Free To Read Thoughts On: Vincent Alvarez in Lakai's Bubble
With the recent release of Lakai’s latest full-length, Bubble, we were incredibly stoked to see full parts from some of our favourites!
With the recent release of Lakai’s latest full-length, Bubble, we were incredibly stoked to see full parts from some of our favourite in Vincent Alvarez, Cody Chapman and Simon Bannerot. We intend to analyse each of these in due course, starting here with Vincent Alvarez!
We’re publishing this edition of our Thoughts On series as a free to read article, if you’d like to read our thoughts on Cody Chapman and Simon Bannerot’s sections, become a Paid Subscriber below!
The part starts off with a series of quick-fire clips that encapsulate plenty of Alvarez staples; boardslide pop outs, switch frontside wallrides, switch and nollie heelflip variations and quick ledge combos being some examples. A bank to ledge switch frontside tailslide shove-it just about ends the intro to the part, landed properly bolts.
The first line proper is situated at an amazing looking ditch spot. It’s great to see Vincent still repping the switch frontside bigspin some twenty years after it’s proper heyday. He begins this line with a smooth one over a hole in a bank, before wallie 180ing into a mirrored, fakie version of the nollie 360 heel seen during the intro section. Capping off this ditch foray is a brilliant fakie inward heelflip out of a trannied bank over a similar hole in the ditch to the switch bigspin spot, quickly followed by a clip of a potentially horrible bail on the same trick where Alvarez ends up fully sideways flying through the air… A gnarly gap Ollie over a gap to rail, into a hillbomb follows, with some classic speed wobbles both at the point of landing and whilst rolling away down the hill following a speed check.
An epic Barcelona section comes next, with plenty of flip trick on steep bank action, including a brilliant cameo from one Tom Penny. Alvarez has a great nack for making unfashionable flip tricks look great, and he repeates the trick here with a fakie bigspin flip to fakie, again landed absoulately bolts. Penny’s 360 flip on the same bank is great for the oppposite reason - he seems to correct his landing whilst still in the air. Vincent hits up a few more well known bank spots in the next few clips, seeing a switch bluntslide revert transfer on a red brick banked hip, followed by a fun line at those red waves ending with him switch slappying the last wave.
The next section sees Alvarez and an eclectic crew hit up an amazing ledge spot. Something like a set of banked steps, allowing you to get a grind then ride down into the steps themselves. Vincent plays out my dream trick on this setup, with a backside 5-0 ridden down the stairs to fakie, mayday style.
The final few clips see a few Alvarez tricks interspersed with tricks from Griffin Gass and especially Simon Bannerot. Alvarez fakie heelflips into a gnarly bank followed by a downhill ride, where Gass switch 360 flips and Bannerot Bigspinflip reverts(!). The ender is a hectic switch backside wallride over a diy quarter, preceded by an even more hectic switch bomb down a heavy ditch bank…