This issue hits like a basement show and a parking-lot brawl rolled into one, with Ben Raemers on the cover, loose, fearless, and skating like the concrete owes him money. The centerpiece is the SOTY Party, a chaotic victory lap stacked with spilled drinks, bad decisions, and skate royalty behaving exactly as advertised. Brazil delivers sunburned madness and DIY destruction, while RTMF and Raemers sections lock into raw street energy, tricks fired off fast and casual, easy-looking only because the consequences are ignored. Birdhouse keeps the bloodline alive with heavy terrain and precision, Hollywood High and Haslam inject technical wizardry, and Saints & Sinners leans into skate mythology with warped legends and personalities colliding at speed.
The back half drifts into Thrasher’s beloved weird frequency. Nobunny, Christian Mistress, and Lyrics Born bring noisy, dusty music culture into the mix, while departments spiral through busted bodies, street dogs, radio static, cosmic nonsense, and quotes from legends like Tony Hawk marveling at impossible 360s. Photo-G feels like dragon-slaying bravado, Trash celebrates vertical lunacy, and Firing Line keeps the attitude sharp and sideways. It’s messy, loud, funny, reckless, and alive, a snapshot of skating when it’s still dangerous, still dumb in the best way, and still burning hot at street level.
