Embracing the Ephemeral – Cordano Russel, Tyshawn, and John Dilo

by Landen Fergus | Oct 4, 2024 | Blog

On Sept 13 Cordano Russel posted a halfcab blunt to back lip down the Stampede Rail at GMC stadium in Calgary, Canada. The trick is undoubtably an NBD down a handrail, and the set looks to be at least a twelve. Cole Nowicki did a great write up of his experience watching the trick go down as a hard-post for the ‘gram, including a nod to a previously historic front-nose down the rail by Paul Machnau 22 years ago (if you’re not reading Nowicki’s Simple Magic blog, you should be). Nowicki also puts to words what was probably in the backs of the minds of many older skaters: how could this ender worthy trick be posted to Instagram with such nonchalance (including a typo in the original caption!), noting that it “is surprising seeing [the trick and subsequent post] done with such little regard for what it means.” Nowicki’s words here prompt the further question for those of us with this in the backs of our minds, what does it mean to do a trick of this magnitude and then to post that same ender worthy trick to Instagram?

Nowicki has written and thought about this question before (again, read his blog). As has The Mostly Skateboarding Podcast (you should also be listening to this too). In their May 5 episode, the Mostly Skateboarding cast, Templeton Elliott, Patrick Kigongo, and Jason from Frozen in Carbonite, discuss, among other things, Tyshawn hard-posting his 360-flip over the 145th St. subway station tracks. This is the same gap Tyshawn kick flipped to earn the December 2022 Thrasher cover, thank you Atiba for getting the full scope of the thing, and later backside flipped in a hard post (which seems to have since been deleted from Tyshawn’s Instagram). In the case of Tyshawn’s backside flip hard post, it felt like the post was finishing his SOTY run. It was the proverbial cherry on top. Here, that appears to be the meaning. The backside flip over the subway was connected to Tyshawn earning the title of SOTY, the hard post connected to the coming accolades, but the 360-flip posted in May of 2024 doesn’t seem to be attached to a SOTY run unless there is a coming bombardment of Tyshawn footage in the next couple months–a possibility but unlikely. There’s no cover for the 360 flip and it was likely filmed on an iPhone. The meaning, then, must be something other than doing the trick for traditional skate coverage. In this regard, The Mostly Skateboarding crew brings up a great point, and that’s reach. As of September 25, 2024, Tyshawn’s 360 flip has 6.5-million plays, 300-thousand likes, 4-thousand comments, and 93-thousand shares. By comparison, Tyshawn’s Kingdom Come part, one of the parts that cinched his SOTY run, has 270-thousand views racked up over nearly two years. The 360 flip was posted May 1 of this year, barely five months ago. That is a staggering difference in the reach of a viral single hard post compared to a relatively short but full part, plus the speed at which that reach reaches. Similarly, Cordano Russel’s halfcab blunt to back lip has 960-thousand plays and 26-thousand shares. Russel has yet to release a full solo part since his stardom began to rise, but we can look at his mini doc through Thrasher or Toy Machine’s Real Life Sucks, in which Russel has a part, and see the same pattern, these viral posts garner greater numbers.

For outward facing skateboarders like Russel and Tyshawn, internet virality would seem the strongest career move. They have eyes on them from outside the skateboard industry. Russel, an Olympian, and Tyshawn as an extensive public figure moving through the New York fashion world and neighborhood work with his restaurant. Both have incentive to broaden their appeal to an audience beyond the peering eyes of the skateboard industry. If a sponsored skateboarder’s job is to functionally be a billboard, then these skateboarders are showing how they can be on the sides of highways that non-skaters commute, potentially receiving endorsements and money from outside sources (I’m sure that soon enough I will inevitably be DM’d Russel’s incredible feat by a friend or family member who doesn’t skate). What is harder to pin down is when a skateboarder who is inward facing posts in this way.

