kingsize

"Meat. Meat only."

Filming flatground with a clunky camcorder on that singular stroll down the sidewalk, the nineties began the second Matt Hensley went to the store. The rockstars on their vert ramps and their flashy overbudget films had run their course... skateboarding was officially leaving its backyard and hitting the streets.

But as visionary as Natas and Gonz were with laying down that initial foundation, they were still products of that same larger-than-life mentality that had been used to market all those vert guys prior to. The kids wanted something they could relate to, and every skaterat could relate to Hensley.

Shackle Me Not was barely more than a home movie... and it gave us all a peak inside Matt's world, one that really wasn't all that different from our own. He hated school and ate at McDonalds... he went to camp and even had crappy little ramps in his garage. Just like we did. You wouldn't find him lounging with Warhol and Marilyn in some metropolitan city, he was more like that older kid we looked up to from down the street.

And he just happened to be really REALLY good at skateboarding. So good that we all sat back and watched him progress so quickly that he was damn near untouchable by the time Hokus Pokus came out only a few years later. One-foot backlips, tre flips galore and that handrail 50-50 grab thing he always did... the age of the McTwist was over. While he had stolen the show in Shackle Me Not, he was the show in Hokus.

But there was a method to it. What made Hensley's ascension so enjoyable to watch is that we got to see him combining tricks to create new ones right before our very eyes. Each month brought magazines ads featuring Hensley doing something that was totally mindblowing... but also completely logical from his last feat. One ad would be a kickflip, the next month's a melanchollie... which makes the third month's ad pretty obvious in hindsight (Matt just hadn't invented those moves for us yet). But it was all laid out right there in front of us. Every trick was added just that one more component... because he could.

As his skating soared to new heights, he began to lose that relatibility that initially drew us to him. The awe we experienced of his 360 one-foot tailgrabs and 540 ollies soon carried over to the man himself and he was put on a pedestal. All of a sudden everyone had a shaved head and the Hensley look was born (chukkas, chain wallets, cargo shorts and those socks). Cheeks were puffed-out on-purpose and the man grew uncomfortable. He had to go underground.

But he'd return.