Listen: Grant Yansura’s Favorites

Grant Yansura is my favorite skateboarding filmmaker.

I am writing this intro for Grant’s playlist on the L train heading toward Brooklyn at 3:13AM. Would you like to hear a really shit-eating statement about the media? Here you go: ‘skateboarding media exists in a climate where having strong opinions - favorites or least favorites - is discouraged lest we hurt the feelings of other people in skateboarding.’ I hate when people talk about skateboarding like it’s CNN, but it’s true. I have a hard time getting people to talk shit, or talk love, or anything stronger than, ‘yeah, super chill!’ That I feel the need to go on a tangent in order to justify my saying that Grant is my favorite skateboarding filmmaker is evidence of the evidence.

Anyway, he is my favorite skate filmmaker and brand owner. Sorry, Dan, Geoff, Greg, Bils, Yansura does it for me. So much so that I am actively trying to cast him in a non-skateboarding film, to draw his talents further out from skating and into the normal and boring world of narrative filmmaking. So much so that between WKND material, I follow along on his Pasadena piss-escapades.

On that note, with solemnity I say that I hope he and his family and friends are okay given the firestorm, with gratitude I say Grant, make more shit for me to watch, and with joy I implore you to listen his playlist composed of his favorite skate video soundtracks, and take a gander at his notes for each below. Take additional note of his excellent handwriting and the fact that he owns a highlighter. That’s why he makes the big bucks.