Last night saw Southbank overrun with swoosh-fans all ready to peep the new video offering from Nike, ‘Nothing But The Truth’, and the turnout was phenomenal as you would expect.
With media press days happening over in east London all day, a fair few of the crowd (myself included) were well oiled and truly hyped to see what the shoe giant and their incredible team had to offer. When your team list includes the likes of Gino Iannucci, Brian Anderson, Paul Rodriguez, Stephan Janoski, Reese Forbes, Chet Childress and Omar Salazar, it can’t be anything but amazing.
The crowds assembled and free boxes of popcorn eaten, the performance began with the film style skits that have already been well discussed. Lewis Marnell (interview on Crossfire soon) had the opener and some beautiful reggae-tinged tre flips caught front foot and dragged back into land. Janoski did what Janoski does and made skating look far too easy, whilst Wieger did frontside 180 fakie nosegrinds that put people on the edge of their seats.
Gino received rapturous applause through his 8 tricks at the end of Brian Anderson’s section, which almost drowned out the perfect pop noises. Chet Childress also killed it and looked like he was having the time of his life doing it. P-Rod closed the show with the footage of ‘that’ treflip crook, which is fast. Really fast. I was shocked. And he knocked out yet another bolts switch frontside heel down enough steps to make asthmatics wheeze.
An incredible day, and Nike really know how to treat their supporters, but the video, with all the hype surrounding it, seemed to lack that certain something that could have made it the best piece of film ever made. Fingers need to be put on something, but I’m not sure what. Look out for a full review on Crossfire very soon, as well as interviews with Nike riders Brian Anderson and Chet Childress