I know you want to tell me how many bangers so and so had in their latest part – but fuck that – this is one of our favorite skate clips of the year, for sure. Colin Read and Mandible Claw make a skate dream come true: skating police cars, skitching taxis, grinding trucks and having full blown subway sessions. What is so great about this clip, is that it actually looks FUN, something that can be missing from these high budget, ultra pressured skate videos where stair count and tricks trump all. They don’t need to start cutting in clips of smiles, high fives and skaters bro-ing down to convince us, you just know it is.

Q & A with filmer Colin Read

How’d you get away with this shit? You get a ticket or summons?
The metro clip was filmed in 2 nights, at 3-6 in the morning. We tried to switch trains often to lesser our chances of getting caught. For some of the clips, we waited until a train was almost there to try the trick, so we could bail afterward. While skating in the trains, we would either skate the last car, or one several down from a conductor. For the most part, when we neared a station we would sit down in case a cop was chilling on the platform. Miraculously, we got away without getting arrested or getting tickets. I feel like I used up all my karma filming those videos; if I even stand on a board in the subway now I’ll probably be arrested on the spot. Gotta chill on it for a bit.

Where was this all mostly filmed?
We rode all over the city, filmed on the L, G, F, A, and more. As for stations, we got out wherever we saw something we could skate. Indoor 10 is at 42nd/Bryant Park; those two metal boxes are at 14th St & 6th Ave. Kenji’s nose wallie was in the financial district, I think the manual through the train was in downtown Brooklyn. Rector St on at R is a fun stop to skate at, since it’s downhill and there aren’t any yellow bumps at the edge of the track. You can slalom downhill through the pillars and get some fun flatground in. It’s completely abandoned late at night, too.

Anything funny happen while filming?
I’ll tell you one funny thing. One of the guys in the video, Kenji Nakahira, is Japanese–he’s part of the whole Fat Bros crew. He came with Akira Takata, an amazing photographer. Kenji was here for two weeks and didn’t speak barely any English. Anyway, before we went out filming the first night, he got really, really high. And I guess he gets weird when he gets high. So we were on the L train at around 1 AM, at the 1st Ave stop, when he suddenly bolts out of the train and up the stairs, alone. Remember he’s in NYC for the first time, speaks no English, and is high as hell. We sat there, stunned; right before the doors closed, our friend Connor Kammerer (who speaks Japanese) ran out after him. The rest of us got out at the next stop, and in a few minutes Connor walked over with Kenji.
It didn’t end there. Later on we had to stop him from picking up a piece of dog poop, claiming “Someone must clean it up,” and had to stop him from suddenly jumping inside trains whose doors were closing. Stay rad, Kenji!

What videos are you psyched on or influenced you to make clips like these?
My favorite company at the moment is probably Magenta: the team, the aesthetic, the graphics, the videos. Going along with that, Yoan Taillander makes some of the best videos out there. Josh Stewart always comes correct. Takahiro Morita is another of my influences–all the FESN stuff is amazing, like Overground Broadcasting, On the Broad, etc. I want to move to Japan and skate with those dudes, they understand skating. Skating at night, terrorizing shit. Maybe that’ll be where I go next.

Last Words?
You’ll probably find us underground again as winter sets in. Hopefully I won’t be hitting you up for bail.

Want to see more clips from Colin Read & Mandible Claw?
Check clips of the video “561 to NYC” here