I started a substack called Skate Part Reviews and Nyle was the first review I did.
SkatePartReviews.substack.com
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I skated with Danny Aguilera on Wednesday. My knee hurt when I popped tricks at Lower Flat, so I filmed Danny backside heelfip and heelflip body varial. Next we cruised to Seward Park where I filmed him ollie over a rail around dark, then we went to his apartment, where I shopped his closet over bong rips and coquitos. I left with two pairs of Alien Workshop black jeans size baggy 32, no belt needed, low crotch, roomy thighs, minimal knee restriction, but of a rougher material I’ve felt rubbing on leg hairs in the days since wearing both pairs. Matt Zwiesler texted "Whoa," which I knew because he'd texted me his SOTY analysis earlier in the day, meant the winner had been revealed.
I skated home and opened laptop to Thrasher site. The top post was Nyle Lovett’s Pyramid Park part. I knew I wouldn’t be the only surfer visiting Thrasher’s homepage looking for SOTY results, and wondered if SOTY release date drives Thrasher's highest daily traffic. What a coup for Nyle that, even after the Junk Drawer scroll feed updates to include Tyshawn’s winning announcement, Nyle back tailing up six stair ledge in New York is still the largest graphic on the Thrasher homepage surrounded by "Play Dead" adverts.
Nyle is from Indiana, like me, and the caption identifies him as “Theories’ resident Hoosier.” Someone tweeted how it must feel being that other skater on the page when people were clicking for TJ, but I couldn’t imagine Nyle feeling anything but a great pride over this pairing. Nyle is 30 I believe and this summer turned pro for Theories out of Brooklyn. I settle in bed with a Top Note Sparkling Grapefruit bottle, Trainwreck Sativa Ghost brand weed vape and a small bottle of sweet chipotle hot sauce from today's Advent Calendar my parents gifted me. Nyle's 5:13 clip is ready to play and so am I.
When I was turning 18 in Indiana, Pat Binkley and Ryan Weddle were two of the best skaters in the state. Both from Brazil, the five figure Clay County seat 15 miles east of Terre Haute by Indiana's Illinois border, Pat and Ryan were Workshop influenced skaters in a state where the aesthetic tilted more to Emerica, Toy Machine, and Zero stopping for summer tours through Rise Skateshop. Ryan and Pat’s big local video debut was in The Other Side of Things, a title perhaps nodding both to the skaters versus civilians viewpoint distinction and to Ryan and Pat's stylistic difference from current Indianapolis scene. (Habitat did come through on their Mosaic tour, where Kerry Getz gave his complete to my friend Eli and I picked up a Polaroid of Poppalardo 5050 grinding the curved Love Park Rail Koston noseslid.) Pat was on One in a Million in 2007 and worked for Sole Tech for some time. As I lived in New York, Ryan started telling me about a younger skater named Nyle, from Brazil too, who was going to be better than he and Pat.
I first saw Nyle skating in 2008's Rockpile video, then Transworld posted his HulkRipps 2 part in 2017, and Nyle has released multiple parts each recent year, including a nearly 10 minute solo section featured on Free Skate Mag, by which point he was am for Theories. He’s been filming Pyramid Park since the Spring it seems. I messaged him when I saw his story post of the Flushing globe in June, but he was leaving town at that point.
She starts strumming synth guitar, showing Super 8 street sign shots of Nyle's last name Lovett. Past cornfields and cows, behatted Nyle carrying his board takes us underneath infrastructure then up rusty stairs to view Pyramid Park, these three Pyramid buildings on the Northside of Indianapolis. Scene established, video shifts to a sharp current camera for Nyle’s first trick, the back tail up six stairs we saw on the screen grab. In a lush green summer park, deserted save a statue with its back turned, Nyle scoops and weight distributes with the spot’s trigonal assistance for smooth exhale rollaway, to immediately fulfill the viewer’s anticipated gratification from thumbnail click. We proceed with interest confirmed and established.
Next trick Nyle varial heels over a rusty rail to crusty bank that calls to mind Rob Pluhowski. Again I think of the woodworker when Nyle frontside heels from a porch to black cellar door. Along Midwestern municipal buildings and brick back alleys, Nyle accents flat gaps, ledges and manual pads with upper echelon aplomb. The curved Hudson waterfront ledge at Canal Street gets a switch back tail front 270 shove, Cincinnati spots lead between Xenia Ohio and downtown Indianapolis, switch 360 flip cruising around a manhole, flip outs stomped with speed. Some street tech homies with twisted ankles and fingers contribute clips and I've seen Nyle and Randy Benko sharing a previous part. Again, the Lovett Street sign as camera returns to Nyle, at a spot Gabe Tenned skated. As Nyle pops lines over consecutive farmland flat gaps, Look Blue Go Purple's vocals beguile and I imagine Nyle as the "Guy Who Knows a Place" meme, taking his company to a marvelous middle western manual pad and stacking the clip in time to share the sunset. Brands such a Workshop, Quasi, $lave and here Theories explore mass market Rust Belt commentary and I see Gilbert Crockett and Bobby DeKeyser influences along with Andrew Allen and Brandon Biebel. The ethos blends sunbleached municipal metropolitanism with modern tech, plus beard stubble like cut cornfields. Nyle nollie back heels over a ledge into a brick bank that might be my favorite clip, switch varial flips an elevated flat gap in downtown Indy that I want to skate, and manual reverts at the Indianapolis library, then we pause for a breather at the used car lot.
For the second song King Plague orchestrates us through flip in and out of switch nose Manny tech, backside flip fakie 5-0 shoves, bigflip out of back tail at the Indianapolis Canal ledge, a fresh combo to pedestrian dodge at the Columbia University ledge beside the chain to bank, that blue and red step up ledge in Philly, brown trousers, white shirt and shoes, green cap tan brim, FiDi hitting Pyramid, Seaport and C shaped manual pad before catching the train to Flushing, for back tail heel flip out to regs, then back tail varial heel out. The final shots bring pyramids together with Theories' branding, which seems that of autodidact philosophy bordering on conspiracy. A few cornfield Super 8 shots replicated where something instead could have built, but Nyle's Indiana pride is evident along with his ability to stack at world famous spots. I could see him getting on Cons trips this year and would like to see him skate San Francisco. The video's ending shots are from the top of Crown Hill Cemetery, which is the climatic setting for my Dollar Story RIP.