Favorite does not mean most difficult. It doesn't mean gnarly and it's usually not the clip you filmed on the most fucked up, get-rich-or-die-trying spot. Ok, there can be some overlap. Maybe your favorite clip is gnarly or fucked up or just plain difficult. But, more often than not, favorite clips are the clips that have a story behind them, that's been the common thread throughout Shot List. It's all about the story. This week, Parrish Issacs takes us into his archive—his bookshelf if you will—for some proper New England jibbing. And yes, there's a story behind these clips.
Parrish Issacs
Originally From: Manchester, VT
Currently Residing: Philadelphia, PA/Manchester, VT
Sam Eisenhaur—Ollie:
So this first one, that clip of Sam, it’s special to me because Sam is one of my best friends. He’s the person I first started filming street snowboarding with and that spot is really really close to his house. I grew up in high school, just hanging out at his house a lot. It’s a special clip because it’s walking distance from Sam’s family’s house in Londonderry. There are a couple other clips in the video that are in the same zone. There are actually like five clips that are in that same little tiny area right there. The clip in the very beginning of the video where Sam does a Natas spin on a log, there’s a clip where John does a front board on a culvert and it goes out and he almost lands in the river, those are all like, right in the middle of South Londonderry. But yeah, that one is just really special to me. He’s one of my best friends and I just think it’s a cool clip.
Savannah Shinske—Ollie to 5050
The Savannah one is really funny because I saw that spot in a Buck 90 video so long ago. I don’t even remember how they rode it. I don’t even know…I don’t remember what they did but they did something on it. I was like, dude it would be so sick if you just ollied over into it and rode the rail. But I could never find the spot. It’s clearly in New England. I thought maybe it was like, south of Boston. Maybe closer to the ocean where it doesn’t get as much snow and I don’t spend as much time down there and it’s kind of endless. Needle in a haystack looking for that thing. But it ended up being in New Hampshire somewhere in a random town. Or maybe it was Massachusets, on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. Super random at a school. And we just drove by it one day when we were home filming stuff. We just drove by it and I was like, holy shit! I’d wanted to know where that was for like five years but I had given up hope of ever finding it. I hadn’t even tried to find it for years at this point and we just drove by it. I was like, oh my god, that’s that fucking spot they rode in the Buck 90 video that I’ve always wanted to find. So, we went there. We tried to hit it and got kicked out and then I think we went back and set it up at night. I think it was about to rain and we were going to lose all the snow and we couldn’t wait until the weekend so we had to go after school was closed. It’s at a school, right out front. I think we just tried to barge it one day while school was open and obviously just got kicked out. That night I think we set it up. And then the next day we went at like, five, barely any light. Yeah, definitely pretty scary because you’re ollieing over and you can’t see anything so you have to hope you’re lining up with the rail correctly. But it just worked out right as it was getting dark. It was the last day, right before the rain, and for that thing, you need to make a big drop-in. You can’t do it with a little bit of snow. So that one I was really stoked it worked out.
Jake Gaudet—Front 180
That was, I think John or Jake found that on Google Earth on one of the last days we were in Washington DC. It was like, fuck how have we not found this yet. It was right there, not hidden and also super-hidden at the same time. We went and checked it out. We were like, fuck this is going to suck to set up. We ended up finding all these pallets at a construction site and trying to use those for a lip. I think John was originally supposed to do it but then we set it up and he…bunted. Not to throw him under the bus. But we had to shovel so much fucking snow. There was a shopping cart there and we were bringing it in a shopping cart from really far away. It was like under a bridge, around this corner, and down a bike path where the snow was somehow still there. I mean, if you look at the clip there’s like no snow. It was a reach. It barely worked. But I think it was the last clip we got in DC. I don’t know, it was just one of those kinds of spots that you hope you find but probably aren’t going to find. Especially in a place like that where you show up and there’s like four inches of snow. It was actually the only thing we hit that was really in the city there.
Evan Sheridan—Ollie
Some of the other clips here barely worked out and that’s why they were my favorite but this one I put because it worked out so well. We just drove by the spot, set it up a little the night before, went back and hit it. It worked perfectly, looked really cool. I like how I filmed it. I like the different angles of it. Evan probably did it like twenty times so we could get a bunch of different angles. It’s classic New England, brick wall and beams. But it was just fun, we pulled up, got the clip, he did it a bunch of times and we left. I like how he slams into the fence at the bottom. And it ended up being the cover of the video. We never have a photographer with us really but Ezra took a cool photo of it and it ended up being the cover of the video.
Jack Szkutak—5050-tree-5050
This one is because of the spot. It’s a grail spot. You get on a rail then go to the log then get back on the rail again. It was just in the middle of nowhere Vermont and it was so freaky. We pulled up, started shoveling, Skoot maybe hopped on it a few times and it was at a campground I think, but I’d never been to this place in Vermont before and have never gone back. It is in such a hidden zone of Vermont. It was on a campground. These people pulled up and I was definitely getting religious family vibes. And they owned the place and we convinced them that we were just riding down the hill next to the rail, I don’t think they saw us hit the rail. But then Skoot rode down the hill onto the tennis court and they were like, No! Don’t ride on the tennis court because it was one of those really nice clay courts. And they got mad at us for that but for some reason let us stay. But they were weird, for sure. Like, they don’t leave this town, they’re this family that owns all this land. It was super creepy vibes. And then they drove off and we waited for them to get out of sight and then Skoot got it in like three tries and we were like, ok let’s get the fuck out of here. But that one is just a cool spot.