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GOOFY NOLLIE LASER 
“This is the most direct expression of stancelesseness. Chris Haslam was the first to create a compound movement with his front foot to make his board jump into him, allowing a control that made it a signature trick—mostly backwards, as ‘switch lasers.’ When I understood the complexity of what he was doing, I realized a new generation had emerged with skill sets that are not in my reach. I figured the most difficult thing I could do would be to develop that skill set in the other (wrong) stance. Mechanically, this is a fakie laser, but visually, it has nothing to do with fakie. It is a switch trick that could not be done switch, and proof that a stance can be broken.”

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ONE-FOOT 540º SHOVE-IT
“You have to throw yourself out of balance in order to regain it, in order to generate the torque to do this trick. In this case, the board turns 540 degrees, from a near standstill. Since there’s no room to stop in the dome, I couldn’t afford to land squarely; it was a matter of jumping to the inside (watch back foot), just enough to curl it behind the rail, then un-weight enough to allow a slight slide, which halted me enough to stay standing yet not plow into the cameras. I went back to footage as old as 27 years ago, and I do not see it. I don’t think I’ve ever done it on camera, nor do I recall anyone else ever doing it, certainly not with a modern board.”

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540º GAZELLE
“I was so sure I was going to damage the dome that I held this for the very last night. This trick is accessible to others—not exotic or new—which is part of its strength. There are skaters who can do hard tricks, but within that top tier, skaters who have a flow from within are often considered the best, as long as their tricks are good enough. This speaks to how much the community values individual expression over metrics of prowess, such a trickiness or power. I’d be hard-pressed to give examples of my own skating that show an inner flow’s outward expression more than the simple recovery of this trick.”

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FAKIE CASPER 360º-SPIN TO 360º-CASPER-FLIP
“Another example of having to throw yourself out of balance, whilst spinning, in order to regain it, in order to generate the torque to do the trick. In that black dome with the shadows, your instincts to slide it into control are almost too hard to fight. (I had to come back to this trick three times for that reason alone.) Because breaking my stance allowed me to center with greater poise, I could generate the torque without pitching my upper body forward—to some extent, you have to stand fakie because of it, like a garden-variety fakie 360 kick-flip—which allowed me to stay behind the board once the final 360 casper-flip spun, eventuating in the full spin, so that I could keep the overall rotary motion and pivot backwards, instead of pitching forward to a dead stop.”

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FRONT-RAIL TO 360º-SHOVE-IT TO BACK-RAIL
“This trick has never been seen or done, as far as I know. It is rooted in an obscure freestyle trick dating back 30 years. However, it was only done landing on all four wheels. This rail-to-rail version requires another level of power and control. On top of that, to do it on a modern (bigger) board, and landing on axles, is so daunting that I had never done it until now. It was particularly inspired by the camera action, because of how beautiful it would look: a rotary motion in a rotary system.”

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TRUCK-STAND SARAN (WRAP) to POGO, DOUBLE (SCISSOR) FLIP
“This is a 30-plus-year-old trick from my freestyle days. It is doubtful if it has ever been filmed, as I don’t recall others doing it, certainly not with a modern setup.”

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In mid-2012, Ben Harper and I were driving to a premiere of the Bones Brigade Documentary, when Dhani Harrison called. Ben put him on speaker to introduce us, because Dhani had been on him about this idea of having me skate in a special camera system created by Steven Sebring. I immediately found myself a little star-struck in listening to him, but Dhani quickly had me laughing and intrigued by ideas and pure love for skating. A couple of weeks later, I found myself in Dhani’s office, completely taken-in by the scope of his vision. It was there that he introduced me to his manager David Zonshine, who has an x-ray-vision kind of insight in his ability to capture essences and connect them. Together, they are a formidable pair.

Having used Steven’s Dome to photograph his father’s guitar collection, Dhani said he’d like to get me in there before moving on to other legendary guitar collections from musicians that made my head spin. I apologetically explained that I had not filmed in years, still in the throes of trying to break apart the adhesions that had fused my right femur to my hip—fueled by hope, yet without promise. Dhani never even winced; he merely stated that it’d be ready for me whenever I was, then went into detail about Sebring’s revolutionary invention. He’d periodical pause to hop onto his board and snap a quick heelflip—as if to complete his thought—then warned that there was nothing that could prepare me to skate in Steven’s Dome.

A few months later, I met Steven in the Bowery Hotel lobby, a day or two before we tested the rig for the first time. Steven Sebring is one of the most respected photographers in the world, having shot many of the most iconic figures in music, fashion, and more; beyond that, he’s a visionary. Steven is a tall, long-haired, black-clad figure with a penetrating gaze, yet the moment I met him, his smiling candor overcame his natural gravitas. As soon as we shared ideas, an almost childlike excitement overcame him. It was then that I realized we tapped into the core of his love for leveraging technology to capture movement in unparalleled ways, utilizing what he stressed was Pure Photography. This was my first glimpse into his genius.

This collaboration of Dhani Harrison, Steven Sebring and myself was driven simply by a love of what we do. There were no sponsors, nor will there be any product launch. While there was indeed talk of app’s at first, it was all scrapped because we didn’t want constraints or deadlines to bind us. Together, along with Steven’s band of digital wizards, we single-mindedly committed ourselves to creating something pure and beautiful, by doing what we do. Together, we leveraged and redlined everything we’ve done for most of our lives, all that makes us who we are.

We hope that you enjoy this.

- Rodney Mullen

from left to right, Dhani Harrison, Steven Sebring, Seneca Sebring, Rodney Mullen, David Zonshine.

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