SUMMER 12 // RIPPING
Monday, June 4th, 2012
You’ve got to organize a shoot for Rhythm’s summer line. It’s noon and you’ve got until the end of the day.
No guidelines, no location, not much time. You’ve got ten tops, six bottoms, a photographer, and one skateboarding Saint, Christian Sereika. It’ll work.
You get Christian on the phone and head down to his spot. He knows you suck at skating – he knows you don’t even have a skate – but he’s got you covered. He comes out to the parking lot to greet you. You shake hands and share a big smile as he walks you into his pad. He offers a beer and you hang on his patio for a little while. Today will work.
He asks what we’re doing. You say you have no idea but you know that he’s skating, you’re going to capture some Polaroids of him skating, and the photographer is going to snap shots of you taking Polaroids of him skating. He’s hyped and has a spot in mind to warm up. He’s already on the phone and now he’s off. We got a place to go. Right up the road. At his friend Greg Lutzka’s mini-ramped, pooled, and lemon-treed backyard. Yes sir, today will most certainly work.
So you cruised over and are warmly greeted (actually, the beers you’re greeted with are cold, so…) by Andy, Greg’s brother, a wad of hospitality and laughs. Christian drops in and that’s when you get it: he loves this. The footage he showed you on the drive over was ham (any form of street skating, let alone his kickflip backlips, his double-set heelflips, or just watching him crack an ollie into backside 5050, is enough to make you question the rails you hit this winter strapped in), but getting to watch him in person, be it on an eight foot mini, is just raw – an all-natural, organic, ham sandwich.
He starts blasting frontside airs; melons that hit home to anyone who’s ever stood atop any kind of board. Backlips on the extension and disasters so powerful you can’t help but yell for him as he rips across the flat-bottom, linking together a fluid line. It was a gamble using your Polaroid however the blur and ghosts in the prints are precisely reflective of his skating: Slick and fast, no hesitation. There is a single instant to create his image on film and that is in that glimmer between physics and the soul – between routine and nature. That’s why you brought the camera and that is exactly why your half-dozen fuzzed out, out of focused, tilted prints are worth it; this is how to capture Christian Sereika, even if it is just the flicker of a star.
A couple hours pass and before you know it, you and Christian have gone through every piece you brought and have it all wrapped up. A huge thanks to Andy and Greg, then you zoom back to Christian’s place to relax with a cold Black Star and some good laughs. Later, at dinner, he gets the call to go film at Sheckler’s park. Cannot pass. You drop him back off at his place and head for home with one thing on your mind: Ripping.
Verbiage :: Keenan Cawley
Photography :: Andrew Noel
