Now Playing: Carlos Bernal's City Fade
Sometimes, a decade of hard work finally pays off.
Carlos Bernal has been killing shit for a long time. Although some of his earlier sections seem to have disappeared along with the Conference Vimeo account, his body of work is nonetheless pretty darn impressive. For the last ten years, he’s been relentlessly dropping edits and hammers, steadily moving up the corporate ladder from the Spanish to the European USD team, until he finally got promoted to pro status last year! Carlos has traveled from NYC to the Dominican Republic, from Venezuela to Cali, and in addition to a constant stream of promo edits for sponsors UC Wheels and USD, he also produced full parts for traditional videos such as Focus or onliners like The Capital VOD.
Granted, this new City Fade section makes no exception, only it seems to take things one step further. Patiently filmed over the last two years and edited by Teles Angel of Martell Productions, a man responsible for Michel Prado’s recent From The Dirt VOD and whose skating, photography, and filming all constitute one of the major driving forces behind the famed Balas Perdidas collective, with additional filming by Marc Moreno and Ferran Laparra (the former also created the motion graphics), this massive piece clocks in at a solid 12 minutes over the course of which Carlos manages to destroy five different pairs of skates and a variety of spots most wouldn’t dare to even touch:
Big kink rails, double rails, rail transfers, gaps to rails and rails to gaps, with a bank to rail thrown in for good measure… All sorts of rails, basically, for a skater whose technical mastery is on full display on this type of obstacle, but whose skills also shine with moves you wouldn’t necessarily expect, like launching lofty 360 bank transfers or dropping onto lower wall rails, not to mention a handful of gaps and wallrides as well. When he’s not lacing sweatstances both ways on big, dangerous rails, or impossible negative switch-ups, he’s connecting technical lines where every trick involves a full spin beforehand… And even a freaky fakie backflip, for that matter!
In short, here are 40 carefully picked clips all worth screaming for, and though they sometimes seem to leave his friends quite unimpressed as they watch from the sidelines, this section is the epitome of the good ole hammer-blading your retired skate buddies claim no one is doing anymore. So if you want to shut them up for a while, I suggest you shell out the 8€ and treat yourself with an early Christmas present. If only for the danger factor itself, this is the kind of section worthy of a pro skate. Now, one can only hope Carlos is indeed as incredibly consistent as the bonus Chronology file would have us believe, so he can start stacking clips for his next boot already: hopefully, we won’t have to wait another decade for that one!
PHOTO GALLERY: IMPRO PRODUCTIONS