the rader on this one, I love the label, Jason Adams is one of my all time favourite skaters, and Shannon and Chris Troys parts were bangin, including the fakie bigspin to feebs down a rail, pure sickness, but unfortunately with the AWS vid I think this got a bit overshadowed, the filming was all good and the editing and songs were rad, pretty underated again I think.


Fun
Again this took everyone by surprise, Powell is far from most peoples favourite company but they seem to know what they are doing when building up a team! Loads of power moves came out in this vid, fakie Ollie switch front feebs down a rail, nine kink handrails and THAT smith from Ben Hatchell, its no surprise that Jamie Thomas has poached Hatchell and he is now part of the Zero team!

Hold Tight London
I was stoked on this video, a great price that you couldn’t refuse and an independent video to boot, Henry clearly makes these vids because he loves skateboarding and it shows, loads of the filming and editing was better than some professional filming and the british soundtrack to all the HTL edits can’t help but make you proud of skateboarding in the UK, Tanner smashes it in theis vid, definitely one of my favourite UK skaters, and Karims mega pop makes an appearance, even after Paget stole his Sugar Puffs!

Extremely Sorry
I was really surprised by the mixed opinions on this, the video gave me goose bumps at the premier, Bob Burnquist was absolutely amazing, Rowley still smashed it, Luan confirmed what I had been saying all year and Gonzalez was straight gnar. Buteven with this a lot of people went on about how they didn’t like the music, I personally think if you can get Lemmy to record a new song specifically for your video part then you are on to a winner! A lot of peoples minds seemed to change when they realised that a lot of the songs had well known and respected artists in too. This video is also gonna go down as an instant classic, and I’m looking forward to kids in the future saying this was the first video they used to watch all the time.


Slave and Zero vids
I can’t really say much about these as we don’t have them in yet, but I have seen them both and they are both rad , Slave, like Stereo, are one of the companies we have always been behind, so hopefully like The Berrics has done for Stereo this video will show you all just how rad Slave are! Frecks is a beast! Both the vids should be here between Christmas and New Year.

Hesh Law
Does what it says on the tin, a bunch of straight gnar from the Creature dudes with a lot of focus on the street ams who kill it, Taylor Bingaman is sick and a lot of new skaters love Gravette!
The surge in park and tranny skating is definitely helping the popularity of these guys, I think the only thing people didn’t like about this vid is where the hell was Stu!



As well as this we have supported or put on a lot of stuff locally:

One thing that really increased this year was the amount of premiers we put on, and we plan to continue to do so! The Black Label vid, Heel Toe Magic, Extremely Sorry and 6:57 all had an airing and each premier was busier than the last so if you continue to support them then they will only get better!

We also supported a bunch of comps this year, about 7 I think, two at Hoglands, Two at Merryoak, Shirley Warren, Netley View and the yearly Something For The Weekend comp.

I have had a lot of people asking if we are gonna be doing a SFTW next year, I’m not sure what part of annual comp you guys don’t get but yeah, we will be doing it EVERY YEAR! Always around March to kick off the spring, its gonna be cool to see how much some of you guys have progressed that have entered for the last two years! We should have a lot more prizes for the next one too. This years seems like ages ago now but it was rad, the 6:57 and Winch edits were both amazing, and it even had the editor of Sidewalk taking notice of our scene!
I did mention at the time that we were going to trying to get a Southampton article happening, that is still going to happen at some point!


This year was definitely the year for the Berrics! A few people didn’t enjoy BATB as much as the last one but a few of the matches were amazing!


Busenitz is amazing!


The quality of some of the Bangins and Recruits have been outstanding, the only qualm I have the Berrics is that at the end of the day it is just a skate park, and filming in skateparks is pretty damn boring, street skating and finding spots and adapting to your environment are some of the best parts of skating, and I bet there are gonna be more kids just filming stuff in parks which is a real shame. The resurence in flatground is kinda cool though, if only for some originality with clips like this:

At the same time we fell victim to the weather and had a nice little block that we would skate when it rained or in the dark, unfortunately for me this meant all the time! A few people asked about getting invited to Level 3, you don’t need an invite, its just skateboarding, if anyone wanted to turn up and skate that was cool! Having said that the block has now disappeared but hopefully we’ll have an even better one soon and the Reskue training facility will be back on!
Level 3 RIP!



By far the highlight of the year has been 6:57, which you should have bought and seen by now!
The premier was rammed which was awesome, I was so pleased that so many people came out to support the project.
Rob Crawford has been filming Skateboarding in Southampton for years, and finally put together a full video, and its awesome! Everyones sections are amazing, i’m stoked people can finally see how sick Curtis style is, and see best nollie tres you’ll ever witness, but I’m mostly proud of Paget, I hooked him up with shop sponsorship pretty early on, and a few people doubted my decision, but he is progressing really fast and his video part is sick, to see how much better he has got in the last year is helping me know that Reskue is doing exactly what I started it to do, support our scene!

It’s looking like Paget might be on a bit of a flow deal from some companies after they have seen his part, which companies they are will probably be officially announced in the new year but I’d hope its like a Zoo in here with Thunderous applause when his first package arrives, he deserves it!

More Skateboarding >>

Unfotunately injury cut down the filming time for Curtis, but he’ll be back on it soon and I have no doubt he’ll be hooked up next year.
Curtis is straight G


6:57 was also the catalyst of getting Rannys first photos published in sidewalk with Jaks First Light, he should be getting some flicks of Paget for a First Light in the new year, and it is rad we have a photographer that can get published photos in Southampton.

You may have also noticed a change in the amount of events we are sponsoring, and the fact that we now sell tickets to events, basically Reskue are now partners with Raygun Youth, a company that puts on Hip hop and Drum and Bass shows, this has meant we are able to get a lot more stock in (hence all the new SBs!) and support a bunch of local DJs and MCs as well as skaters, this will also mean that I might get a few days off next year and will be able to put on a lot more skate events! It will never mean that we are coming detached from skating in any way, in fact the more events Raygun put on and the more Paint and tickets for events we sell will mean we can get more stock in and support skateboarding even more, and it also means that you can get tickets for all the Raygun Youth shows without paying a booking fee.
We are even hoping to combine this with the shows and have some music/skate crossover events, imagine a skate comp with some top UK hip Hop artists there, it would be sick!

So next year you can look forward to:
A LOT more comps, including the SFTW! With a lot more prizes!
More events at skateparks with some live music.
A Southampton article for a magazine.
First lights from some of our riders.
Demos from the team.
Hopefully some more sponsorship for local skaters!
Some big names in Hip hop and DnB coming to local venues in conjunction with Reskue.
Some free skate schools and introductory lessons in conjunction with Rubicon.
Some Graffiti workshops.
And a hell of a lot of skateboarding!

All of this is only happening because of you guys too, so thank you, the people that support Reskue! We'll keep doing what we are doing and supporting the scene, as long as you guys keep supporting us! This year has been amazing, and next year is going to be even better!

I hope you all have an awesome Christmas, and are looking forward to the new year as much as we are!