I don't hate Strobek's style of filming as I think most of the time it works and like you said, it's very much his style, but the way he butchered how gnarly Tyshawn's switch flip over the wall and into that fountain was pissed me off.
Not to be
that guy, but...
I was there that day. And Johnny Wilson filmed/ruined that clip for you.
So there's a fun fact.
(I feel like that probably happens a lot at either end of this spectrum... you don't know exactly who filmed what, in which video, half or most of the time.)
Do you want to hear about that day at the fountain?
Okay, go on then...
I was walking through the park to meet my lady friend, and she was running late. Which she tends to do. So I decide to go sit at the fountain and wait. It's a beautiful New York day in April, everyone is out but it's not summer yet so the fountain is still drained. It's rammed with people, because you can sit in that thing and on that thing and it's great to watch the world go by. Some steezy-looking college-age kid in dress shoes and pants and a white T-shirt is playing football/soccer with his less well-dressed friends. There's a guy in mirrored sunglasses, a leather jacket with nothing underneath it, playing music from a legitimate-looking 80's boombox, smoking a cigarette. (I'm not even joking.) The Johnny Wilson/Supreme crew are there. I see them gathered as I walk up. There's people everywhere and Tyshawn is just pushing through the crowd towards the fountain. And I get excited because watching Tyshawn skate in person is incredible.
(Honestly, the kid has so much grace and power. In real life just the way he pushes and looks on his board tells you he's destined to be looked on as one of the greatest to ever do it. It's not a perfect comparison but I felt the same way seeing Alex Olsen skate for the first time in his younger, Lakai/Workshop flow days. He just had that thing about him, the way he set-up for his tricks, that felt the same as the older, cannon pros from the middle 90s.)
Anyway...
Tyshawn pushes up at mach 100, but oh-so casual, and just ollies into the fountain a few times like it's nothing. And if you've been there, it's not nothing. Then he does it switch a few times. Then he starts trying the switch flip.
I sit and watch for maybe 15 minutes. Then my lady friend arrives. And, like the fucking nerd I am, I make her sit and watch with me for another 20-or-so. He doesn't land it in that time, but he comes close to a few, sticking one and springing backwards into a roll and the crowd starts aww-ing and ooo'ing. I start feeling bad about making the lady watch some 20 year old's skateboard because by this point she's been putting up with this shit from me for a decade-plus. So we go on our merry, spring way to celebrate the forthcoming pleasures of summer by getting absolutely smashed on Negroni's in a bar in Brooklyn.
I have iPhone footage you're going to ask me to post of a few of his tries/sticks/bails. Shot from a normal angle, from inside the fountain.
You can see Wilson up there with the HD rig, standing on the little raised platform on the rim of the fountain, butchering a glorious, historic trick however many tries later. In the Blessed footage it looks darker/cloudier then I remember it, so I figure it took him a while to land it. I've even wondered if they went back another day.
Either way, he had plenty of time and opportunity to correct his mistake is what I'm saying.
Also, I guess I'm saying don't blame Bill.
But I also can tell you from multiple real life interactions that Fat Bill is an insufferable douchebag who smells kind of stale up close. Like an old, damp rug and last night's Budweiser burp. And he was probably texting Wilson that day and telling him exactly where to stand and how to fuck it up. So DM him on Insta like a man and tell him I sent you.
(You're welcome)
The End.