Sometime around the beginning of August, John Dilo shared a clip on his Instagram story of a mind melting manual trick on a slight drop down manny pad: switch front 180 nose manny nollie backside flip to switch nose manny, with a little halfcab out. This was originally just a story post, 24-hours of ephemerality, which was later hard posted and subsequently deleted. Now, on Dilo’s page, only the process lives on: a collection of close attempts and the make (if the process really includes every attempt, Dilo is a freak of manualing nature). Sometime in September Dilo story posted a nearly mirrored version of this trick on the same manny pad, sans the 180s in and out: nose manny nollie frontside flip to switch nose manny. That clip has no hard post or process post to compliment it. It’s gone. I just happen to have seen it during its brief life in the content mill. Dilo appears to have a devil may care attitude toward people seeing these clips. The posts themselves are a kind acknowledgment that many clips now, even those saved for branded video parts, are viewed only once by only so many eyes, and are therefore just as meaningful when posted to a story as they are in a video part.

Dilo, who never got the nod from Addidas and who was a pro for Almost before the great fallout of Dwindle, may have a lingering sour taste toward the traditional way that skateboarders have ridden for companies. He put in the work for both previous brands, releasing multiple parts after his pro debut in Boss Fight, capping 2021 with Red Tiger, and being a SOTY contender for multiple years, only to be left without board or shoe sponsors soon after. He now skates for Jacuzzi and Hours is Yours, two companies with less followers than Dilo himself. Although Dilo promotes these brands and shows loyalty to being part of the skater owned subcategory of the skate industry, the numbers show that he is a bigger brand than his sponsors, making his relationship with his sponsors perhaps more true to the goal of skaters skating for brands than most. He likely brings more financial foot traffic to the brands he skates for than their names bring him clout. Dilo’s posting of ridiculous manual tricks with little regard for their temporary viewing status becomes part of his brand. His nonchalance suggesting a kind of “this is just me skating today,” his clips selfie filmed by his phone propped on a trashcan. And we can easily accept that this is not an effort to reach outside the skate industry. Dilo doesn’t move in broader circles as far as I can tell, and, frankly, none of my family members are going to share his manual tricks with me (even if I wish that those tricks translated to a broader audience). If we can ignore the paradox that he did film the tricks and share them, then his posts feel pure in a way, like learning to kickflip in your driveway while no one is around.

I am admittedly a Dilo fan. I find it exciting that I often don’t know if the trick he just popped over something is going to land in a manual or not. As a fan, I’m here for Dilo posting tricks that he selfie filmed while skating alone. Those clips make him seem like he’s just a skater out there skating; many of us regular skater folk are guilty of selfie filming tricks we are proud of and posting them to our stories or feeds. But I also dislike the idea of this becoming the norm for sponsored skateboarders. If relying on hard posts and shares becomes the new norm for professional skateboarders, we are likely to revert back to the proliferation of repost accounts like @skatecrunchmag and @metrogrammed that recycled insane skatepark clips until we all became desensitized to the insanity (the Berrics is still dabbling in this, old habits die like cockroaches). And this concern is not to take away from Russel or Tyshawn, they are doing their thing and I’m here for that too, I’m simply trying to consider why we might be seeing these posts and what our role may be as the audience.

There is a comforting nihilism in the act of skateboarding, doing a trick just to have that moment disappear while endorphins rush through your body. Skateboarding is temporary in every sense. The culture does great things and has potential to do more, but the act itself is full of ephemerality. Unintentionally, our media consumption has started to reflect that temporariness, and while I hope that not everyone goes on to embrace the ephemeral, it makes sense as a response to our viewing habits. Be it capitalizing on virality or carefree personal branding, it’s not absurd for our favorite skaters to shoot clips into the ether. If we want skateboarding clips to live longer, it’s on us as the viewers to spend more time with them. Clips, parts, and videos having meaning is contingent on us as viewers giving them attention. If we want meaning, maybe we should all rewatch a part or video today, there’s plenty of incredible stuff to choose from that is more beautifully put together than our Instagram feed.