Jun 5

Jun 5 Best Sections of All-Time: Curated by Grady Strange

We loosened up the rules for Best Section of All-Time this week so Grady Strange — this week’s creative guru and curator — had room to explore the space. He didn’t disappoint. A music video. A surf film. A surf section. And a skate section. Get yourself educated and hear why these parts had such an impact on nurturing Grady’s very well manicured lifestyle.—Travis

Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys / Directed by Spike Jonze

I have a vivid memory of getting in my uncle Mike’s truck to go skate someone’s backyard half pipe. I have no idea how old I actually was but in my memory I wanna say I was 8 or 10 or something. He was blasting Beastie Boys and my mind exploded.

After that I got some CDs and dove in. A lot of our family’s humor and appreciation for things was based off the Beastie Boys' energy. A super loud New York / New Jersey breed of damaged. This music video in particular is etched in my brain from the first time I saw it. I love the light story line with the robot coming and taking over New York, with the Beastie Boys acting as its little minions. The mix of the story and props and explosions with the classic fisheye lens shots with whoever is rapping at the time jumping up to the lens, is just the shit for me. That’s still what my style is based off of.

For all of my music videos or edits I make, I like to have those insane outlandish story lines going on. Creating a world inside a quick three minute piece. I often don’t feel like I’ve fully expressed a song until I make a video for it. That’s definitely because of these guys.

Searching for Tom Curren

I have a lot of parts from childhood that blew my mind, but the style compass parts that stick in my mind are “Searching For Tom Curren” and the well deserved infamous rainbow fish Burch part in “Psychic Migrations”.

I was never a big high performance surfer but the 90’s were the peak for me. Those long ass drawn out rails kept the smooth style at the forefront of performance surf for the time being. Nothing like seeing Curren do wraps like that. Now I hunt out boards from that era so I can pretend to be him in my mind.

Ryan Burch in Psychci Migrations

For Psychic Migrations, I was living in Nashville at the time when that came out. I was playing in bands, chasing the dream, and then skating to keep myself sane. I was only surfing when visiting home or in little windows on tour. That part came out and it’s basically the way I dream surf in my mind to a tee.

Everything I wish I could do, he was doing. It almost made me sad because I knew how far I was from that feeling. Especially pulling any of it off with that much ease and style. It gave me a, “What the fuck am I doing out here?” moment, even though it would take me three more years to fully move to the West Coast. I just skated a ditch and busted myself over and over to scratch the itch till I got to move out and reconnect with surfing.

Andrew Considine in Street Fighters 2

For skate, watching the homie Andrew Considine barrel through shit big boy style in his Street Fighters 2 part got me so hyped and made me wanna skate again after promising myself I’d never go break my body for zero glory ever again.